Inebriety is a vice of rare occurrence, inasmuch as iced water occupies the place of ardent spirits and fermented liquors; but the stiletto is still used by the populace; and many of our soldiers, in their nocturnal rambles, fell beneath its blow. Jealousy is chiefly prevalent amongst the common people: the Herculean arm of Cecisbeism has nearly crushed the monster in the higher ranks. No such thing is ever dreamt of in Palermo, as a preventive police, where the streets are lighted by a few glimmering tapers that burn before the images of saints and martyrs; and when the most atrocious crimes are committed, no measures are ever taken for the discovery of the perpeAn English gentleman of our acquaintance was awoke in the dead of the night by two assassins standing over him with drawn daggers: being enjoined silence, on pain of instant death, he was made to deliver up his money, and to empty his drawers, the contents of which were handed out to an accomplice in the street: this being done, the villains leaped over the balcony and escaped. Next morning intelli

trators.

Copia della Relazione che fu ritrovata nel Santo Sepolcro di nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, La Quale Sua Santità tiene scolpita nel suo Oratorio.

Avendo S. Elisabetta Regina d'Ungheria, e S. Brigida fatte molte Orazioni a Nostro Signore, e desiderando di sapere le pene maggiori di Lui patite nella sua Santissima Passione, egli per sua divina bontà così le parlò.-Sappiate mie Sorelle carissime qualmenti i Soldati che mi fecero prigioniere furono 161, oltre altri 33 Ministri della giustizia, quelli che mi presero e mi legarono furono 11, e mi diedero 333 pugni nella testa, e quando fui prigioniere mene diedero altri 100 e due fieri spinte: Cascai in terra 7 volte, alla casa di Anna mi seguitarono 190 battiture, e per farmi levare da terra mi diedero 18 colpi sulle spalle, fui strascinato per terra con la corda, e per i capelli 70 volte, e sortirono dal mio petto 161 sospiri, fui tirato per la barba 20 volte, mi diedero alla colonna 6600 battiture: mi sputarono in faccia 121 volte, mi diedero una spinta mortale, e mi fecero cadere a terra con la Croce alle spalle: mi diedero colla Croce tre spinte mortali: Le goccie di sangue che sortirono dal mio corpo furono 30,160.

A tutte le persone, che per lo spazio di 12 anni diranno ogni giorno 7 Pater ed Ave sino a compirne il num. delle goccie di sangue sparse da Gesù Cristo, e viveranno col santo timor di Dio, saranno concesse le infrascritte grazie, cioè, indulgenza plenaria, e remissione dei loro peccati; saranno liberate dalle pene del Purgatorio, e benchè morissero avanti di aver compita detta devozione sarà lo stesso, che averla terminata; saranno riputati come Martiri, che avessero sparso il loro sangue per la Santa Fede, scenderà il Signore dal Cielo in Terra a prendere le anime loro nell' ora della morte, e finalmente de' loro Parenti sino alla quarta generazione. Portando questa medessima Relazione addosso e dicendo ogni giorno come si è detto i detti 7 Pater ed Ave saranno libere dal Demonio, non moriranno di mala morte nè di morte subitanea. Con questa divozione le Donne partoriranno senza pericolo, ed in quella Casa dove vi sarà non vi regneranno visioni cattive, nè altre cose spaventevoli: Per ultimo nell' età della di loro morte vedranno La SS. Vergine Madre di Dio.

Questa Relazione e Divozione è stata veduta ed approvata dalla Sacra Inquisizione di Spagna ed altri sacri tribunali.

12

GENERAL STATE OF THE ISLAND.

gence was given to the proper officers of police; but they seemed as ignorant of the commonest method of investigation, as they were indignant at the idea of being taken for thief-catchers. If common report be true, and every one affirms it, justice is often put up to the highest bidder: certainly, the powers of the magistrate are scarcely able to support his authority; and his salary is so small and badly paid, that the rogue must be poor indeed, who cannot afford to bribe him. There is no such thing known as prison-discipline; the gaols are literally schools of corruption, where the innocent are abandoned to ruin, and the guilty hardened in iniquity; but on this subject I shall touch in another place. Such briefly are some of the traits which distinguish Palermo and the other large Sicilian cities. Society and good government have hung upon loose hinges in this unfortunate island ever since the Roman conquests, and the anarchy to which it is, in some measure, a constant prey, is the accumulated evil of many centuries. Though in later times its inhabitants have not, indeed, suffered those revolting cruelties of tyranny at which the mind shudders, still perhaps, the sum of human misery has been equally great: for the most cruel princes are not always the most insufferable tyrants, and imbecility sometimes leads to greater evils than unrestrained brutality : such has been the case with Sicily, most especially under the present reign; during which a set of dissolute courtiers, and an imperious woman, abusing the confidence and employing the authority of the sovereign, have filled the state with interminable disorders. Favouritism has existed in its most injurious forms, and court intrigue has been the sole study of the great: privilege has monopolized all honours, offices, and distinctions; property and civil liberty have had no security from rapacity and caprice; justice has become venal; murder knows the price of its impunity; and the unequal distribution of the criminal law has instigated individuals to become their own avengers: commerce has been fettered by the most grievous ties; the pressure of taxation has fallen upon the necessaries, not the luxuries of life, whilst

DEPARTURE FROM PALERMO.

13

the revenue thence arising has been expended in profligacy, to the neglect of all improvements physical and moral ;---add to all this, that the diffusion of knowledge has been prohibited by the darkest veil that superstition ever spread before its enlightening rays, that liberty has invariably been opposed by the priesthood, a body of men too bigoted, too intolerant, too dependent to endure its very name, and the reader will have some faint idea of the political state of Sicily; nor will he wonder that difficulties environed those who endeavoured to resuscitate the embers of a patriotism nearly extinct, and break the fetters of a nation who rather chose to hug them, that civil liberty was received with an hypocrisy more injurious to its cause than open enmity, and that returning without any efforts of the people, it returned without vigour, and excited neither talent nor enthusiasm; that those amongst the higher classes who received it at all, received it like a toy, which they played with for a time, and then broke to pieces; and that the populace, having penetration sufficient to discover the weakness of their rulers, were clamorous for the English authorities to dissolve the whole constitution and take the power into their own hands.

After about a month's residence in Palermo we prepared to gratify our curiosity in visiting the remains of those magnificent cities, which abounded in this once flourishing island, and still attest, even in their fall, that unrivalled taste and grandeur of sentiment, which distinguished the Grecian colonies no less than their mother-country.

66

Having crossed the island in two days, we arrived in view of the sea, and of those beautiful temples, whose ruins still adorn the site of Agrigentum, a city, which, as an eminent historian observes, was such a phenomenon of political prosperity, that these very relics are necessary documents for supporting the truth of its historical records*." History, it is true, has given us very scanty information respecting the government, laws, and commerce of this extraordinary people: from

* Vide Mitford, Hist. of Greece, c. xxix. § 3.

14

ANCIENT REPUBLIC OF AGRIGENTUM.

thinly-scattered notices, however, we may collect that its constitution, like that of most other cities in Magna Grecia, was democratical, disturbed occasionally by an aristocratic party, and sometimes overturned by the success of individuals denominated tyrants, who were rarely able to overcome the original spirit of the constitution, or to legitimatize their authority. The goodness of its laws may partly be inferred from the great accumulation and security of private wealth, from the long intervals of peace which it enjoyed, and its general freedom from domestic commotions, the more extraordinary in such an immense population, where the citizens bore a very small proportion to the free settlers and slaves*. The extent of its commerce must have been prodigious Diodorus extols highly the fertility of its vineyards and olivegrounds, and the excellence of their produce; but, however abundant this may have been, however advantageous in commercial exchange, it will never account for the almost unexampled prosperity of a state whose whole territory scarcely exceeded in size the smallest English county; not even if we add to its articles of exportation that breed of horses, for which it was so renowned in the great games of Greece, and the sulphur, which is still dug in vast abundance from the mines in its vicinity. It is more probable, that a city so conveniently situated opposite the Carthaginian coast, soon became a great emporium for the mutual barter of commodities between Africa and Sicily; and that its ingenious artisans, being highly superior to the semi-barbarians with whom they traded, enjoyed the great commercial advantage of exporting manufactured articles, and receiving a return in specie, or in

* The account quoted by Diogenes Laertius (lib. viii.) respecting the population of this city, seems nearest the truth, amounting to 800,000 souls: of these about 20,000 were citizens, 180,000 free settlers, and the rest slaves: this is nearly two-thirds of the whole population of Sicily at the present day. + "altor equorum

Mille rapit turmam atque hinnitibus aera flammat

Pulveream volvens Acragas ad inania nubem." Sil. Ital. xiv. 209.

"magnanimum quondam generator equorum." Virg. Æn. iii. 704. The sulphur-mines are at Palma, on the road to Alicata. The stone sulphur is dug out of a mountain and liquefied in furnaces, from whence it is drawn off into vessels, and left to cool for exportation.

SPLENDID SITE OF THE CITY.

15

raw materials. The wealth which thus flowed in upon Agrigentum, was expended in works of great magnificence and public utility; for, being a Grecian colony*, its inhabitants, like the rest of that people, were not more studious in acquiring wealth, than profuse in expending it upon the elegancies of life. The brightest era of its prosperity extended from the reign of the patriotic Theron, to the capture of the city by the Carthaginian Himilco: it was at that time foremost in celebrity among the states of Magna Grecia (Polyb. ix. c. 27); its citizens, like Tyrian princes, rivalled monarchs in extent of wealth, in hospitality, and encouragement of the fine arts: they built, according to the saying of their great Empedocles, as if they were about to live for ever, and lived as if they expected to die on the morrow†. During this period, those stately edifices arose, whose ruins still command the admiration of posterity, where they stand, the images of calm repose, the memorials of a mighty state, and the vindicators of its ancient grandeur. Time has spread over them its sombre tints, which blend harmoniously with the surrounding landscape, and throw, as it were, a sacred charm around its rocks and mountains.

Agrigentum, in its site, possessed something of the magnificent peculiar to itself. Nature traced out its plan in a vast platform of rock; Art

* Strabo erred in calling it an Ionian colony: it was planted by the people of Gela, who derived their origin from Rhodes, and the Rhodians were of Dorian descent. Hence the Agrigentines are rightly styled Dorians by Lucian ('EXAnvés TE ÖνTES Kài Tò ȧpxãιov Awpiɛis Phal. prior 14). Perhaps in ages subsequent to its foundation, an Ionian colony may have settled there, which would reconcile historical discrepances. The best authors derive its Grecian name ("Akpayaç) from a neighbouring river that washed its E. and S. S. E. sides, which itself seems to have derived its appellation from the abrupt and craggy ground through which it flowed, év ra ya ăкpa-See also an epigram quoted by Diogenes Laertius, lib. viii. :

ΤὮ φίλοι οι μέγα ἄτυ κατὰ ξανθῆ Ακράγαντος

Νάμετε ΑΚΡΑ ΠΟΛΕΩΣ, &c.

To this river the people paid divine honours, under the form of a youth, and dedicated its statue in ivory at Delphi. Ælian. Var. Hist. 1. ii. c. 33. The river Hypsas, which flowed on the other side of the city, seems to have a similar derivation (üog altitudo), and therefore, however bold the assertion may appear, I cannot help thinking, that Polybius is wrong, or that Stephens has mistaken him, in deriving the name of the city διὰ τὸ ἐύγειον.

+ Elian ascribes this saying to Plato, Var. Hist. lib. ii. Athenæus gives a curious account of a large building at Agrigentum, called the Trireme, adapted to the purposes of public luxury.