University of Virginia Library

70. LETTER LXX.

Palermo, June 28.—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 a féte given 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,
can not 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 favorite 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 realize 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
realize 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 the 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 the 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 visiter 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 walls 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 whimsied 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 colored 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 faery.

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, aintings
set in the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals
around, stood statues of the finest workmanship, rep
resenting the males of the family in the costume or
armor 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 an atmosphere! 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 moralizing.

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 honors
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 way 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 rides 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.