6 



especially favour the husbandman — a genial and sunny 

 clime — clear, blue skies, balmy air and never failing 

 dews — a soil fertile in oil and wine, and abundant in 

 corn, almost beyond belief. 



Thousands of years ago, when no Saxon or Celtic foot, 

 not even that of the roving Northmen, had yet trodden 

 the American shores, this ancient^Syracuse was the capital 

 of a kingdom of six millions of souls ; and though it had 

 so many mouths of its own to fill, the produce of its 

 teeming soil left still a large surplus for exportation. An 

 energetic people, comparatively free — unbroken in spirit 

 by frequent wars, by foreign conquerors, and by the degre- 

 dation and oppression which afterwards beset their domestic 

 hearths — availed themselves to the utmost of the bounties 

 of nature, and by patient industry made their country the 

 ^^horreum Romanorum^^ and in the language of Livy, 

 ^^populo Romano J pace ac hello Jidissimum annonce subsi- 

 dium." Now cast down and degraded, the successors — 

 scarcely to be called the sons of the same people — languish 

 in comparative indolence ; and though the bounties of na- 

 ture are ever fresh and new as in its palmiest days, there 

 are few countries in which agriculture and the arts of life 

 are in a more debased condition than in modern Sicily. 



But time, which has wrought this melancholy change, 

 has caused others more cheering to happen too. It may 

 be, that amid the ruins of old Syracuse its ancient fires 

 still live, on some future day to be lighted up anew, 

 and more successfully, into a steady and enduring flame, 

 which the foot of despotism shall never again be able to 

 trample out. But however this be, it is gratifying to me 

 to see — as it must be to you — that in a new country, 

 peopled by a new race, a younger Syracuse has sprung up, 

 emulous of the worth and glory of the ancient — nourished 

 by free institutions — carried forward by the untiring en- 



