1898.] on ''Marked Unex;ploredr 673 



acknowledging the receipt of his orders he poured out his usual 

 volume of abuse of everybody concerned. In partial justification of 

 himself, but yet with a fine inconsistency, he wrote, " Hated though 

 Murat is, he is not so detested as the old King." " Badly as I think 

 of the Crown Prince, I cannot believe that he has broken my con- 

 fidence." '' Still worse as I think of the King, I can hardly believe it 

 even of him." In receiviug Bentinck's official disclaimer the Crown 

 Princo wrote that he had never breathed a word on the subject to 

 any one, and that he had severely scolded Prince Castel cicala. 



Prince Castelcicala, the Neapolitan ambassador, whose romantic 

 and resounding name accords somewhat oddly with the high respect- 

 ability of Great Cumberland Place, where his Embassy was, had 

 demanded Bentinck's immediate recall as the only satisfactory protest 

 against his iniquitous plan of buying half the kingdom to which he 

 was accredited. In this coil it is evident that some one is telling the 

 thing which is not. The person who was saying the thing that is not 

 would appear to have been the Crown Prince of Sicily. The facts are 

 as follows. 



On the 3rd of December, 1813, about a month before our story 

 opens, Lord William Bentinck had written to the Crown Prince and 

 laid before him the plan of surrendering Sicily to England. Sicily, 

 he wrote, had never paid Naples ; the island could not rule itself, and 

 would not consent to be ruled by Naples. England was the only 

 power who could manage the government of Sicily. As to compen- 

 sation, why, money was no object. Or, if territory was preferred, 

 perhaps King Ferdinand would like the States of the Church. 

 England could have no objection to his taking them. Perhaps not : 

 but Ferdinand might have some objection to accepting them. All 

 serious adjectives are out of place when applied to that incomparable 

 fribble ; but the least flighty part of his character was, perhaps, his 

 attachment to the Church. So that, apart from the unprincipled 

 nature of the communication, I know not which to marvel at most, the 

 brutality of offering to j^lace the King of Sicily on the Pension List 

 of the Treasury, or the ineptitude of proposing to dower an ardent 

 Catholic with the plunder of the Holy See. The Crown Prince re- 

 plied guardedly, and made some allusions to Bentinck's instructions. 

 "Instructions?" Bentinck rejoined, "he had none:" the Crown 

 Prince must not give the proposal a second thought. It was only 

 " the phantasm of his own disordered brain," a " sogno filosofico," a 

 " castle in Spain," " le reve d'un voyageur." 



From the way the correspondence runs it appears to me plain that 

 the Crown Prince did not believe Bentinck when he said that he had 

 no instructions and was acting on his own initiative. He gave the 

 question a week's thought, and then transmitted copies of the corre- 

 spondence to Castelcicala; who acted as we have seen, adding dry 

 comments. In the unparalleled circumstances, he said, of an ambas- 

 sador proposing to buy the country to which he was accredited, and 

 doing so without his sovereign's instructions, it was not sufficient for 



