DESIGNED AND DRAWN ON WOOD BY RICHARD DOYLE

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A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA[(Frontispiece)]
THE FISHERMAN AND THE GENIE[25]
SICULO-SARACENIC JAR[33]
THE SIRENS AND ULYSSES[34]
THE RAPE OF PROSERPINE[53]
PRESIDING DEITY OF HYBLA, FROM A SICILIAN COIN[57]
INFANT PLATO AND THE BEES[58]
FAIRY AND BEE[70]
SHEPHERDESS AND FLOCK[71]
THEOCRITUS, FROM THE RECEIVED PORTRAIT OF HIM[87]
POLYPHEMUS[88]
SICILIAN PEASANT[106]
KING ROBERT AND THE ANGEL[107]
KING ROBERT, FROM A SICILIAN COIN[122]
SIR CALIDORE[123]
TASSO[146]
ELVES AND SQUIRRELS[147]
SHEPHERD AND DOG[161]
ENGLISH PASTORAL[162]
CHAUCER[176]
MOUNT ÆTNA[177]
OF ANJOU, KING OF SICILY[197]
SICILIAN BEE-HIVES[198]
ENGLISH BEE-HIVES[210]
SICILIAN VESPERS[211]
MELI, FROM A MEDALLION[235]

CHRISTMAS AND ITALY;

OR

A PREFATORY ESSAY, SHOWING THE EXTREME FITNESS
OF THIS BOOK FOR THE SEASON.

In one of the volumes of that celebrated French publication, the Almanach des Gourmands, which sounds the depth of the merit of soups, and decides on the distracting claims of the most affinitive relishes, there is a frontispiece presenting to the respectful eyes of the reader a “Jury of Tasters.” They form a board of elderly gentlemen with the most thoughtful faces, and are in the act of chewing each his mouthful, and profoundly ruminating on its pretensions. Having seen but this single volume of the work, and that only for a short time (which we mention with becoming regret), we are not qualified to report its verdicts; but one of them made an impression on us not to be forgotten. It ran as follows:—“With this sauce a man might eat his father.”

Now, far are we, in the most ambitious moments of our honey-making, from aspiring at a judgment upon us like that;—sad evidence of the excesses of imagination into which the most serious intellects may be transported, in consequence of giving way to their appetites. One of the especial parts of our vocation is to draw sweet out of bitter; and the only association of ideas which these unfilial sages brought to our mind, was that of an equally searching, but far nobler set of judges, who, when this our Honey first made its appearance at the periodical table of Mr. Ainsworth, and was thence diffused over the country, exclaimed from all quarters, after the most benignant meditation, “With this sauce a man might swallow some of the bitterest morsels of life.” “This is the condiment to sweeten every man’s daily bread.” “There is the right Christian aroma in the sacrificial part of the offering of these dulcitudes.”