70 
A GIRA THROUGH SICILY. 
We paid a visit to the modem catacombs in the convent, 
but found them much inferior to those in Palermo, of which 
I have given some account. While strolling through among 
the bodies, accompanied by an old monk, one of the heads 
rolled off and fell on the ground. The monk quietly picked 
it up, thanked God for the accident, and placed it on the 
neck again, but in such an extraordinary position as to pro¬ 
duce a most ludicrous effect. “Non fa niente /” said he, 
“ it makes no difference now,” and we walked on. 
In the evening we went to an opera in Ortigia; rather an 
odd thing, you will admit, among the ruins of Syracuse. 
The piece was quite new to me, and abounded in terrible 
love scenes, murders, and thunderings of brass instruments. 
The prima donna created a great furore by her violent man¬ 
ner of dying; she died three times in succession by special 
request of the audience, and so great was the enthusiasm on 
the subject that I could not help joining in an attempt to 
get up a fourth death, in the faint hope that she might re¬ 
main dead till the conclusion of the opera. 
Now this, to be sure, is rather a scanty description of 
Syracuse—a mere budget of anecdotes, you will say. But 
what can I tell you without copying from the guide-book, 
which you will find in any public library. To be candid, I 
think there is more in the name of Syracuse than any £hing 
else. The ruins are in such a state of dilapidation that one 
can scarcely recognize any thing, even with the assistance 
of a guide. Those of Agrigentum are considered much finer. 
After Borne, and the ruins of Pestum, near Naples, there is 
little worth seeing in Sicily in the way of ruins, except Sicily 
and its government, which may be considered a ruin on a 
large scale; one of the grandest ruins, if we are to believe 
its early history, in Southern Europe. War and rapine, and 
all the evils of military despotism; pestilence and famine, 
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, have scourged that ill- 
fated island till its mountains are bare and its valleys are 
waste ; and the spirit of desolation broods over its ruins even 
as the scourge of the Divine hand yet rests upon Jerusalem 
and the hills of Judea. 
