landscape. It would not be more incongruous to tumble a cart-load of live coals into the midst of a drawing-room-upsetting and breaking to pieces the supper tables, burning up the carpets and chairs, and driving the half-suffocated company into the streets for shelter.

Your philosopher steps in and tells us that all this is for the best, and that in due time these very streams of lava and showers of dust, the cause of so much present mischief, become the sources of a far greater fertility than existed before, and that new towns and villages, more wealthy and beautiful than their buried predecessors, will rise above them: but I could never find the stupid Sicilians much influenced by this reasoning when the growling of the volcano threatened an outbreak.

I shall only say further of the Val del Bove, that, as I am not acquainted with any scene in the world better fitted to strike the mind with awe, as a mere spectacle exhibiting the grander works of Nature, or more calculated to yield, upon careful examination, interesting scientific information, I should venture strongly to recommend any one at all curious in such matters not to pass it by, as too many do, for objects of comparatively small value.

We reached Catania on the morning of the fifth day of our tour, having completed the circuit of the Mountain, which I believe is ninety miles by

the road we went, without counting the occasional digressions we made to Taormina, the Simeto, the Moya, and the Val del Bove, which may be reckoned to have added twenty or thirty miles more. I felt so little fatigued, however, that on the same day I set out with my children to visit the Cyclopean islands of the poets, called now, I do not know by what process of language, the Fariglone Islands. We made the outward voyage in a letiga, as far as the village of Trezza, where we crawled out of our cramped conveyance and took a boat, in which we made a most successful excursion to the spot where old Cyclops forged the bolts of Jove. The specific purpose which I had in view, was to examine into the fidelity of the published drawing of one of these celebrated islands, which a friend had expressed some doubts about-and I fear it was in no very Christian spirit that I felt gratified by finding the drawing erroneous, as it gave me an opportunity of doing the thing afresh with instrumental accuracy, by means of the camera lucida.

During our examination of these pretty little islands, a fresh sea-breeze had sprung up, which at once induced us to put our helm up, and we bowled away so merrily before the wind, that in an hour we reached Catania.

CHAPTER II.

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ETNA-PROPOSED
PANORAMA OF THE VOLCANO.

So far as I am able to judge from what I have seen or been told of the climate of Sicily, I should consider it the best in Europe for a delicate patient; and yet, by reason of a strange prejudice on the part of the natives, that island is rendered almost entirely useless in this respect. They have unfortunately taken a notion into their head, I believe without any foundation, that consumption is not only occasionally infectious, but that it is always so-even worse than the plague or any other disease. Consequently they will not admit a person suspected of having a tendency to pulmonary complaints into their houses. If any one afflicted with this malady should die among them, a ban is put on the house, its furniture destroyed, and no one allowed to inhabit it for a period of many months. As this is ruinous to innkeepers and inconvenient to all, and as every native firmly believes in the

truth of this persuasion, it becomes impossible for any consumptive patient to find house-room in Sicily. I have even heard of instances of such persons being allowed to perish in the streets or in the country roads, to which they were driven by the excessive terror of the inhabitants.

It is well that this should be generally known, as it might lead to great inconvenience were a family to reckon upon finding rest in Sicily, when in search of climate. There is another reason, however, against choosing Sicily-at all events Catania-for a place of rest for an invalid, which, though it may seem ludicrous, is really a substantial objection. I allude to the noise caused chiefly by the church-bells, and especially by those of the church of Santa Agatha, the painful remembrance of which I shall carry in my ears to the grave, whatever other sounds may disturb me in the interval. Of all the noisy places, indeed, in which it has been my lot to spend any time, Catania is the most so. Naples is pretty well; but there the distances are greater, and it is possible to get tolerably out of the reach of the ringing; but at Catania this is impossible-for the churches are so numerous, and are placed in such a manner, that you cannot escape from the sound of one, without falling within the range of another— as if they were a series of forts or redoubts, erected for the express purpose of battering your peace.

To me indeed this nuisance became so intolerable, that I felt as if no consideration on earth could induce me to live in the place. Ten days of St. Agatha would put me either out of the world, or into a mad-house! I dare say it might not be impossible to bribe the fathers of any given church or convent, to intermit the ringing, or to soften it, for a night or two, should one's friend be dying in the hotel opposite. But no wealth or power on earth could suffice to check the eternal uproar in the streets-the music-the shouting--the popping of fireworks-the rattling of carriages. What it may be in winter I know not-but in summer it would seem as if the whole population lived out of doors, and occupied themselves all night, and every night exclusively, in making a noise.

At all events, on our return from the tour of their mountain, we found them just as hard at work at their festas as when we left them; and sleep being totally out of the question, we repaired to the streets, and after a sufficient dose of the wearisome and tawdry folly of the processions, stepped into the church of Santa Agatha, of which the bells had plagued us so dreadfully. We found it brilliantly lighted up, and, as we had been promised, also a grand concert of fiddlers. Instead of sacred music, which in our innocence we had hoped to hear, we were entertained with