A Handbook for Travellers in Sicily: Including Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse, Etna, and the Ruins of the Greek TemplesJ. Murray, 1864 - 524 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adorned Agrigentum aisle Alcamo altar ancient city antiquity Antonio Gagini apse architecture ascends bajocchi beautiful beneath called Caltagirone Carthaginians Castelvetrano castle Catania cathedral Cefalù cella century chapel Chiesa church cliffs coast colour columns contains convent corn Count Roger crater crest cross Doric early eruption Etna façade Fazello Fiume foliage frescoes Gagini gate Girgenti Greek ground height hill Himera hollow inhabitants inscription island King lava Lilybæum Locanda lofty Madonna marble masonry ment Messina miles Misilmeri Monreale Monte mountain Norman Novelli olives painted palace Palazzo Palermo Paternò Piazza picture picturesque plain pointed arches Porta portico precipices remains ridge rises road rock Roman ruins saint Santa Saracenic Sciacca Segeste Selinus shore Sicilian Sicily side slopes spot square stands statue steep stream style stylobate summit Syracuse tains tarì temple tion tombs tower town transept Trapani traveller valley vaulted village Virgin walls
Popular passages
Page 193 - ... feet. By a most unlucky coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the former station was chosen for the place of the confessional. Secrets never intended for the public ear thus became known, to the dismay of the...
Page 395 - Etna,' says Sir Charles Lyell, 'these minor volcanoes, which are most abundant in the woody region, present us with one of the most delightful and characteristic scenes in Europe. They afford every variety of height and size, and are arranged in beautiful and picturesque groups. However uniform they may appear when seen from the sea, or the plains below, nothing can be more diversified than their shape when we look from above into their craters, one side of which, as we have seen, is generally broken...
Page 395 - On looking down from the lower borders of the desert region, these volcanos present us with one of the most delightful and characteristic scenes in Europe. They afford every variety of height and size, and are arranged in beautiful and picturesque groups. However uniform they may appear when seen from the sea, or the plains below, nothing can be more diversified than their shape when we look from above into their craters, one side of which is generally broken down.
Page 286 - Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world...
Page xxiv - ... unwearied waves which almost wash their base, and mock their desolation by the image of perpetual life and motion they present, while the tone of their heavy fall upon the beach well accords with the solemnity of the scene. At Girgenti the ridge visible to the mariner from afar is still crowned by a long line of fabrics, presenting to the eye a considerable mass and regularity of structure, and the town is near and visible; yet that town is so entirely the mere phantom of its former glory within...
Page 433 - It consists not of one vast trunk, but of a group of decayed trees or portions of trees growing in a circle, each with a hollow trunk of venerable antiquity, covered with ferns or ivy, and stretching out a few gnarled branches with scanty foliage. It is said that excavation showed these various stems to be united at a very small depth below the surface of the ground. Travellers have differed in their measurements of this stupendous growth, Admiral Smyth, who takes the lowest estimate, giving...
Page 327 - Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, Her voice their only ransom from afar: See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the...
Page 421 - We may suppose, that, at the commencement of the eruption, a deep mass of drift snow had been covered by volcanic sand showered down upon it before the descent of the lava. A dense stratum of this fine dust mixed with scoriae is well known to be an excellent non-conductor of heat, and may thus have preserved the snow from complete fusion when the burning flood poured over it.
Page 137 - ... imagine you have got into the regions of delusion and enchantment; for of all that immense group, there is not one made to represent any object in nature; nor is the absurdity of the wretched imagination that created them less astonishing than its wonderful fertility.
Page 421 - Having procured a large body of workmen, he quarried into this ice, and proved the super-position of the lava for several hundred yards, so as completely to satisfy himself that nothing but the subsequent flowing of the lava over the ice could account for the position of the glacier.