SYRACUSE. 
71 
We spent a day and a half in Syracuse, and would have 
continued on to Noto and Girgenti but for the want of time. 
It was getting late in the season, and each of us had plans 
of Oriental travel for the coming month of November. It 
must be said in favor of Sicily, at this season of the year, 
that the climate is perfectly delicious; and the skies unsur¬ 
passed in any part of the world. The sunset scenes every 
evening were beautiful beyond description ; and the soft tints 
of the distant mountains of Calabria, and the interior of Sicily, 
were such as Claude Lorraine delighted to paint, and which 
no other artist has ever given in such perfection. It is pleas¬ 
ant, after all the annoyances of passports and beggars, in a 
country like this, to get up in the morning at day-light, drink 
your coffee, pay all your bills, thank Heaven when you are 
through; jump into the open diligence ; listen to the lively 
crack of the postillion’s whip and the rattling of the wheels 
as you are whirled off out of the narrow streets; and then, 
when fairly beyond the gates, to snuff the fresh air as you fly 
along the smooth roads by the sea-shore, and watch the first 
glimmer of the sun as it lightens up the Eastern horizon, and 
trace out cities of gold among the light clouds that float over 
the mountains of Calabria ; to draw in the fresh morning air 
again until you feel as if it would lift you up into the realms 
of pure spirits. A wild joy thrills through your blood at such 
a time—a gladness that you are bom, and in the world, and 
capable of feeling its beauties ; and you inwardly thank God 
for all the blessings that life still contains, even amid the 
ruin and desolation Wrought by man’s evil deeds. What if 
that sun has risen for centuries over battle-fields, and scorched 
with thirst the wounded and the dying; mingled its rays 
with the flames of Etna, and shed its softest evening glo¬ 
ries over scenes of terror and death : through the unfathom¬ 
able past, in the alternate phases of good and evil throughout 
all the wicked deeds that man has wrought against man, 
and all the fierce convulsions of nature, it has shed its heal¬ 
ing glow upon the human heart; it has cheered the house¬ 
less and the homeless with its warmth ; it has nourished 
and ripened the fruits of the earth for countless generations ; 
