RUSSIA AND SICILY: A PARALLEL.
[To THE EDNOR OF THE" SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The German Government, with its usual effrontery, attri- butes the murder of the German Minister at Moscow and the German General in the Ukraine to the intrigues of the Entente; but a simpler explanation is supplied by Dante, who ascribes the massacre known as the "Sicilian Vespers" to the cruelty and mis- government of Sicily by Charles of Anjou-
" Se main signoria, che solver accora li Repoli suggetti, non avesse mosso Palermo a gridar : Mora, mora."
(Paradiso, VIII., 73-73)— which Mr. Wicksteed translates: "Had not ill lordship, which (loth ever cut the heart of subject people, moved Palermo to shriek out : Die, die!"
German tyranny has indeed cut to the heart the Russians sub. jected to it, and it seems as if expulsion from Russia should folloa in the one case, as the loss of Sicily did in the other.—I am, Sir,
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