The worthy Governor of Syracuse was not the only person prodigal of attention and kindness to the two English officers.
There then lived upon a beautiful farm in the midst of the vale an English gentleman of considerable genius and learning, whose energy of character and acuteness of judgment, and the application of English skill to a Sicilian soil, had given him a very powerful ascendency over the population within his reach. Equally a master of the language, from the Tuscan tongue to the dissonant jargon of the Sicilian peasant, his tall, athletic, but not ungraceful figure, and his intelligent and finely-featured head made him no ill representative, among foreigners, of the personal predominance of an Englishman.
I had met him at Valetta, where he had opened an acquaintance with me by accusing me of some resemblance to Lady Hamilton. He immediately remembered the circumstance, and perhaps even so slight a thread acted as a bond of old acquaintance. Yet there is a stronger bond than that which draws one to a countryman in a foreign land.
My Anglo-Sicilian friend showed Lefebure and me how truly he felt this by the unbounded kindness and grateful hospitality he extended to us, and his handsome, noble-hearted wife received us with a smile of welcome that was redolent of home.
Our fare was studiously English, and to our delighted eyes appeared the effect of magic.
There was the burnished brown of the small fillet of veal, the small smoked ham, cauliflower, potatoes, and melted butter; the household loaf of barm-raised bread as white as snow; the ample slice of fresh-churned butter, not lard of goat’s milk, but yellow butter, from the breathy cow. And then the bubbling and loud-hissing urn, the presiding lady, plates of real bread-and-butter, and genuine tea, attempered with thick cream!
No one untried in travel can imagine with how keen a zest a robust English appetite returns to these wholesome and ordinary provisions of his country in lands where he has no hope of meeting with them.
On our return to Messina we simply retraced our steps, and met with nothing remarkable, so I give no account of our journey of 120 miles.
* * * * *
It was about the second week in May when Lefebure and I arrived at Messina, and on the 25th of that month our force received a valuable acquisition by the arrival of the 78th Regiment of Highlanders, a beautiful regiment, 900 strong, whose picturesque national dress made a great impression upon the Sicilians, though the women, indeed, seemed to think it due to modesty to say the dress was very ugly. “La Baronessa” also maintained “It was an ugly dress, and a very curious dress, and a very curious thing that such a dress should be approved of in England, which she thought was a cold country.” The arrival of this regiment gave us the more satisfaction, as rumours were afloat that Sir John Stuart would take advantage of his interregnum to do some dashing thing.