SICILY, BATTLE-FIELD OF NATIONS AND OF NATURE 117 



mother, Margherita of Aragon. Around 

 the cathedral and its adjoining monas- 

 tery has sprung up gradually a consider- 

 able town, from whose rocky heights the 

 inhabitants look down upon an earthly 

 paradise. The exterior of the cathedral 

 is plain and simple, giving no hint of the 

 glories within, dependent on no one school 

 of art for its magnificence. The splendid 

 church is the work of Norman-Sicilian 

 artists, is Latin in shape, Roman in its 

 colonnade, Byzantine in its mosaics, 

 Greek in its sculpture, Saracenic in its 

 mouldings. Eighteen of the oriental 

 granite columns were taken from Greek 

 and Roman temples. Walls, arcades, and 

 vaultings are one solid incrustation of 

 Byzantine mosaic on a gold ground, its 

 jeweled splendors blazing in glowing 

 richness of tone, blended and modified to 

 calculated harmony. 



The memories of its many artists invest 

 Monreale with peculiar charm. Adjoin- 

 ing are the cloisters of the ruined monas- 

 tery, superb examples of the twelfth cen- 

 tury art. Four hundred and thirty-two 

 richly carved and inlaid columns sur- 

 round this old retreat of Benedictines, 

 their home in days when the monasteries 

 were the conservators of all that was best 

 in all the arts. Wonderful as is Mon- 

 reale, with its treasures of art, it is still 

 more wonderful to realize the situation of 

 this superb creation. The world has paid 

 but little attention to the chronicles of 

 Sicily; its history is a sealed book to 

 most of us, and we are prone to ignore 

 the debt which all civilization owes to 

 that dynasty of Norman kings, the most 

 powerful, the richest, most enlightened 

 of their day. 



THE RUINS AT SELINUS 



MARION CRAWFORD in his fascinat- 

 ing Wstory of Sicily, "The Rulers of the 

 South," gives the following account of 

 the ruins at Selinus: 



It was between 480 B. C. and 409 B. C. that 

 the great temples of Selinus, of Segesta, and of 

 Akragas were built, edifices which surpassed in 

 size and solidity almost every building of the 

 sort in the Greek world. 



There is nothing in Europe like the ruins of 

 Selinus. Side by side, not one stone upon 

 another, as they fell at the earthquake shock, 

 the remains of four temples lie in the dust 

 within the city, and the still more gigantic 

 fragments of three others lie without the 

 ruined walls. At first sight the confusion looks 

 so terrific that the whole seems as if it might 

 have fallen from the sky to the world, from 

 the homes of the gods to destruction on earth — 

 as if Zeus, might have hurled a city at man- 

 kind, to fall on Sicily in a wild wreck of sense- 

 less stone. 



Blocks that are Cyclopean lie like jack- 

 straws one upon another, sections of columns 

 twenty-eight feet round are tossed together 

 upon the ground like leaves from a basket, 

 and fragments of cornice fifteen feet long lie 

 across them or stand half upright, or lean 

 against the enormous steps. 



No words can explain to the mind the in- 

 voluntary shock which the senses feel at the 

 first sight of it all. One touches the stones in 

 wonder, comparing one's small human stature 

 with their mass, and the intellect strains hope- 

 lessly to recall their original position; one 

 climbs in and out among them, sometimes 

 mounting, sometimes descending, as one might 

 pick one's way through an enormous quarry, 

 scarcely understanding that the blocks one 

 touches have all been hewn into shape by 

 human hands and that the hills from which 

 men brought them are but an outline in the 

 distance. But as one reaches the highest frag- 

 ment within the Acropolis, the plan of _ the 

 whole begins to stand out from the confusion; 

 the columns have all fallen in ranks, and in the 

 same direction, and from the height one may 

 count the round drums of stone which once 

 composed each erect pillar. There is method 

 in the ruin and a sort of natural order in the 

 destruction. 



No earthly hands, bent on blotting out the 

 glory of Selinus, could have done such work, 

 neither crowbar and lever of the Carthaginian, 

 nor the giant-powder of the modern engineer. 

 Nature herself did the deed. In the morning 

 the seven temples of Selinus were standing 

 whole and perfect against the pale and daz- 

 zling sky ; at noonday the air grew^ sultry and 

 full of a yellow glare, the sea lay still as liquid 

 lead, and the sleeping beast in the field woke 

 suddenly in terror of something far below, that 

 could be felt rather than heard ; an hour and 

 more went by, and then the long, low sound 

 that is like no other came up from the depths 

 of the world .and the broad land heaved like 

 the tidal swell of the ocean, once, twice, and 

 thrice, and was still, and a great cloud of white 

 dust hung where the seven temples had stood. 

 As they fell, so they lie and will lie for all 

 time, a very image of the abomination of deso- 

 lation. 



