AN AMERICAN BOOK ABOUT SICILY.* Mn. PATON'S book about Sicily

almost overpowers us by the manysidedness of its information and the multitude of associations it touches. The writer confesses very frankly in his preface and his early chapters that he came to the island entirely ignorant of its modern history and contemporary life, and very slightly prepared for the immensity and variety of the archaaological treasures that have given it the name of the "Museum of Europe." But he evidently brought with him a mind quick with the freshest interest in all the ages of history and an inexhaustible fund of sightseeing energy. To give an adequate idea of the number of places described, historical events recorded, and authorities quoted in his book, is absolutely impossible within the limits of any one article. We can only say that every page of the ample volume teems with interest, and that if here and there

• Picturesqn. SiAiy. By Willis:a Agnew Paton. London: Harper sad Broths, s. ROL iki.1

one finds a chapter a little overloaded with historical detail, and consequently heavy in reading, one finds many more that are vivid with the life and colour of contemporary events and manners. But it is the crowding together in a small area of the relics of many civilisations, and the super- imposition of the traditions of successive races of conquerers, that make the peculiar character of the island, and—quite as much as its beautiful and varied scenery—justify the name of "Picturesque Sicily," which Mr. Paton has taken for the title of his book. "With great surprise," he tells us, he "learned that there are more rums of Greek temples in the island of Sicily than are to be found in the Peloponnesus, or in all Greece besides," and that, in addition to these, it contains also specimens of almost every kind of antiquity of every age of the world :—

"Caves of the cliff-dwellers; fragments of cyclopean structures reared by prehistoric builders ; foundations of walls laid by IThcenicians and Carthaginians ; temples, theatres, and fortresses of Greek construction ; bridges, aqueducts, and amphitheatres erected by Roman engineers ; remains of edifices built by Byzantine architects; mosques and towers:of Saracenic origin ; while of Norman churches, castles, palaces, who can tell the number or describe their magnificence ?"

With Palermo Mr. Paton fell entirely in love at first sight. Its gardens of myrtle and palm, its oranges and citrons and lemons, its "red roofs, domes, towers,'and minarets," and its background of rich vegetation and snowy summits, stir him to much eloquent and excellent description. "We had planned a stay of two weeks in Palermo. We dwelt there in health and happiness for three months, lacking a few days." It was in Palermo that the travellers learned to know the life of a modern Sicilian city, with its picturesque medley of

beauty and squalor; and the graphic sketches of street life, made during those three months, fill some of the most enter-

taining pages of the book. The poultry-sellers, "crying their wares in tones shrill enough to drown the cackling of the birds;" the cobblers, tailors, and other itinerant menders, patching and repairing all sorts of wares in the streets; the women, boiling the ragged clothes of their families " in copper kettles placed over charcoal furnaces" in front of the dwelling-houses; the butchers' stalls and the fish shops, with their malodorous and unappetising cheap morsels ; the vegetable stands and the painted wine-carte; the "readers of books" collecting groups of listeners round them ; the letter-writers and accountants inditing epistles for the uneducated, and casting up accounts for the costermongers ; the booths where cheap trinkets are sold to devotees wishing to hang up votive offerings in the

churches ; the women with babies, looking like Madonnas in the Italian galleries ; the women with pitchers, carrying

themselves and their burdens with the grace of Greek statues; the men and women of Saracenic type, looking incongruous

among surroundings obviously not Moslem, and denying the Mahommedan faith their looks profess, by automatically

making the sign of the cross and dipping their fingers in holy water at the doors of the churches ; a recruit carried off by a sergeant amid the howls and tears of a mob of women and children, and the hysterical curses of a fainting mother ; a Procession of the Host passing in the rain under commonplace umbrellas, its tinkling bell un- heeded by the people in the street, who are more interested in popular airs and minstrel songs being played at the same time by numerous organ-grinders,—all these things are described very graphically and freshly. But they make, after all, only the background to detailed accounts of visits to the Cathedral and other famous churches of Palermo, the Monastery of Monreale,ithe Villa Belmonte, Monte Pellegrino, and Monte Cuccio. The ascent of Monte Pellegrino gives occasion for some characteristic descriptions of scenery :—

" Our cavalcade began the ascent of La Strada di Monta.gnon, a broad, substantially built viaduct, with arches and piers; a miracle of boldness for seventeenth-century engineers. It zig- zags up the mountain, crossing and recrossing a precipitous ravine, down which in winter time pour great torrents of water. Fifteen or twenty times La Strada leaps from side to side, until one does, indeed, marvel how the engineers found their way up the precipices, and where the builders stood while laying the foundations."

They overtook a. flock of over a thousand goats, behind whom "followed, constantly shouting the strange cry, Ah-ee a number of goatherds, brown and sun-burned, ragged and unkempt, some clothed in sheepskin trousers and coats, others bare-legged save for knee-breeches, and

all of them wearing upper garments of goatskin." Their satyrlike appearance and the weird and savage scenery suggested a return to the days of Pan ; and the flora of the mountain side, in strange contradiction to the time of year, gave a colouring of probability to anything improbable. "For by the roadside, in December, within a week or two of Christmas, we beheld daisies, marigolds and sweet alyssum, wild thyme, flowering - mint and dandelions, pink- tipped asters, budding trefolia, sorrel, and, last but not least, purple violets peeping shyly at us." The ascent of Monte Cuccio gave them their first view of Etna and a magnificent panorama of Palermo and its environs :— "Looking down from Monte Cuccio towards the sea, one be- holds a wide extent of wonderfully fertile valley, overgrown by almond orchards and plantations of the fruits for which Sicily, and especially Ii Conco d'Oro, are famous all the world over. For miles and miles, in spring-time, the traveller in this shell of gold makes his way through an ocean of orange blossoms that perfume the air with odours rivalling the spices of Araby the Blest. Orange blossoms are everywhere, white as snow, glisten- ing all the whiter because they shine amid deep, rare green foliage. Amid the orange and lemon plantations are pastures, grain fields, and gardens, and where the soil is mixed with &trans washed from the hills, terraced vineyards give promise of an abundance of grapes. A score of towns and villages, red-tiled and white-walled, appear here and there, connected by highways with each other and the mother city. These 'strade' wind through the valley, dropping gently from the mountains, and, although apparently wandering aimlessly hither and thither through the land, are nevertheless all trending towards Palermo, the Rome of Sicily, to which all Sicilian roads lead at last, Turning from the view of Ii Como d'Oro and the city by the sea, facing the south and east, a wonderful change comes over the spirit of one's dream Beyond the farthest range of the Madonian mountains, towering above all other peeks and pin- nacles, there rises a superb dome of snow, grandly uplifting its vastness to the heavens. It dominates the land, and looks down upon all the coast of Sicily; it presides majestically over the convocation of all the lesser hills that gather around it like barons of a mighty king kneeling before their lord. Back of the crests of the Madonian mountains a sky-line of glistening snow rises, gradually and evenly, from both sides of the picture to a.

rounded cupola, from which there drifts a feathery cloud of steam The background of blue sky throws this snowy eminence into high relief, and all the picture shows distinctly in sunlight, rare in

colour, wonderfully impressive in contour and significance Yes, there was /Etna, and in his presence all the mountains dwindle to hills, and all the hills to pleasant knolls. The eye noted nothing but the sky, the sea, and /Etna, through leagues and leagues of thin, translucent air ; so distant and yet apparently so near, it seemed as if one might journey to its base before night had shut out the view of the everlasting snow."

The descriptions of the ascent of Etna, and the ex- ploration of the Plain of Catania, come later. Through- out the book a great point is the quaintness of contrasts, and juxtapositions of incongruous memories and associations. It jumps from traditions of the Cyclops to recollections of Garibaldi, from the spirit of Pan to the influence of Mazzini. The same village—Carini--is famed as the birthplace of classic Lab, and romantic Fra Diavolo. A dreary moorland, "desolate as the Boone Valley on Exmoor," is the site of Piana dei Greci, a town of about seven thousand inhabitants, the largest of the Albanian cities in Sicily; and the Albanians are remarkable for having preserved since 1488 certain primi- tive customs and forms of worship which distinguish them from the general population of Sicily. But, alas ! the special worship which the Albanians of the fifteenth century made the sacrifice of their fatherland to retain, is to-day a thing shown for money to tourists, and the proprietor of the hotel at which Mr. Paton and his party stayed made them a sort of apology for not having a wedding on exhibition :— "Had you told me you expected to be in Piana dei Greci, I should have telephoned to the sindaco, and he would have arranged for a marriage ceremony to be held in the church ; then you would have seen something to repay you for your trouble in taking so long a ride on so inclement e. day."

Mr. Paton has tales to tell of brigandage and La Mafia, and he gives a heartrending account of the poverty and sufferings of the humbler class of Sicilians. Beggars swarm everywhere, but he speaks highly of the arrangements made for securing public cleanliness in even the poorest quarters of Palermo, though he cannot vouch for the personal cleanliness of those thousands and thousands of its inhabitants who possess but one ragged suit, and therefore cannot afford the luxury of having it boiled in a street copper once a week. English philanthropists will read with pleasure how he was struck by the hospitable sign of the "Sailors' Rest" over a comfortable habitation in Palermo, where stranded English and American sailors are made to feel at home.

Syracuse, the great city of Sicily in the days of Greek dominion, was somewhat of a disappointment :— "As we stood on the platform of a newly erected railway station, and beheld the commonplace modern town, it was difficult to realise that we had actually arrived at a city which, in ages past, rivalled Athens and Rome in size, in wealth, and in popu- lation. We were not impressed by the antiquity of anything we saw, nor did Syracuse in any way resemble any of the other Sicilian cities we had visited. It was not a hill city like Monte San Girliano, Girgento, or Castrogiovanni; it was not a city lying at the base of a mountain, like Catania or Trapani, nor at the foot of cliffs like Cefalii, nor on the margin of a vast and beautiful plain like Palermo. The silver-grey city stands upon what is now a peninsula, once an island and formerly called Ortyisria (' Quail Island '), surrounded by the deep blue water of its two harbours. Syracuse has no acropolis, no long range of temples, no domes and spires, no towers and minarets. As seen from a distance, it exhibits no architectural relics of Greek, Roman, Saracen, or Norman times. It does not lie in the midst of grand and imposing scenery ; low, encircling hills cut off all view of the island. Undoubtedly the first impression of Syracuse is disappointing, as is the first view of Rome when the traveller arrives at 'the Eternal City' and gains his first idea of it from the piazza in front of the railway station. Nevertheless, it is impossible to behold Syracuse unmoved."

And Mr. Paton, full of classical memories, having sought out and identified the famous sites, succeeds in making his de- acriptions of them and the legends as interesting as everything else in his book. A liberal supply of excellent illustrations completes the attractiveness and usefulness of the volume.