I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a building at the foot of a garden. I passed the threshold and started back. A ghastly monk, with a broom in his hand, stood gazing at me, and at a door just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing backward and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at the right, disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with his narrow bed and single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling his glass from an antiquated bottle, and nodding his head to his visitor in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer. The whole was as like a living monastery as wax could make it. The mingling of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but we were told that it represented a tale, the title of which I have forgotten. It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy for a garden ornament, and shows by its uselessness the once princely condition of the possessors of the palace. An Englishman married not many years since an old princess, to whom the estates had descended, and with much unavailable property and the title of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the Sicilies for a support.
We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its ornaments. The extensive wall which enclosed it, the gates, the fountains in the courts and gardens, were studded with marble monsters of every conceivable deformity. The head of a man crowned the body of an eagle standing on the legs of a horse; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon the body of a dog; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the most revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so beautiful the material, that even outraged taste would hesitate to destroy them. The wonder is that artists of so much merit could have been hired to commit such sins against decency, or that a man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune they must have cost.
We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade of gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with the family portraits, the eccentric founder at their head. He was a thin, quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and sword, and had precisely the face I imagined for him—that of a whimsical madman. You would select it from a thousand as the subject for a lunatic asylum.
We were led next to a long, narrow hall, famous for having dined the king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling was of plate mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled through, and the walls were studded from the floor to the roof with the quartz diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of coloured glass, spangles, and everything that could reflect light. The effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit, and the table spread with silver and surrounded by a king and his nobles, in the costume of a court in the olden time, must have exceeded faëry.
Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room, a saloon of grand proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but paved and lined throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian agates, paintings set in the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals around, stood statues of the finest workmanship, representing the males of the family in the costume or armour of the times. A table of inlaid precious stones stood in the centre, cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side tables, occupied the spaces between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered with the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed magnificently. I sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers in the ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that had moved across the floor they were treading so unceremoniously, the knightly and royal feet that had probably danced the stars down with the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent mirrors; the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter feelings and faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors that might still outlive ours as long. How much there is in an atmosphere! How full the air of these old palaces is of thought! How one might enjoy them could he ramble here alone, or with one congenial and musing companion to answer to his moralising.
We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome avenue stood a large palace, in rather more modern taste than those we had left. The crowd of carriages in the court, the gold-laced midshipmen scattered about the massive stairs and in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship’s band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies and gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the stately structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the days when they were first lifted to their pedestals.
The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching from one end to the other, loaded with every luxury of the season, and capable of accommodating sixty or seventy persons, usurped the place of unsubstantial romance, and brought in the wildest straggler willingly from his ramble. No cost had been spared, and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honours of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my pride of country and birthplace. All the English resident in Palermo were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment in Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country abroad. The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our countrymen at Florence, has served me as a better argument against the charge of hardness and selfishness urged upon our nation, than all which could be drawn from the acknowledgments of travellers.
When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompeii, and we then assembled on a broad terrace facing the sea, and with the band in the gallery above, commenced dances which lasted till an hour or two into the moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but untiring glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer party. There were among the English one or two lovely girls, and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the commodore’s family and Captain Reed’s), the dancers were sufficient to include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the moon was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on either side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old palaces seen from the eminence around us, and the noble pile through whose low windows we strolled out upon the terrace, the music and the excitement, all blended a scene that is drawn with bright and living lines in my memory. We parted unwillingly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to the frigates, and were under-weigh at daylight for Messina.
This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on through the water with no more motion than is felt in a dining-room on shore. The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a feathery ripple, the sky is always serene, the merchant sail appears and disappears on the horizon edge, the island rises on the bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined by the glasses of the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern; the sun-fish whirls in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and breathes about us; and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and invigorating, keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. I am glad to escape from the contact, the dust, the trials of temper, the noon-day sultriness, and the midnight chill, the fatigue, and privation, and vexation, which beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to it no doubt willingly after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it is relief, refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the Mediterranean during the summer months, and this gliding about, sleeping or reading, as if at home, from one port to another, seems to me just now the Utopia of enjoyment.