The evening that we left Catania we visited the museum of Baron Recupero, by far the most interesting of them all, though seldom pointed out by the cicerone, for as the baron allows nothing to be taken by his servant, the cicerone of course is not bribed to lead travellers there. The Barone di Recupero and his brother (who are nephews of the famous Canonico mentioned by Brydone) take the greatest delight in showing their cabinets to strangers. The one exhibits a collection of natural history, and the other his vases, gems, and medals. They neither interfere in each other's province, which are both admirable of their kind; the coins are assorted geographically-the intaglios are far the most beautiful I have ever seen, particularly an Hercules and Anteus, and a rape of Proserpine: the execution of the last would make a modern engraver sigh. There is also a gallery of pictures, but not of value. One of the largest nunneries in Sicily exists at Catania, the Battista di St. Juliano. The chapel, which is the only part of course that we could see, is surrounded by little grates where the nuns come to hear mass, or to confess without any possibility of their being seen. July 26.-At nine o'clock in the evening we embarked on board our speronara. The twin kling lights of Catania, with the dark outline of the mountain behind, and the stream of lava on the right, the phosphoric appearance in the waters, all would have formed an admirable night pieture. It was very dark when we passed the basaltic pillars near Aci*. I have little doubt that the ancients have formed their story of Acis, on the death of some shepherd occasioned by a stone hurled from one of the craters of Etna; and poetical fiction attributed it to the jealousy of Polyphemus, whom Virgil tells us inhabited the mountain. Our mariners in dulged us this night with their evening hymn, which they sing with occasional pauses. Brydone says it soothed him to sleep; I found I slept better when it was over. At day-break we were in the bay of Taormina; many of the promontories, even at this distance, are formed by lava. We landed at Giardini at eleven, and found a tolerable neat albergo, "la Fortuna," kept by a custode of a church; and if he always gets as much as he asks, he will soon be under considerable obligations to the blind goddess. We mounted on * I find this place in the maps termed Aci as well as Jaci, I have preferred the least corrupted designation. mules up the rock to Taormina. The views from this spot are so remarkably celebrated, that description is unnecessary. The theatre, which is another of those colossal antiquities, that seem too overgrown for its purpose, stands singly on an elevated crag, and, like its rival of Syracuse, commanding a view that must have often arrested the attention of an audience from fiction to reality*. No unhappy resource, indeed, if condemned to sit out a dull play. The loveliest scene is, however, at the back of the seats; the mountains of Calabria, gray from distance, the blue sea, the road to Messina winding over rock and dale, such are its peculiar features. We clambered up a high cliff to the ruins of a Saracen castle that hung over the town, but we found mountains still rising far above us to the west, and on their very pinnacle the little town of Mola perched like an eagle's nest. We obtained a glass of wine at a cottage in our return, and received it from the hands of a most beautiful peasant girl, whose Grecian * I have selected from some drawings, that were done at my desire by a Maltese, this view, and that from the theatre at Syracuse, to be engraved, from their being the most. celebrated. |