University of Virginia Library

68. LETTER LXVIII.

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 harbor 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 hinderances, it was evening before we
set foot upon the pier.

With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked
up the Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were
opening their shops after the siesta. 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 bird-cage, 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 the concha 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 at 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; the ciborio of entire
lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, frescoes
and relievoes 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
neighborhood 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 seabreeze 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, an avant-courier
on 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
gray beards, and the heavy brown sackcloth cowls of
the order tied around 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 scull, 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 gayety 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 scull, 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
frair 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 gray-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 arbors, the
least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath the
unwary visiter; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner
touched than you were showered from an invisible
source; and one small hermitage, which sent a jet
d'eau into 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 visiter 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.