As I feel myself at present somewhat oppressed with such a flood of thoughts of the good and desirable, I cannot help reminding my friends of a dream which I had about a year ago, and which appeared to me to be highly significant. I dreamt forsooth, that I had been sailing about in a little boat and had landed on a fertile and richly cultivated island, of which I had a consciousness that it bred the most beautiful pheasants in the world. I bargained, I thought, with the people of the island for some of these birds, and they killed and brought them to me in great numbers. They were pheasants indeed, but as in dreams all things are generally changed and modified, they seemed to have long, richly coloured tails, like the loveliest birds of Paradise, and with eyes like those of the peacock. Bringing them to me by scores, they arranged them in the boat so skilfully with the heads inwards, the long variegated feathers of the tail hanging outwards, as to form in the bright sunshine the most glorious pile conceivable, and so large as scarcely to leave room enough in the bow and the stern for the rower and the steersman. As with this load the boat made its way through the tranquil waters, I named to myself the friends among whom I should like to distribute those variegated treasures. At last, arriving in a spacious harbour, I was almost lost among great and many masted vessels, as I mounted deck after deck in order to discover a place where I might safely run my little boat ashore.
Such dreamy visions have a charm, inasmuch, as springing from our mental state, they possess more or less of analogy with the rest of our lives and fortunes.
But now I have also been to the famed scientific building, called the Institution or "Gli Studj." The edifice is large, and the inner court especially has a very imposing appearance, although not of the best style of architecture. In the staircases and corridors there was no want of stuccoes and frescoes: they are all appropriate and suitable, and the numerous objects of beauty, which, well worth seeing, are here collected together, justly command our admiration. For all that, however, a German, accustomed to a more liberal course of study than is here pursued, will not be altogether content with it.
Here again a former thought occurred to me, and I could not but reflect on the pertinacity which in spite of time, which changes all things, man shows in adhering to the old shapes of his public buildings, even long after they have been applied to new purposes. Our churches still retain the form of the Basilica, although probably the plan of the temple would better suit our worship. In Italy the courts of justice are as spacious and lofty as the means of a community are able to make them. One can almost fancy oneself to be in the open air, where once justice used to be administered. And do we not build our great theatres with their offices under a roof exactly similar to those of the first theatrical booths of a fair, which were hurriedly put together of planks? The vast multitude of those in whom, about the time of the Reformation, a thirst for knowledge was awakened, obliged the scholars at our universities to take shelter as they could in the burghers houses, and it was very long before any colleges for pupils (Waisenhäuser), were built, thereby facilitating for the poor youths the acquirement of the necessary education for the world.
I have spent the whole of this bright and beautiful day under the open heaven: scarcely do I ever come near a mountain, but my interest in rocks and stones again revives. I feel as did Antæus of old, who found himself endued with new strength, as often as he was brought into fresh contact with his mother earth. I rode towards Palermo, where is found the so-called Bolognese sulphate of Barytes, out of which are made the little cakes which, being calcined, shine in the dark, if previously they have been exposed to the light, and which the people here call shortly and expressively "fosfori."
On the road, after leaving behind me a hilly track of argillaceous sandstone, I came upon whole rocks of selenite, quite visible on the surface. Near a brickkiln a cascade precipitates its waters, into which many smaller ones also empty themselves. At first sight the traveller might suppose he saw before him a loamy hill, which had been worn away by the rain; on a closer examination I discovered its true nature to be as follows:—the solid rock of which this part of the line of hills consists is schistous, bituminous clay of very fine strata, and alternating with gypsum. The schistous stone is so intimately blended with pyrites that, exposed to the air and moisture, it wholly changes its nature. It swells, the strata gradually disappear, and there is formed a kind of potter's clay, crumbling, shelly, and glittering on the surface like stone-coal. It is only by examining large pieces of both (I myself broke several, and observed the forms of both), that it is possible to convince oneself of the transition and change. At the same time we observed the shelly strata studded with white points, and occasionally also variegated with yellow particles. In this way, by degrees, the whole surface crumbles away, and the hill looks like a mass of weather-worn pyrites on a large scale. Among the lamina some are harder, of a green and red color. Pyrites I very often found disseminated in the rock.
I now passed along the channels which the last violent gullies of rain had worn in the crumbling rock, and to my great delight found many specimens of the desired barytes, mostly of an imperfect egg-shape, peeping out in several places of the friable stone, some tolerably pure, and some slightly mingled with the clay in which they were imbedded. That they have not been carried hither by external agency any one may convince himself at the first glance; whether they were contemporaneous with the schistous clay, or whether they first arose from the swelling and dissolving of the latter, is matter calling for further inquiry. Of the specimens I found, the larger and smaller approximated to an imperfect egg-shape; the smallest might be said to verge upon irregular crystalline forms. The heaviest of the pieces I brought away weighed seventeen loth (81/2 oz.) Loose in the same clay, I also found perfect crystals of gypsum. Mineralogists will be able to point out further peculiarities in the specimens I bring with me. And I was now again loaded with stones! I have packed up at least half a quarter of a hundred-weight.