LETTER VI.

Baiæ—Grotto of Posilipo—Tomb of Virgil—Pozzuoli—Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Serapis—The Lucrine Lake—Lake of Avernus, the Tartarus of Virgil—Temple of Proserpine—Grotto of the Cumæan Sybil—Nero’s villa—Cape of Misenum—Roman villas—Ruins of the Temple of Venus—Cento Camerelle—The Stygian Lake—The Elysian Fields—Grotto del Cane—Villa of Lucullus.

We made the excursion to Baiæ on one of those premature days of March common to Italy. A south wind and a warm sun gave it the feeling of June. The heat was even oppressive as we drove through the city, and the long echoing grotto of Posilipo, always dim and cool, was peculiarly refreshing. Near the entrance to this curious passage under the mountain, we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy took us up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and winding in among the just budding vines, we came to a small ravine, in the mouth of which, right over the deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-ruined mausoleum which held the bones of the poet. An Englishman stood leaning against the entrance, reading from a pocket copy of the Æneid. He seemed ashamed to be caught with his classic, and put the book in his pocket as I came suddenly upon him, and walked off to the other side whistling an air from thePirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo. We went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few minutes to indulge in what recollections we could summon, and then mounted to the top to hunt for the “myrtle.” Even its root was cut an inch or two below the ground. We found violets, however, and they answered as well. The pleasure of visiting such places, I think, is not found on the spot. The fatigue of the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between reality and imagination, and, worse than all, the caprice of mood—one or the other of these things disturbs and defeats for me the dearest promises of anticipation. It is the recollection that repays us. The picture recurs to the fancy till it becomes familiar; and as the disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade from the memory, the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling, and we dwell upon it with the delight we looked for in vain when present. A few steps up the ravine, almost buried in luxuriant grass, stands a small marble tomb, covering the remains of an English girl. She died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie in as the world could show. Forward a little toward the edge of the hill some person of taste has constructed a little arbour, laced over with vines, whence the city and bay of Naples is seen to the finest advantage. Paradise that it is!

It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base of a broad mountain, in at one side and out at the other, after a subterranean drive of near a mile! The grotto of Posilipo has been one of the wonders of the world these two thousand years, and it exceeds all expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated at two thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth twenty-two, and its height eighty-nine. It is thronged with carts and beasts of burden of all descriptions, and the echoing cries of these noisy Italian drivers are almost deafening. Lamps, struggling with the distant daylight as you near the end, just make darkness visible, and standing in the centre and looking either way, the far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire through the cloud of dust. What with the impressiveness of the place, and the danger of driving in the dark amid so many obstructions, it is rather a stirring half-hour that is spent in its gloom! One emerges into the fresh open air and the bright light of day with a feeling of relief.

The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was extremely beautiful. The fields were covered with the new tender grain, and by the short passage through the grotto we had changed a busy and crowded city for scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as ever charmed the eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and then the road turned away to the right, along the beach, passing the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had a villa, and which is now a prison for the carbonari).

Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we descended into its busy square, and were instantly beset by near a hundred guides, boatmen, and beggars, all preferring their claims and services at the tops of their voices. I fixed my eye on the most intelligent face among them, a curly-headed fellow in a red lazzaroni cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats.

While the boatmen were forming themselves into a circle to cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the famous ruins of the temple of Jupiter Serapis. This was one of the largest and richest of the temples of antiquity. It was a quadrangular building, near the edge of the sea, lined with marble, and sustained by columns of solid cipolino, three of which are still standing. It was buried by an earthquake and forgotten for a century or two, till in 1750 it was discovered by a peasant, who struck the top of one of the columns in digging. We stepped around over the prostrate fragments, building it up once more in fancy, and peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice, raised by flights of steps, and at the foot still remain two rings of Corinthian brass, to which the victims were fastened, and near them the receptacles for their blood and ashes. The whole scene has a stamp of grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs, very unwillingly.

As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a moment from our course to look at the ruins of the ancient mole. Here probably St. Paul set his foot, landing to pursue his way to Rome. The great apostle spent seven days at this place, which was then called Puteoli—a fact that attaches to it a deeper interest than it draws from all the antiquities of which it is the centre.

We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the shore of Baiæ, and passing on the right a small mountain formed in thirty-six hours by a volcanic explosion, some three hundred years ago, we came to the Lucrine Lake, so famous in the classics for its oysters. The same explosion that made the Monte Nuovo, and sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the oyster-beds of the poets.

A ten minutes’ walk brought us to the shores of Lake Avernus—the “Tartarus” of Virgil. This was classic ground indeed, and we hoped to have found a thumbed copy of the Æneid in the pocket of the cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet. A ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark water, is supposed to have been a temple dedicated to Proserpine. If she was allowed to be present at her own worship, she might have been consoled for her abduction. A spot of more secluded loveliness could scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of silver at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking unfathomably deep through the clear reflection, and the fringes of low shrubbery leaning down on every side, were doubled in the bright mirror, the likeness even fairer than the reality.

Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we were seating ourselves upon the banks, and we struck into a narrow footpath of wild shrubbery which circled the lake, and in a few minutes stood before the door of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill. Here dwelt the Cumæan sybil, and by this dark passage, the souls of the ancients passed from Tartarus to Elysium. The guide struck a light and kindled two large torches, and we followed him into the narrow cavern, walking downward at a rapid pace for ten or fifteen minutes. With a turn to the right, we stood before a low archway which the guide entered, up to his knees in water at the first step. It looked like the mouth of an abyss, and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout fellows had followed us in, and the guide assured us we should be safe on their backs. I mounted first myself to carry the torch, and holding my head very low, we went plunging on, turning to the right and left through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus, till I was set down on a raised ledge calledthe Sibyl’s bed. The lady behind me, I soon discovered by her screams, had not made so prosperous a voyage. She had insisted on being taken up something in the side-saddle fashion; and the man, not accustomed to hold so heavy a burden on his hip with one arm, had stumbled and let her slip up to her knees in water. He took her up immediately, in his own homely but safer fashion, and she was soon set beside me on the sibyl’s stony couch, dripping with water, and quite out of temper with antiquities.

The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted the torches to the dripping roof of the cavern, and showed us the remains of beautiful mosaic with which the place was once evidently encrusted. Whatever truth there may be in the existence of the sybil, these had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentiousness. The guide pointed out to us a small perforation in the rear of the sybil’s bed, whence, he said (by what authority I know not), Caligula used to watch the lavations of the nymph. It communicates with an outer chamber.

We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from the smoke of the torches, and the ladies’ dresses in a melancholy plight, between smoke and water. It would be a witch of a sybil that would tempt us to repeat our visit.

We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero’s villa. It was perhaps a half mile further down the bay. The only remains of it were some vapour baths, built over a boiling spring which extended under the sea. One of our boatmen waded first a few feet into the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought up a handful of warm gravel—the evidence of a submarine outlet from the springs beyond. We then mounted a high and ruined flight of steps, and entered a series of chambers dug out of the rock, where an old man was stripping off his shirt, to go through the usual process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain. He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air, and rushed away by a dark passage, whence he reappeared in three or four minutes, the eggs boiled, and the perspiration streaming from his body like rain. He set the bucket down, and rushed to the door, gasping as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard, but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such sudden changes of atmosphere to his health, quite destroyed our pleasure at the phenomenon.

Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve of the bay presents one continuation of Roman villas. And certainly there was not probably in the world, a place more adapted to the luxury of which it was the scene. These natural baths, the many mineral waters, the balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the cape, and the vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean passage, to a populous capital on the other side of a range of mountains, rendered Baiæ a natural paradise to the emperors. It was improved as we see. Temples to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius, of Hortensius, of Cæsar, of Lucullus, and others whose masters are disputed, follow each other in rival beauty of situation. The ruins are not much now, except the temple of Venus, which is one of the most picturesque fragments of antiquity I have ever seen. The long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof, and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still half-splendid walls with the very poetry of decay. Our guide here proposed a lunch. We sat down on the immense stone which has fallen from the ceiling, and in a few minutes the rough table was spread with a hundred open oysters from Fusaro (near Lake Avernus), bottles at will oflagrima Christifrom Vesuvius, boiled crabs from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury, fish from the Lucrine lake, and bread from Pozzuoli. The meal was not less classic than refreshing. We drank to the goddess (the only one in mythology, by the way, whose worship has not fallen into contempt), and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient Baiæ to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and started over land for Elysium.

We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero invited his mother, with the design of murdering her, visited the immense subterranean chambers in which water was kept for the Roman fleet, the horrid prisons called the Cento Camerelle of the emperors, and then rising the hill at the extremity of the cape, the Stygian lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool, and around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very home and centre of classic fable. An overflowed marsh, and an adjacent corn-field will give you a perfect idea of it. The sun was setting while we swallowed our disappointment, and we turned our donkeys’ heads toward Naples.

We left the city again this morning by the grotto of Posilipo to visit the celebrated Grotto del Cane. It is about three miles off, on the borders of a pretty lake, once the crater of a volcano. On the way there arose a violent debate in the party on the propriety of subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the common experiment. We had not yet decided the point when we stopped before the door of the keeper’s house. Two miserable-looking terriers had set up a howl, accompanied with a ferocious and half-complaining bark, from our first appearance around the turn of the road, and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted and walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse to see the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary. The door was surrounded with another party less merciful, and as we approached, two dogs were dragged out by the heels, and thrown lifeless on the grass. We gathered round them, and while the old woman coolly locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals began to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled to their feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered to our party, but we contented ourselves with the more innocent experiments. The mephitic air of this cave rises to a foot above the surface of the ground, and a torch put into it was immediately extinguished. It has been described too often, however, to need a repetition. We took a long stroll around the lake, which was covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa of Lucullus on the opposite shore, and returned to Naples to dinner.

LETTER VII.

Island of Sicily—Palermo—Saracenic appearance of the town—Cathedral—The Marina—Viceroy Leopold—Monastery of the Capuchins—Celebrated Catacombs—Fanciful Gardens.

Frigate United States,June 25.—The mountain coast of Sicily lay piled up before us at the distance of ten or twelve miles, when I came on deck this morning. The quarter-master handed me the glass, and running my eye along the shore, I observed three or four low plains, extending between projecting spurs of the hills, studded thickly with country-houses, and bright with groves which I knew, by the deep glancing green, to be the orange. In a corner of the longest of these intervals, a sprinkling of white, looking in the distance like a bed of pearly shells on the edge of the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With a steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent, and its mole, bristling above the wall with masts; and, running in with a free wind, the character of our ship was soon recognised from the shore, and the flags of every vessel in the harbour ran up to the mast, the customary courtesy to a man-of-war entering port.

As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was very captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position, and the eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and palaces. A broad street extended along in front, crowded with people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long avenues of the public gardens, we could distinguish the veiled women walking in groups, children playing, priests, soldiers, and all the motley frequenters of such places in this idle clime, enjoying the refreshing sea-breeze, upon whose wings we had come. I was impatient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and some other hindrances, it was evening before we set foot upon the pier.

With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up to the Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their shops after thesiesta. The oddity of the Palermitan style of building struck me forcibly. Of the two long streets, crossing each other at right angles and extending to the four gates of the city, the lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The second and third stories are ornamented with tricksy-looking iron balconies, in which the women sit at work universally, while from above projects, far over the street, a grated enclosure, like a long birdcage, from which look down girls and children (or, if it is a convent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep the household from the contact of the world. The whole air of Palermo is different from that of the towns upon the continent. The peculiarities are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are still found upon the ancient buildings. The town is poetically called theconcha d’oro, or “the golden shell.”

We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop of literally naked beggars, baked black in the sun, and more emaciated and diseased than any I have yet seen abroad. Their cries and gestures were painfully energetic. In the course of five minutes we had seen two or three hundred. They lay along the sidewalks, and upon the steps of the houses and churches, men, women, and children, nearly or quite naked, and as unnoticed by the inhabitants as the stones of the street.

Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the shade of the porch of the cathedral. The columns of the vestibule were curiously wrought, the capitals exceedingly rich with fretted leaf-work, and the ornaments of the front of the same wild-looking character as the buildings of the town. A hunchback scarce three feet high, came up and offered his services as a cicerone, and we entered the church. The antiquity of the interior was injured by the new white paint, covering every part except the more valuable decorations, but with its four splendid sarcophagi standing like separate buildings in the aisles, and covering the ashes of Ruggiero and his kinsmen; the eighty columns of Egyptian granite in the nave; theciborioof entire lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, frescoes, and relievos about the altar, it could scarce fail of producing an effect of great richness. The floor was occupied by here and there a kneeling beggar, praying in his rags, and undisturbed even by the tempting neighbourhood of strangers. I stood long by an old man, who seemed hardly to have the strength to hold himself upon his knees. His eyes were fixed upon a lovely picture of the virgin, and his trembling hands loosed bead after bead as his prayer proceeded. I slipped a small piece of silver between his palm and the cross of his rosary, and without removing his eyes from the face of the holy mother, he implored an audible blessing upon me in a tone of the most earnest feeling. I have scarce been so moved within my recollection.

The equipages were beginning to roll toward the “Marina,” and the sea-breeze was felt even through the streets. We took a carriage and followed to the corso, where we counted near two hundred gay, well-appointed equipages, in the course of an hour, What a contrast to the wretchedness we had left behind! Driving up and down this half mile in front of the palaces on the sea, seemed quite a sufficient amusement for the indolent nobility of Palermo. They were named to us by their imposing titles as they passed, and we looked in vain into their dull unanimated faces for the chivalrous character of the once renowned knights of Sicily. Ladies and gentlemen sat alike silent, leaning back in their carriages in the elegant attitudes studied to such effect on this side of the water, and gazing for acquaintances among those passing on the opposite line.

Toward the dusk of the evening, anavant-courrieron horseback announced the approach of the viceroy Leopold, the brother of the King of Naples. He drove himself in an English hunting-wagon with two seats, and looked like a dandy whip of the first water from Regent Street. He is about twenty and quite handsome. His horses, fine English bays, flew up and down the short corso, passing and repassing every other minute, till we were weary of touching our hats and stopping till he had gone by. He noticed the uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with particular politeness to them.

As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand around a small open gallery raised in the broadest part of the Marina. Rows of lamps, suspended from the roof, were lit, and a band of forty or fifty musicians appeared in the area, and played parts of the popular operas. We were told they performed every night from nine till twelve. Chairs were set around for the people on foot, ices circulated, and some ten or twelve thousand people enjoyed the music in a delicious moonlight, keeping perfect silence from the first note to the last. These heavenly nights of Italy are thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go to visit, or lounge at home till morning, when the windows are closed, the cool night air shut in, and they sleep till evening comes again, literally “keeping the hours the stars do.” It is very certain that it is the only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate. The sun is the worst enemy to health, and life and spirits sink under its intensity. The English, who are the only people abroad in an Italian noon, are constant victims to it.

We drove this morning to the monastery of the Capuchins. Three or four of the brothers in long grey beards, and the heavy brown sackcloth cowls of the order tied round the waist with ropes, received us cordially, and took us through the cells and chapels. We had come to see the famous catacombs of the convent. A door was opened on the side of the main cloister, and we descended a long flight of stairs into the centre of three lofty vaults, lighted each by a window at the extremity of the ceiling. A more frightful scene never appalled the eye. The walls were lined with shallow niches, from which hung, leaning forward as if to fall upon the gazer, the dried bodies of monks in the full dress of their order. Their hands were crossed upon their breasts or hung at their sides, their faces were blackened and withered, and every one seemed to have preserved, in diabolical caricature, the very expression of life. The hair lay reddened and dry on the dusty skull, the teeth, perfect or imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the nose had shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and they looked more like living men cursed with some horrid plague, than the inanimate corpses they were. The name of each was pinned upon his cowl, with his age and the time of his death. Below in three or four tiers, lay long boxes painted fantastically, and containing, the monk told us, the remains of Sicilian nobles. Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children of from one year to five, in little chairs worn with their use while in life, dressed in the gayest manner, with fanciful caps upon their little blackened heads, dolls in their hands, and in one or two instances, a stuffed dog or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly ludicrous collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expression so entirely inconsistent with the gaiety of their dresses, could scarce be conceived. One of them had his arm tied up, holding a child’s whip in the act of striking, while the poor thing’s head had rotted and dropped upon its breast; and a leather cap fallen on one side, showed his bare skull, with the most comical expression of carelessness. We quite shocked the old monk with our laughter, but the scene was irresistible.

We went through several long galleries filled in the same manner, with the dead monks standing over the coffins of nobles, and children on the shelf above. There were three thousand bodies and upward in the place, monks and all. Some of them were very ancient. There was one, dated a century and a half back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The friar took hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling it against his teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish-skin, and as sharp and thin as a nail.

At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault appropriated to women. There were nine already lying on white pillows in the different recesses, who had died within the year, and among them a young girl, the daughter of a noble family of Palermo, stated in the inscription to have been a virgin of seventeen years. The monk said her twin-sister was the most beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was laid upon her back, on a small shelf faced with a wire grating, dressed in white, with a large bouquet of artificial flowers on the centre of the body. Her hands and face were exposed, and the skin, which seemed to me scarcely dry, was covered with small black ants. I struck with my stick against the shelf, and startled by the concussion, the disgusting vermin poured from the mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is to believe that the beauty we worship must come to this!

As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed us the deeper niches, in which the bodies were placed for the first six months. There were fortunately no fresh bodies in them at the time of our visit. The stench, for a week or two, he told us, was intolerable. They are suffered to get quite dry here, and then are disposed of according to their sex or profession. A rope passed round the middle, fastens the dead monk to his shallow niche, and there he stands till his bones rot from each other, sometimes for a century or more.

We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the monk our gratuity, were passing out of the cloister to our carriage, when two of the brothers entered, bearing a sedan chair with the blinds closed. Our friend called us back, and opened the door. An old grey-headed woman sat bolt upright within, with a rope around her body and another around her neck, supporting her by two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that morning, and was brought to be dried in the capuchin catacombs. The effect of the newly deceased body in a handsome silk dress and plaited cap was horrible.

We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a Sicilian prince, near by. I was agreeably disappointed to find the grounds laid out in the English taste, winding into secluded walks shaded with unclipped trees, and opening into glades of greensward cooled by fountains. We strolled on from one sweet spot to another, coming constantly upon little Grecian temples, ruins, broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with curious seats and tables, bridges over streams, and labyrinths of shrubbery, ending in hermitages built curiously of cane. So far, the garden, though lovely, was like many others. On our return, the person who accompanied us began to surprise us with singular contrivances, fortunately selecting the coachman who had driven us as the subject of his experiments. In the middle of a long green alley he requested him to step forward a few paces, and, in an instant, streams of water poured upon him from the bushes around in every direction. There were seats in the arbours, the least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath the unwary visitor; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner touched than you were showered from an invisible source; and one small hermitage, which sent ajet d’eauinto the face of a person lifting the latch. Nearly in the centre of the garden stood a pretty building, with an ascending staircase. At the first step, a friar in white, represented to the life in wax, opened the door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next step, the door was violently shut. At the third, it was half opened again, and as the foot pressed the platform above, both doors flew wide open, and the old friar made room for the visitor to enter. Life itself could not have been more natural. The garden was full of similar tricks. We were hurried away by an engagement before we had seen them all, and stopping for a moment to look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walking around in an aviary like a temple, we drove into town to dinner.

LETTER VIII.

The Lunatic Asylum at Palermo.

Palermo,June 28.—Two of the best conducted lunatic asylums in the world are in the kingdom of Naples—one at Aversa, near Capua, and the other at Palermo. The latter is managed by a whimsical Sicilian baron, who has devoted his time and fortune to it, and, with the assistance of the government, has carried it to great extent and perfection. The poor are received gratuitously, and those who can afford it enter as boarders, and are furnished with luxuries according to their means.

The hospital stands in an airy situation in the lovely neighbourhood of Palermo. We were received by a porter in a respectable livery, who introduced us immediately to the old baron—a kind-looking man, rather advanced beyond middle life, of manners singularly genteel and prepossessing. “Je suis le premier fou,” said he, throwing his arms out, as he bowed on our entrance. We stood in an open court, surrounded with porticoes lined with stone seats. On one of them lay a fat, indolent-looking man, in clean gray clothes, talking to himself with great apparent satisfaction. He smiled at the baron as he passed, without checking the motion of his lips, and three others standing in the doorway of a room marked as the kitchen, smiled also as he came up, and fell into his train, apparently as much interested as ourselves in the old man’s explanations.

The kitchen was occupied by eight or ten people, all at work, and all, the baron assured us,mad. One man, of about forty, was broiling a steak with the gravest attention. Another, who had been furious till employment was given him, was chopping meat with violent industry in a large wooden bowl. Two or three girls were about, obeying the little orders of a middle-aged man, occupied with several messes cooking on a patent stove. I was rather incredulous about his insanity, till he took a small bucket and went to the jet of a fountain, and getting impatient from some cause or other, dashed the water upon the floor. The baron mildly called him by name, and mentioned to him, as a piece of information, that he had wet the floor. He nodded his head, and filling his bucket quietly, poured a little into one of the pans, and resumed his occupation.

We passed from the kitchen into an open court, curiously paved, and ornamented with Chinese grottoes, artificial rocks, trees, cottages, and fountains. Within the grottoes reclined figures of wax. Before the altar of one, fitted up as a Chinese chapel, a mandarin was prostrated in prayer. The walls on every side were painted in perspective scenery, and the whole had as little the air of a prison as the open valley itself. In one of the corners was an unfinished grotto, and a handsome young man was entirely absorbed in thatching the ceiling with strips of cane. The baron pointed to him, and said he had been incurable till he had found this employment for him. Everything about us, too, he assured us, was the work of his patients. They had paved the court, built the grottoes and cottages, and painted the walls, under his direction. The secret of his whole system, he said, was employment and constant kindness. He had usually about one hundred and fifty patients, and he dismissed upon an average two-thirds of them quite recovered.

We went into the apartments of the women. These, he said, were his worst subjects. In the first room sat eight or ten employed in spinning, while one infuriated creature, not more than thirty, but quite gray, was walking up and down the floor, talking and gesticulating with the greatest violence. A young girl of sixteen, an attendant, had entered into her humour, and with her arm put affectionately round her waist, assented to everything she said, and called her by every name of endearment while endeavouring to silence her. When the baron entered, the poor creature addressed herself to him, and seemed delighted that he had come. He made several mild attempts to check her, but she seized his hands, and with the veins of her throat swelling with passion, her eyes glaring terribly, and her tongue white and trembling, she continued to declaim more and more violently. The baron gave an order to a male attendant at the door, and beckoning us to follow, led her gently through a small court planted with trees, to a room containing a hammock. She checked her torrent of language as she observed the preparations going on, and seemed amused with the idea of swinging. The man took her up in his arms without resistance, and laced the hammock over her, confining everything but her head, and the female attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing little creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every swing threw a little water on her face, as if in sport. Once or twice, the maniac attempted to resume the subject of her ravings, but the girl laughed in her face and diverted her from it, till at last she smiled, and dropping her head into the hammock, seemed disposed to sink into an easy sleep.

We left her swinging and went out into the court, where eight or ten women in the gray gowns of the establishment were walking up and down, or sitting under the trees, lost in thought. One, with a fine, intelligent face, came up to me and courtesied gracefully without speaking. The physician of the establishment joined me at the moment, and asked her what she wished. “To kiss his hand,” said she, “but his looks forbade me.” She coloured deeply, and folded her arms across her breast and walked away. The baron called us, and in going out I passed her again, and taking her hand, kissed it, and bade her good-bye. “You had better kiss my lips,” said she, “you’ll never see me again.” She laid her forehead against the iron bars of the gate, and with a face working with emotion, watched us till we turned out of sight. I asked the physieian for her history. “It was a common case,” he said. “She was the daughter of a Sicilian noble, who, too poor to marry her to one of her own rank, had sent her to a convent, where confinement had driven her mad. She is now a charity patient in the asylum.”

The courts in which these poor creatures are confined open upon a large and lovely garden. We walked through it with the baron, and then returned to the apartments of the females. In passing a cell, a large majestic woman strided out with a theatrical air, and commenced an address to the Deity, in a strain, which showed her possessed of superiority both of birth and endowment. The baron took her by the hand with the deferential courtesy of the old school, and led her to one of the stone seats. She yielded to him politely, but resumed her harangue, upbraiding the Deity, as well as I could understand her, for her misfortunes. They succeeded in soothing her by the assistance of the same playful attendant who had accompanied the other to the hammock, and she sat still, with her lips white and her tongue trembling like an aspen. While the good old baron was endeavouring to draw her into a quiet conversation, the physician told me some curious circumstances respecting her. She was a Greek, and had been brought to Palermo when a girl. Her mind had been destroyed by an illness, and after seven years’ madness, during which she had refused to rise from her bed, and had quite lost the use of her limbs, she was brought to this establishment by her friends. Experiments were tried in vain to induce her to move from her painful position. At last the baron determined upon addressing what he considered the master-passion in all female bosoms. He dressed himself in the gayest manner, and, in one of her gentle moments, entered her room with respectful ceremony, and offered himself to her in marriage! She refused him with scorn, and with seeming emotion he begged forgiveness and left her. The next morning, on his entrance, she smiled—the first time for years. He continued his attentions for a day or two, and after a little coquetry, she one morning announced to him that she had re-considered his proposal, and would be his bride. They raised her from her bed to prepare her for the ceremony, and she was carried in a chair to the garden, where the bridal feast was spread, nearly all the other patients of the hospital being present. The gaiety of the scene absorbed the attention of all; the utmost decorum prevailed: and when the ceremony was performed the bride was crowned, and carried back in state to her apartment. She recovered gradually the use of her limbs, her health is improved, and, excepting an occasional paroxysm, such as we happened to witness, she is quiet and contented. The other inmates of the asylum still call her the bride; and the baron, as her husband, has the greatest influence over her.

While the physician was telling me these circumstances, the baron had succeeded in calming her, and she sat with her arms folded, dignified and silent. He was still holding her hand, when the woman whom we had left swinging in the hammock, came stealing up behind the trees on tiptoe, and putting her hand suddenly over the baron’s eyes, kissed him on both sides of his face, laughing heartily, and calling him by every name of affection. The contrast between this mood and the infuriated one in which we had found her, was the best comment on the good man’s system. He gently disengaged himself, and apologised to his lady for allowing the liberty, and we followed him to another apartment.

It opened upon a pretty court, in which a fountain was playing, and against the columns of the portico sat some half dozen patients. A young man of eighteen, with a very pale, scholar-like face, was reading Ariosto. Near him, under the direction of an attendant, a fair, delicate girl, with a sadness in her soft blue eyes that might have been a study for amater dolorosa, was cutting paste upon a board laid across her lap. She seemed scarcely conscious of what she was about, and when I approached and spoke to her, she laid down the knife and rested her head upon her hand, and looked at me steadily, as if she was trying to recollect where she had known me. “I cannot remember,” she said to herself, and went on with her occupation. I bowed to her as we took our leave, and she returned it gracefully but coldly. The young man looked up from his book and smiled, the old man lying on the stone seat in the outer court rose up and followed us to the door, and we were bowed out by the baron and his gentle madmen as politely and kindly as if we were concluding a visit with a company of friends.

An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant enough anywhere in Italy: but I have found no place where the people and their amusements were so concentrated at that hour, as upon the “Marina” of Palermo. A ramble with the officers up and down, renewing the acquaintances made with visitors to the ships, listening to the music and observing the various characters of the crowd, concludes every day agreeably. A terraced promenade twenty feet above the street, extends nearly the whole length of the Marina, and here, under the balconies of the viceroy’s palace, with the crescent harbour spread out before the eye, trees above, and marble seats tempting the weary at every step, may be met pedestrians of every class, from the first cool hour when the sea-breeze sets in till midnight or morning. The intervals between the pieces performed by the royal band in the centre of the drive, is seized by the wanderingimprovisatrice, or the ludicrouspuncinello, and even the beggars cease to importune in the general abandonment to pleasure. Every other moment the air is filled with a delightful perfume, and you are addressed by the bearer of a tall pole tied thickly with the odorous flowers of this voluptuous climate—a mode of selling these cheap luxuries which I believe is peculiar to Palermo. The gaiety they give a crowd, by the way, is singular. They move about among the gaudily-dressed contadini like a troop of banners—tulips, narcissus, moss-roses, branches of jasmine, geraniums, every flower that is rare and beautiful scenting the air from a hundred overladen poles, and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest and loveliest. It seems a clime of fruits and flowers; and if one could but shut his eyes to the dreadful contrasts of nakedness and starvation, he might believe himself in a Utopia.

We were standing on the balcony of the consul’s residence (a charming situation overlooking the Marina), and remarking the gaiety of the scene on the first evening of our arrival. The conversation turned upon the condition of the people. The consul remarked that it was an every-day circumstance to find beggars starved to death in the streets; and that, in the small villages near Palermo, eight or ten were often taken up dead from the road-side in the morning. The difficulty of getting a subsistence is every day increasing, and in the midst of one of the most fertile spots of the earth, one half the population are driven to the last extremity for bread. The results appear in constant conspiracies against the government, detected and put down with more or less difficulty. The island is garrisoned with troops from Italy, and the viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforcement, and is said to feel very insecure. A more lamentably misgoverned kingdom than that of the Sicilies, probably does not exist in the world.

LETTER IX.

Palermo—Fête given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul—Temple of Clitumnus—Cottage of Petrarch—Messina—Lipari Islands—Scylla and Charybdis.

Palermo,June 28th.—The curve of “The Golden Shell,” which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant plain of ten miles in length, terminated by a bluff which forms a headland corner of the bay. A broad neck of land between this bay and another indenting the coast less deeply on the other side, is occupied by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to several of the richer princes of Sicily. The breeze, whenever there is one on land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge, and a more desirable residence for combined coolness and beauty could scarce be imagined. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country more attractive than their own; and while you may find a dozen of them in any city of Europe, their once magnificent residences are deserted and falling to decay, almost without an exception.

The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday, by afêtegiven to the officers of the squadron by the American consul, Mr. Gardiner. We left Palermo in a long cavalcade, followed by a large omnibus containing the ship’s band, early in the forenoon. The road was lined with prickly pear and oleander in the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country, these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only hedges to the large plantations of cane and the spreading vineyards and fields. A more brilliant show than these long lines of trees, laden with bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and massive leaf of the pear, cannot easily be imagined.

We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage drew up about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous building, and passing through a deserted court, we entered an old-fashioned garden, presenting one succession of trimmed walks, urns, statues, and fountains. The green mould of age and exposure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once costly but now ruined and silent fountains, the tall weeds in the seldom-trodden walks, and the wild vegetation of fragrant jasmine and brier, burying everything with its luxuriance, all told the story of decay. I remembered the scenes of the Decameron; the many “tales of love,” laid in these very gardens; the gay romances of which Palermo was the favourite home; and the dames and knights of Sicily, the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to let my merry companions pass on, and remain to realise more deeply the spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike over the world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realise the anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground. The eye, the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. In some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his glorious thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved his imagination addressing my eye, with the additional grace which his poetry has left around them, I have found myself unable to overstep the vulgar circumstances of the hour—“the Temple of Clitumnus” was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the “Cottage of Petrarch” an apology for extortion and annoyance.

I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a building at the foot of a garden. I passed the threshold and started back. A ghastly monk, with a broom in his hand, stood gazing at me, and at a door just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing backward and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at the right, disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with his narrow bed and single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling his glass from an antiquated bottle, and nodding his head to his visitor in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer. The whole was as like a living monastery as wax could make it. The mingling of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but we were told that it represented a tale, the title of which I have forgotten. It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy for a garden ornament, and shows by its uselessness the once princely condition of the possessors of the palace. An Englishman married not many years since an old princess, to whom the estates had descended, and with much unavailable property and the title of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the Sicilies for a support.

We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its ornaments. The extensive wall which enclosed it, the gates, the fountains in the courts and gardens, were studded with marble monsters of every conceivable deformity. The head of a man crowned the body of an eagle standing on the legs of a horse; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon the body of a dog; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the most revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so beautiful the material, that even outraged taste would hesitate to destroy them. The wonder is that artists of so much merit could have been hired to commit such sins against decency, or that a man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune they must have cost.

We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade of gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with the family portraits, the eccentric founder at their head. He was a thin, quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and sword, and had precisely the face I imagined for him—that of a whimsical madman. You would select it from a thousand as the subject for a lunatic asylum.

We were led next to a long, narrow hall, famous for having dined the king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling was of plate mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled through, and the walls were studded from the floor to the roof with the quartz diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of coloured glass, spangles, and everything that could reflect light. The effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit, and the table spread with silver and surrounded by a king and his nobles, in the costume of a court in the olden time, must have exceeded faëry.

Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room, a saloon of grand proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but paved and lined throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian agates, paintings set in the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals around, stood statues of the finest workmanship, representing the males of the family in the costume or armour of the times. A table of inlaid precious stones stood in the centre, cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side tables, occupied the spaces between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered with the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed magnificently. I sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers in the ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that had moved across the floor they were treading so unceremoniously, the knightly and royal feet that had probably danced the stars down with the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent mirrors; the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter feelings and faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors that might still outlive ours as long. How much there is in anatmosphere! How full the air of these old palaces is of thought! How one might enjoy them could he ramble here alone, or with one congenial and musing companion to answer to his moralising.

We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome avenue stood a large palace, in rather more modern taste than those we had left. The crowd of carriages in the court, the gold-laced midshipmen scattered about the massive stairs and in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship’s band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies and gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the stately structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the days when they were first lifted to their pedestals.

The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching from one end to the other, loaded with every luxury of the season, and capable of accommodating sixty or seventy persons, usurped the place of unsubstantial romance, and brought in the wildest straggler willingly from his ramble. No cost had been spared, and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honours of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my pride of country and birthplace. All the English resident in Palermo were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment in Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country abroad. The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our countrymen at Florence, has served me as a better argument against the charge of hardness and selfishness urged upon our nation, than all which could be drawn from the acknowledgments of travellers.

When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompeii, and we then assembled on a broad terrace facing the sea, and with the band in the gallery above, commenced dances which lasted till an hour or two into the moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but untiring glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer party. There were among the English one or two lovely girls, and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the commodore’s family and Captain Reed’s), the dancers were sufficient to include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the moon was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on either side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old palaces seen from the eminence around us, and the noble pile through whose low windows we strolled out upon the terrace, the music and the excitement, all blended a scene that is drawn with bright and living lines in my memory. We parted unwillingly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to the frigates, and were under-weigh at daylight for Messina.

This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on through the water with no more motion than is felt in a dining-room on shore. The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a feathery ripple, the sky is always serene, the merchant sail appears and disappears on the horizon edge, the island rises on the bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined by the glasses of the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern; the sun-fish whirls in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and breathes about us; and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and invigorating, keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. I am glad to escape from the contact, the dust, the trials of temper, the noon-day sultriness, and the midnight chill, the fatigue, and privation, and vexation, which beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to it no doubt willingly after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it is relief, refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the Mediterranean during the summer months, and this gliding about, sleeping or reading, as if at home, from one port to another, seems to me just now the Utopia of enjoyment.

We have been all day among the Lipari islands. It is pleasant to look up at the shaded and peaceful huts on their mountainous sides, as we creep along under them, or to watch the fisherman’s children with a glass, as they run out from their huts on the seashore to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship-of-war. They seem seats of solitude and retirement. I have just dropped the glass, which I had raised to look at what I took to be a large ship in full sail rounding the point of Felicudi. It is a tall, pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind. The band is playing on the deck; and a fisherman’s boat with twenty of the islanders resting on their oars and listening in wondering admiration, lies just under our quarter. It will form a tale for the evening meal, to which they were hastening home.

We run between Scylla and Charybdis, with a fresh wind and a strong current. The “dogs” were silent, and the “whirlpool” is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall rock at the entrance of the strait is crowned with a large building, which seems part of a fortification. The passage through the Faro is lonely—quite like a river. Messina lies in a curve of the western shore, at the base of a hill; and, opposite, a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a broad table plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of peace and fertility.

We rounded-to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went ashore in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little expectation of meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem, hailed me from the grating of the health-office, before we reached the land, and having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an hour for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and we were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and we shot away on a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium lay on our left, a large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of the sea. It was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even with a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of “the boot,” the southern point of Italy. We are heading at this moment for the gulf of Tarento, and hope to be in Venice by the fourth of July.

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