peaches (cut small), sour krout, and fifty other roots and fruits peculiar to this country. All the poultry large and fine, but looking yellow and illplucked; but very moderate in price, comparatively.

Considering the great quantities of the supply, the prices appear rather high-certainly very much higher these last five-and-twenty years; poultry and meat, of all sorts, less than in London; butter and eggs dearer. Fish is cheap. They have no soles; but among others we have not is the shad, an excellent fish ; I think it is a distant cousin of the salmon. I do not see any turbot or John Dory, but their piles of oysters are prodigious.

One thing struck me forcibly. How is it that bread is not much cheaper here than in England, in so grain-growing a state as Pennsylvania; touching the Ohio, too, where flour is quite a drug? nay, the Wilmington flour mills, on the Brandywine, a few miles down the Delaware (a town of mills), grinds flour enough, one would think, for half the Union.

And yet the bakers keep the daily bread here at the fountain-head not a bit cheaper than in London. This is the proof of the pudding; and how satisfactory it is to think that, in spite of our own honest bakers, we have got our bread down to sixpence the quartern loaf. I do not find the fancy bread here so nice as our own, and, as to pastry-cooks, they are, besides being much more expensive, a hundred years behind ours. They affect the French trash-no fruit, all paste and sugar-and bon-bon insipidities.

In the same way, the keep of horses at livery stables is higher than with us in London, and in a very slovenly fashion, which need not at all astonish, all the stablemen being either English or Irish in a transition state, getting too independent to work at all, except for themselves.

I have glanced at the short, little, domestic, easy railroad of six miles to Germantown, with its serious conductor, the Major. Its station is in Ninth-street; coming in from the country, along the centre of the street, its quiet speed slackened to a gentle trot, ringing its bell, perhaps a waggon or cart trotting along amicably beside it. This well-behaved town and country engine, or horse and rail plan of bringing the trains well in towards a central station, holds good in most of the cities. There are three other stations, one westward, along the whole length of the state, crossing the Alleghany mountains to the Ohio; another great one to Baltimore; and one, of some forty miles north, along the banks of the Schuylkill by Norristown, chiefly used as the great coal mart. As, however, all their snorting iron horses are not so sure as the Major's, the Ohio "cars" trot away with four or eight capital horses-mules sometimes-from the very centre of the town, in High and Broad-streets, crossing the Schuylkill bridge, and hooking on the engine on the further bank. In the same way the Baltimore line is trotted from near the same point, in the open street, and crosses, lower down, to the south-west; its course, by Wilmington, Newcastle, and across the Susquehanna in a steamer. In this way they avoid the preposterous expenses of buying up whole streets, as in our "South-Western," extended to the Waterloo-road. Even the Americans stare at the enormous outlay of our railroads, and it hangs, of course, like a millstone round our necks, no matter how much the traffic has increased.

The famous old State-house did contain Peel's Museum, but, of late years, Barnum finds all museums, and joins a theatre to it; when the play is over you walk about among the stuffed specimens, if you are not tired enough already; and very awful specimens they are. The expression given exceeds all power of face, particularly if it is meant to express serious dignity. They have made a rare example of our Queen, who stands among the Union's own great men in a glass case; but, I think, a whole living band in wax was the most stunning thing; it was lucky that the barrels, or the bellows, were on an intermittent plan, and had some mercy on one's ears.

The best things are the Indian dresses, weapons, and ornaments, always perfect in their kind, and beautiful.

One of the lions of Philadelphia is the Mint-I am ashamed to say I did not see it, though very easy of access, as all the public buildings are in America, very much to their credit. On the whole, Philadelphia is a very rich, fine, pleasant city, embracing almost every luxury known to the rest of the world. It is healthy too, the fever and ague being confined to the banks of its two rivers. Mysterious as the Marema of Tuscany or the Pontine Marshes-for it is not exactly from dense forests, or more or less elevation, or the presence of water-they say they have less of it than twenty years ago, when most of the villas and country seats were shut up and going to ruin. Still, here, any Englishman may live very pleasantly (when quite disgusted with his own government), if he is a man of fortune, and if he defies excessive heat and excessive cold, and can laugh at mosquitoes! The same thing may be said of almost any city of the Union, except that the heat and the mosquitoes keep getting more and more awful as he passes to the southward beyond Virginia, or westward towards the Ohio. True, there are other things to consult besides mere physical comforts. I have no letters, and will not pretend to judge of the best tone of society; from what I so far see, I should say the Americans here care less about sociability and intimate friendships than we do; they rarely give dinners, but thés dansantes occasionally, where, however, youth is indispensable. The married and middle-aged are barely tolerated; and wall-flowers must make up their minds good fifteen years before it becomes essential with us.

By good luck, I am spared any anathemas against the monster-hotels; they abound here as in all their cities; as barracks they are perfect, much more comfortable, perhaps, than our horse guards' at Knightsbridge. I see they have nearly finished a giant structure to outdo all the others in Chesnut-street, to make up two or three hundred beds, and cut the Astor out if possible (for there is an immense rivalry between the States). It is got up by a company, and truly it may whip them all to "immortal smash."

The Fire and Hose Companies we are familiar with, and the frequent fires; the State-house bell, by its numbered tolls, telling them in what quarter the fire is. I do not recollect a single night without a fire; often two or three. It is pretty well known not half are by accident; and yet nobody is accused or ever found out by the police; or by anybody else. Indeed, a good big fire is considered good amusement; it's good for trade, and fine fun for the boys and rabble, who help to drag along the engines, led by the engine captain, who with his trumpet

keeps hoo-hooing ahead with all his lungs. The firemen fight their own ring clearance at the fires; no police ever helps, but they stand by each other, and are too strong for the mob. They are rewarded in foro conscientia-citizens fork out according to their consciences. To me, from all I can hear, it is a puzzle how these young men like so much trouble and fag (night and day), payless and almost thankless! They build fine engine-houses, too; the engines alone are very expensive, but their pride is touched-they are an order-fast-military!-bands, balls-belles! flowers and hearts are yielded!—voilà, le pourquoi ?

Can one wonder the Americans sent us nothing but utilities in art; all its taste and beauty here (except afloat) is at a very low ebb indeed. Pictures, wretched daubs; a poor, flimsy portrait-painter or two may still a few dollars in spite of the daguerreotypes which eye you with a grim sternness at every window; but all the fine arts are given up to foreigners. French and Germans take the lead in decorations, and all the lighter fashions and elegancies.

No; one must not look for taste of a high order, or the refined elegance in anything, equal to Europe; nor is it at all essential, it will come fast enough, I dare say, when they are less surfeited by the plethora of good living; and when they will have to repine and grumble at the corruptions and anomalies of a more refined state of things.

BEAUTIES OF SICILY.*

LORD PALMERSTON has observed of Sicily, that although a fine island full of natural resources, and inhabited by a highly-gifted people, it is, nevertheless, not large enough to be, in the present state of the world, a really independent country; and were it entirely separated from Naples, it would soon run the risk of becoming an object of contest for foreign influence, and of sinking at last into the condition of satellite to some of the more powerful states of Europe.

It is not so only in the present day, it has always been so. Islanded, and yet in proximity to great continents, varied in configuration, fertile in soil, and lovely in climate, Sicily has been always envied by the dominating powers of the world. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Germans, French, Spaniards, Austrians, and Neapolitans; nay, even the English, have ruled there in succession. The family of Nelson still hold property at Bronte, at the western foot of Etna. Amid such successive invasions, the history and the whereabouts of the Sicilians themselves remains a puzzle for the Aborigines Protection Society.

What is more to our purpose now, is that with these successive couquests, art, science, and poetry have still, ever since the epoch of the

*Pictures from Sicily. By the author of "Forty Days in the Desert." Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co.

Beauties of Sicily.

Greek colonies, been naturalised on this beautiful island. Then arose those noble temples, the ruins of which still adorn its shores, and which have been succeeded by all that is quaint and characteristic in Saracenic and Norman architecture. With its unequalled scenic advantages superadded to its wealth in art, where is there a country so worthy of panoramic representation as Sicily?

In the time of the Greeks, Syracuse and Agrigentum disputed the pilm of excellence. Hiero, King of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, are both celebrated in the immortal poems of Pindar for their victories at the Olympic games. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, and Archimedes, were among the ornaments of the court of Hiero. Carthage and Rome rather detracted from, than added to, either the prosWith the decline perity of the people, or the resources of the island.

of the Roman Empire: the rise of Christianity, and the conversion of Sicilian cities into episcopal sees, gave a new direction to art and to intellectual culture, and when the chief cities once more changed masters and became the seats of Mussulman amirs, the same elegant civilisation of the Arabs, the same arts and sciences, the same architecture and husbandry, which adorned the Moorish kingdom in Spain, were transplanted to a soil no less congenial for their development.

Thus, when the iron-clad Norman knights arrived, they found the island already full of the people of all nations, having different laws, language, These respective differences the Norreligion, manners, and customs. mans had the good sense to leave untouched. Architecture was a favourite pursuit with most of their kings, and hence the strong castles nestled on the summit of the mountains, the stern monasteries, and other rock-secluded ecclesiastical edifices; and, above all, the beautiful Brief as was the career of the palaces that adorn the sea-girt island. Normans in Sicily, it was almost unexampled in brilliancy, and it left behind it, both in the institutions and monuments of the country, magnificent memorials of what it once had been.

From that period to our own day, having no longer a resident king, Sicily has never ceased to experience all the evils arising from a distant monarch and a delegated sway-the invasion of parliamentary privilege -the encroachment of the barons-disregard of all public improvements in roads, edifices, or defences-decline of art and manufactures, industry and commerce, and consequent degradation of the people.

If two prominent points remain then still to attract the stranger to Sicily, it is her truly interesting and remarkable monuments, her unriWho will not be delighted to valled scenery, and beautiful climate. follow Mr. Bartlett in his pen and pencil illustrations of this most lovely island? It is quite a different thing to travel in such company to that of the ordinary jog-trot unillustrated book of travels. With a good map, an excellent picture, and a clear, if not eloquent description to help us, we have at the onset Messina placed as distinctly before us as if we were on the spot. The character of the country, the town and harbour spread before us, the straits, the town of Reggio, and the snow-tipped Calabrian mountains of the opposite side. What more could be desired?

Then again, Etna, that terrible wonder of Sicily; we have the fiery mountain from half a dozen points of view; not the least interesting that Feb.-VOL. XCVII. NO. CCCLXXXVI.

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from Nicolosi ; we have a graphic account of an ascent; a pencil sketch of the well-known Casa Inglese, supposed to be destroyed in the late eruptions; and a journey round the foot of the monster volcano, including descriptions of the massive Norman square keep and Castle of Paterno, exactly like our Rochester and London towers; Bronte, with its convents; and Randazzo, like a town of the middle ages, preserved as a curiosity, with its gloomy walls overhanging a ravine, its Norman churches, and streets of coeval architecture, subsisting almost unaltered to the present day.

The carriage-road from Messina to Catania follows the shores of the Faro, and displays very pleasing scenery all the way. It is, indeed, comparable with the famous Riviera of the Genoese coast, and is hardly less beautiful. Lofty mountains descend to the sea, leaving a narrow view of richly-cultivated plain, sprinkled with towns and villages; while a broad margin of white sand runs along the shore, and masses of rock have fallen into the transparent water. On this part of the coast is one of the few relics of English dominion that are met with amid the motley remains on the island. It is the fort of St. Alessio, which stands upon a bold promontory, commanding a view of Messina on one side, and Taormina on the other.

Insignificant as this latter place is now, it was one of the most ancient and celebrated cities in all Sicily. It was the last place that held out against the Saracens, and it withstood the Normans for six long months. At present the chief relics are the theatre and some beautiful morceaux of Norman architecture, and the view from Taormina is said to be the finest in all Sicily.

"No one," says Mr. Bartlett, "who has seen the sunrise from this glorious spot can ever forget it. Almost at our feet was the immense expanse of murmuring sea; below, the beautiful sweep of the theatre and the broken arches of the proscenium, overhung by tremendous rocks half covered with tufts of cactus-the town upon its beetling precipice -the winding shore, all the way from Syracuse to Messina-with the stupendous mass of Etna towering above everything beside."

Beyond this, the whole line of coast is haunted with classic and poetical associations. First we have Naxos, one of the earliest Greek colonies in Sicily; next, the staircase of Aci, where tradition places the murder of the shepherd by his rival Polyphemus; also the Castle of Aci, beetling over precipitous rocks, the singular cluster of rocky islets called Scopuli Cyclopum, and the port of Ulysses.

Catania, one of the largest and handsomest cities in the island, presents a beautiful appearance with its domes and towers, surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation. Within, however, notwithstanding its numerous churches, monasteries, and charitable institutions, dirt, dilapidation, and neglect of decency and comfort, give an air of shabbiness even to its finest squares and piazzas. Leaving Catania for Syracuse, a rich and fertile, but, nevertheless, melancholy-looking plain, watered by the Simeto, is traversed, as also Lentini, a poor town afflicted with malaria. This is followed by a rough tract, interspersed with a wild growth of oleander and scented myrtle; next the town of Augusta, having a good harbour, but now a lifeless, melancholy place; then the site of Thapsus,