No sooner had the morning dawned, than my faithful Polité was in waiting at the doorway of the Albergo, to act as my guide through the city, to the numerous places of interest and antiquity which still remained for me to visit. I soon despatched a cup of coffee, and joining my guide we set off on foot, intending to make a pedestrian excursion, as most of the spots we had to visit, lay either in the suburbs of the city, or at a short distance from it. The museum, which is situated near the cathedral, first claimed our attention. It consists chiefly, indeed I may almost say exclusively, of antiquities discovered in and about the neighbourhood of the ancient Syracuse. A marble statue of Venus, without the head, which was found buried beneath a fig-tree in the quarter of Acradina, is by far the finest piece of sculpture. The other objects most worthy of notice, are a Greek head of Esculapius, some very curious ancient pictures in fresco, lamps, and other articles of household furniture, two glass cups finely coloured, inscriptions taken from the street of the tombs, of white marble, some of which are very legible, rings, vases, ladies' hair-pins, lachrymatories, and coins. There is also a fine headless drapery exquisitely sculptured in marble, a basso-relievo of Timoleon, found in the amphitheatre, a leaden sarcophagus excavated from the Scala Græca, Campo Romano, containing portions of a skeleton with an amazingly thick skull; another large sarcophagus, and, lastly, a curious relic consisting of a quantity of earthen pots and cups, one inside another, which appear to have belonged to a pottery manufactory, and to have been suddenly crushed by

some violent concussion. These were dug up along with a number of GræcoSicilian antiquities in the vicinity. The usual charge made to visitors at the museum is four taris, but the guardian finds it more profitable to leave it to the generosity of the visitors, (a common practice on the Continent,) which often imposes an unpleasant tax upon strangers. Near the cathedral I observed the two pillars belonging to the temple of Ceres in Acradina, which have been purloined from the fane of the goddess to serve some miserable purpose in repairing the modern city.

The cathedral, which I before noticed, is an erection of the 7th century, and dedicated to the Virgin. It is built in the temple of Minerva, or rather, the remains of that edifice have been cruelly mutilated and disfigured by being transformed into the walls of this building. Some idea, however, of the simple beauty and grandeur of this Doric temple may still be formed by a survey of those portions which now remain. It formerly displayed forty columns, fluted, without a base, erected on a raised quadrilateral platform. The Cella was enclosed by walls, formed of large stones neatly joined without cement: these walls were cut through to form communicating arches with the sides when it became a church. Eleven of the columns on the north side of the edifice are built into the wall, where they may still be traced. Those on the south side are in better preservation, and at the western end two more are visible.

The Monastery of St. Lucian, the guardian saint of Siragusa, is one of the finest religious establishments in the city. I peeped into the chapel during mass, and was much struck with the remarkably light and pretty appearance of a vast number of suspended lamps hanging at various distances above the altar-piece, and reaching quite up to the ceiling of the church. The cords by which these lamps are hung are so fine as to be almost imperceptible, and give one the idea of their resting in the air. Santa Lucian is to the Syracusans what St. Michael is to the inhabitants of Malta— their favourite guardian saint and patroness—and in almost every cottage, and even in the speronaro and fishing-boat, a rude picture of this idolized being is constantly to be found. In more wealthy families, the pictures of the saints are oftentimes elaborately painted, and finely executed, though the character of the individual represented is preserved the same in these as in more humble editions. After visiting the Collegiate Church, where there are several tolerably good paintings, my guide proceeded to show me the far-famed fountain of Arethusa, which still wells up from the ground, broad and bubbling, though its shoals of sacred fishes, and the translucent purity of its waters, are fled for ever. It is now converted into a tank for washerwomen, and is the receptacle for the purification of all the dirty linen in Siragusa. Never again could a poet sit down and sing of Arethusa, if he had once witnessed the sight which I was favoured to behold on looking down from the wall which commands a view of the fountain and its rocky source. My guide wittily said to me on reaching the spot,

"These are the nymphæ modernæ," pointing at the same time to nearly half-a-hundred women with their clothes tucked up above their knees, standing in rows in the water, and all busily engaged in washing and beating their dirty garments with wooden spatulas, forming the most grotesque "coup d'œil" imaginable. This was unexpected, for I did not conceive of nymphs in the year 1841, and so great a number of them too. Such a scene was hardly "comme il faut," and reminded me of the surprise I experienced on first discovering the grotto of the goddess Calypso in the island of Malta. It is said that this is the identical river Arethusa which sinks under ground near Olympia in the Peloponnesus, and that, continuing its course for five or six hundred miles below the ocean, it rises again in this place. Many of the old Sicilian authors state that the golden cup won at the Olympic Games was thrown into the Grecian Arethusa, and was soon afterwards cast up again by the Ortygian one. They also state that after the great sacrifices at the former place, the waters of the fountain rose for several days tinged with the blood of the victims. Near to Arethusa, in the grand harbour, bubbles up another spring, called the "Occhi di Zillica," through the sea, and rises to the surface almost unimpregnated with the salt water. This is Alphæus, who, according to the poets, pursued Arethusa all the way to Sicily, and was by Diana converted into this fountain, just as he was approaching to seize the terrified nymph, who was at the same moment transformed into the spring, which still bears her name. Thus much for Arethusa. I certainly was disappointed in finding it so degraded and debased, but I consoled myself by the feeling that I had seen Arethusa, and that it was the very same of whose "sweet waters" Cicero speaks as containing an incredible number of fishes, &c. Had he said "washerwomen," the description would have better suited its appearance at the present day! Oh! the miserable sordid taste of these modern times. There is no regard paid to many of the precious relics of antiquity, which are the only speaking monuments of ages that once were of ages when the eloquence of a Demosthenes-when the courage of Leonidas or a Miltiades-the chisel of a Praxiteles, and the pencil of a Zeuxis-when a brilliant phalanx of warriors and statesmen, and philosophers and poets, all contributed to render Greece the wonder of her time, and the glory of the world. As Ali Pacha wilfully and maliciously pulled to pieces the venerable temples in Upper Egypt, so in many other countries, ignorant and avaricious men destroy the crumbling edifice that bids them do reverence to a long line of forgotten ancestry. Nor are these instances of a savage and destructive mind few and far between; look at England, our own country, and let the guilty blush at home! For many a fair baronial castle, and many a precious relic of the chivalry and feudal spirit of the middle ages, is sacrificed to the cursed love of gold by the wretched worshippers at the shrine of mammon. But to return to my subject:-having by this time completed my survey of all that was most interesting within the limits of the modern city of Siragusa, we next pro

a