tion, as well as a small adjoining mosque. The building is of hewn stone, with light, airy arches, icicle-like pendants, mullions, and tracery. Within the palace there are fountains, courts, and arcades, that remind one of the splendid ruins of the Alhambra, in Granada. There is a view from a terrace, so exquisitely beautiful as almost to justify the inscription made upon it, which says, "Europe is the glory of the world-Italy of Europe-Sicily of Italy-and the country hereabout of Sicily." Some of the public buildings of Palermo are imposing from their breadth of front and extent. The great customhouse, in the Piazza Marina, was formerly the office of the inquisition. The Jesuits' college is a vast and magnificent edifice, commodiously divided into many wings and compartments.

The Monte di Pietà, or loan-bank for the poor, is another spacious building. It has a very neat portico.

The observatory of Palermo, though not very remarkable for its architecture, is curiously situated, and highly interesting, as being connected with the discoveries of a great modern astronomer. It is heaped on that huge pile of buildings which forms the royal palace. It was first erected in 1748, when the attention of astronomers was attracted to the conjunction of five planets in one sign of the zodiac; a phenomenon which, it is supposed, had not occurred, or had not been observed since the creation of the world. The observatory was completed many years after, by the celebrated Padre Piazzi, who made from it his discovery of a new planet.

The great boast of modern Palermo (and a beautiful thing it is!) is the promenade of the Marina, outside of the Porta Felice. Here a noble line of palaces, facing the bay, a fine carriage-road, and a broad pavement, called "banchetta," for pedestrians, present themselves. At the eastern extremity of the Marina, which is a mile long, there is a botanical garden, with a graceful modern building, in which lectures are occasionally delivered, and adjoining to this there is another garden called the Flora," open to the public at all times, and affording the most delightful walks through avenues of acacias, or orange, lemon, citron, and lime-trees. Part of the ground is laid out in parterres of flowers and sweet-smelling plants, which are watered by several fountains. Statues, small temples, and sculptured cenotaphs, all of pure white marble, are scattered here and there, with happy effect. This gay and lovely garden is said to occupy the very spot on which the inquisitors were wont to celebrate their auto-da-fè. The present population of Palermo, with its suburbs, rather exceeds than falls short of 180,000 souls.

A little to the west of Palermo, and nearly at the summit of the lofty and rugged Monte Pellegrino, there is a natural grotto or cave of considerable extent. Hamil. car Barcas, whose Carthaginian soldiers are said to have made a barrack-room of the cave, long resisted the Romans on this isolated and almost inaccessible height, but it is not from these circumstances that the grotto is dear and sacred to the Sicilians. The mouth of the cave no longer opens on the mountain's side, but is masked and enclosed by a curious church they have built round it. Crossing this church, you enter a low, narrow vault under the rocks, cold and gloomy in the extreme, where silence is never broken, except by the low whisperings of the devotees, or the echoes of the service in the church. Nearly at the extremity of the cavern, there is a beautiful young maiden, in a reclining posture, with her half-closed eyes fixed on the cross. It is only a statue; but in the dim obscurity, partially broken by the lights from some small silver lamps, it looks, at a certain distance, like a human being in the act of expiring, with beatific visions of a brighter and happier world than this. Even on a nearer approach, when the illusion vanishes, the effect of this exquisite piece of workmanship is exceedingly touching. The delicate beauty and youth of the countenance, with its mingled expression of simplicity, resignation, and devotion-the flowing lines of the body and limbs, with their soft and perfect repose, quite captivate the beholder, and almost excuse the idolatry of which the statue is the object. The head and hands are cut in the finest Parian marble; the rest of the figure is of bronze gilt, appearing as if covered with a robe of beaten gold. Many valuable jewels testify the devotion of successive ages. The figure represents Santa Rosalia, the patroness saint of Palermo, who is believed to have lived and died in these deep solitudes and awful cells."

At certain seasons, the sailors and poor people from Palermo, and the peasantry from the neighboring country, flock hither in numerous troops, and, according to a practice which is general in Italy and Sicily, after they have performed their devotions they give themselves up to enjoyment, to feasting and dancing, for the rest of

the day. The view from Monte Pellegrino is at once cheerful, diversified, and sublime, extensive, and beautiful in its details. The fair city of Palermo, with its suburbs, La Bagaria and Il Colle, full of villas and gardens, is close under the eye; the upper sides of Mount Etna, though at the distance of nearly the whole length of the island, are visible; and looking seaward, most of the Lipari islands, with the ever-smoking cone of Stromboli, are discovered.

The festival of Santa Rosalia is the most splendid religious pageant in Sicily, and, according to the Sicilians, whose pride and boast it is, the finest in the world. It is held annually at Palermo, in the glowing month of July, and lasts five days, the anniversaries of the finding of the bones, their transfer from the cave to the cathedral, and the three processions round the walls of the city. People repair to it from all parts of the island, from the neighboring coasts of Calabria, and even from the city of Naples. A detailed account would occupy too much room; but the principal features of the festival are these-a lofty car, of an exceedingly elegant form, and richly ornamented, is surmounted at more that the height of sixty feet, by a statue of the saint, in silver, and considerably larger than life. The car is about sixty-five feet long, and thirty feet broad. On seats which rise above each other like stairs, a numerous orchestra and vocal performers are disposed in rows, and in full courtdress. This enormous vehicle is dragged slowly through the centre of the town by fifty white oxen. It stops every fifty or sixty yards, and at each pause the music, which is generally admirable, fills the summer air, which is otherwise sweetened by incense, and the breath of innumerable flowers, that are suspended to the car, or scattered before its path.

In the evenings, the Cassaro, or principal street, and the long and beautiful promenade of the Marina, are splendidly illuminated, and fireworks, on a very extensive scale, are let off. On the fourth evening, the interior of the fine old cathedral is filled with one blaze of light; the silver lamps, the wax torches, the candelabra, the mirrors, the rich hanging draperies of gold and silver tissue, and all other accessories, being arranged with admirable taste and effect. The festival concludes on the fifth day with a procession, in which the effigies of all the saints in Palermo are carried, amidst a deafening noise of drums, trumpets, and patereroes.

The town of Monreale is nearly four miles from Palermo, but it is so connected with that capital by lines of houses and villas as to have almost the character of a

suburb. It stands on a noble elevation at the southern extremity of the rich vale of Palermo. The road leading to it runs in a straight line from the Cassaro, or principal street of Palermo, to the very foot of the hills, over which it has been made to stride by a noble causeway. The situation, the views, are almost unrivalled; and the town itself, though it can hardly be called handsome, has an impressive, picturesque, half-oriental air about it, and contains a number of very remarkable edifices.' The cloisters of Monreale are, from their magnificence, extent, and taste, considered the masterpiece of the Saraceno-Norman architects; and though the interval that divides them from the great masterpiece of the Moors in Spain is a long one, they are frequently called the "Alhambra of Sicily." The successors of that most energetic soldier of fortune, Count Ruggiero, spared no pains and no money in decorating this monument of their piety: the vast abbey-church, and nearly every part of the monastery, are most elaborately finished. The twisted columns which support the arcades of the cloisters are covered nearly all over with mosaic; and though not large in the diameter of their shafts, these columns are considerable in their number: for, taking in the whole range of the cloisters (of which but a section is shown in our engraving), there are one hundred and twenty columns, and every one of these is exquisitely finished. Some of their capitals are very curious, being composed of the heads of animals, cut with great spirit. In each division of these cloisters there is a richly-ornamented fountain, and as all these are constantly supplied with clear, sparkling, cool water, the effect during the summer heats is delicious. From the shaded porticoes, and the cool open galleries above them, the eyes of the monks rest upon their gardens and groves, abounding in odoriferous shrubs and plants, all kept fresh and doubly fragrant by water gushing forth on all sides, and leaping in marble basins. The wealth and power are departed; the glory of the house is gone; but, as a delicious place of residence, the abbey of Monreale remains unrivalled in the south, and was never surpassed even by the abbey of Batalha in Portugal.

After the cloisters, the most striking feature in this monastery is, perhaps, the vast and truly noble staircase, at the head of which there stand two large and spendid paintings, one being by Velasquez, and the other by Pietro Novelli, a native of the town, and commonly called from it the "Monrealese," or, for greater euphony, "Morealese." His works abound in other parts of the edifice, which also contains many beautiful pieces of sculpture by Gagini, another native artist. The adjoining cathedral church is in the same Saracenic style, but heavier and somewhat less symmetric than the Benedictine house. The interior of the cathedral is a complete crust of rich mosaic work.

In its scenery and accessories the whole neighborhood of Monreale is magic ground. About three miles beyond the abbey is the magnificent monastery of San Martino, situated in a wild and solitary dell, among rocks and mountains.

SYRACUSE.-The city of Syracuse, the metropolis of the island of Sicily, was founded upward of seven hundred years before the Christian era, by Archias, of Corinth, one of the Heraclidæ by the ancients it was called Pentapolis, from its containing within its walls the five cities of Ortygia, Acradina, Tycha, Neapolis, and Epipola. In its most flourishing state it comprised above twelve hundred thousand inhabitants, extended upward of twenty-two miles, maintained an army of one hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse, together with a navy of five hundred armed vessels, that proudly rode in its two capacious harbors, which were separated from each other by the island of Ortygia. This city was surrounded by a rich and fertile country, and possessed every advantage of local situation: it was further embellished by works of the most exquisite taste and perfection in architecture, sculpture, and painting; while commerce and extent of territory diffused such wealth among its citizens as rendered their affluence proverbial. After a long period of prosperity and glory, and after a struggle almost unexampled in the annals of history, Syracuse was finally reduced (B. Č. 212) by the Roman arms under the command of the consul Marcellus; who, on entering the city, and reflecting upon its magnificence and fallen state, is said to have burst into tears.

On approaching the walls of Syracuse, the traveller, who calls to mind the rank which this once-splendid city occupied in the page of history, and who has raised his expectations with the prospect of surveying the remains of those structures so warmly depicted by various classic authors, may, like Marcellus, shed a tear of disappointment over its fallen state. Although these antiquities are few in number, they are