Fountain of Arethusa.
After three hours' steaming from Catania, we were in the harbour of Syracuse; but it was at two in the morning, and we could not go ashore. A little scuttling takes place overhead while the Mongibello litters her two hundred and forty horses for the night; and, when this is accomplished, all is silent, and we sleep in the moonlit mirror. In two hours more the last star had dropped out of its place; and in another, rosy morn found us all in activity, and on deck, examining a most unprepossessing paysage, and contemplating, for many a league, the wretched coast road which must have been our doom if we had not come by sea—so, for once, we had chosen well! Our alternative would have consisted in two days' swinging in a lettiga, in facing malaria in the fields, with nothing but famine and fever-stricken hamlets to halt at, and even these at long intervals. There were, to be sure, places enough of ancient name, in D'Anville's Geography, along the coast, but nothing beyond the name itself. This is so exactly the case, that even with the beautiful and authentic money of Leontium before us, we did not land at Lentini! There is nothing so utterly confounding as the contemplation of money, every piece of which is a gem, on spots where no imagination can conceive the city that coined it. We are not long before we begin to cater for new disappointment, in the desire to be conducted without delay to the fountain of Arethusa. Accordingly, a quarter of a mile's distance from our locanda, under the rampart of the old Ortygia, and in the most uncleanly suburb of modern Syracuse, the far-famed spring is pointed out to our incredulity; and we are at once booked with the many who, having got up a suitable provision of enthusiasm to be exploded on the spot, are obliged to carry it away with them. A vile, soapy washing-tank is Arethusa, occupied by half-naked, noisy laundresses, thumping away with wooden bats at brown-looking linen, or depositing the wet load that had been belaboured and rinsed on the bank, gabbling, as they work, like the very Adonizousœ of Theocritus, (himself, as he informs us, a native of Syracuse.) A man lay sleeping with his dog beside him; a number of mahogany-coloured children, quite naked, were sprawling on the parapet-wall, covered with flies, but fast asleep! A poor bird, a descendant of the Αδονες Σικελικαι, a nightingale of the soil, with his eyes put out, that he might not know day from night, and so sing unconsciously, sang to us as we passed! But the affair was destined, in a single moment, to become ludicrous as well as disappointing. Our guide, Jack Robertson, (so named by an English man-of-war's crew that had, as he said, kidnapped him during the war,) quite mistaking the nature of our disappointment, said, consolingly, "You come dis way, sir; down here I show you more gals' feet, wash more clothes;" on which intimation we certainly followed him down a few steps, when, pushing back a wooden door, we entered at once into a large roofed washing-house, along the floor of which still ran the sadly humiliated Arethusa! We praised the beauty of the young washerwomen, and departed—Jack Robertson having considerably more to say on the subject than would interest the reader to know; and which, in fact, we could not tell, without violating what was evidently imparted in confidence.
Jack Robertson and the Professor of Eloquence.
Under the guidance of the aforesaid Jack Robertson, we had visited two rival collections of coins, the property of two priests, and certainly the finest we had seen in Sicily. Those of Syracuse in silver, of the first or largest module, (medaglioni as they are technically called,) are for size and finish deservedly reputed the most beautiful of ancient coins; and of these we saw a full score in each collection. We might indeed have purchased, as well as admired, but were deterred by the price asked, which, for one perfect specimen, was from 45 to 50 crowns, (£7 or £8 sterling.) These coins are among the largest extant. On one side, the head of Arethusa is a perfect gem in silver, (the hair especially, treated in a way that we have never seen elsewhere;) on the other, is a quadriga. One of these ecclesiastics dealt like any other dealer. The other consulted the dignity of the church, and employed a lay brother to impose upon strangers who buy in haste to repent at leisure; for even among the picked, select, and winnowed coins of the man who knows what he is about, there are always false ones. Having shown that we are au fait both as to the thing and the market-price—that we had read Myounet, and were acquainted with the sharp eyes of de Dominicis at Rome, we pass immediately for an English dealer; and suspicion becomes conviction, when, taking up a gold Philip, we remark that "all trades must live," and that our price must depend upon his "quanto per il Filippo?" "You will not scruple, I suppose, to pay forty-seven dollars!" "Thirty-seven is plenty."—"Pocket Philip." "Sir," said we to our employé as we went home, "you are a rogue to have brought us to that cheating priest." "Not so, sir," said the Siculo-Inglese Jack Robertson, "they tell here priest not cheat, always deal square—have that character indeed, sir;" and he proceeded to conduct us to another priest-collector, who, in this instance, had gone out to dine with a friend. Jack, however, said he would soon bring him back, dined or undined; and in ten minutes he returned in high spirits at his success. "Always trust me, sir! Me no fool, sir! As soon as I see him, sir, I say, you got coins? He say 'yes.' Den you show what you got directly to English gentlemen. 'No, I won't,' he tell me—'I take my dinner here wid my friends, and after dat I come see English gentlemen.'" Rather a cool thing we thought for a dealer to keep his customers waiting; but, whenever one wants any thing, one can always afford to wait a little, and Jack informed us that he had learned from the padré's servant that his master always dines in a quarter of an hour. The quarter of an hour up, we send again, but our messenger comes back empty-handed. "Well, where is your friend?" "He no friend of mine, sir! He very angry! Not my fault, sir," "Angry? what is he angry about?" "Because I say to him only this, sir—'Other priest ask gentleman too much—hope you not very dear too, sir;' to which he say, 'You damn fool, I don't sell coins!' Den I beg his pardon, and he ask me sharply, 'Who say I sell coins?' 'Sir,' I say, 'all the whole world say so.' Den he say, 'D—n all the whole world; and when any body tell you this again, say Abate Rizzi call him a d——d fool, and say he may go to h-ll!!!'" "Abate Rizzi!! why, that is the Professor of Eloquence to whom we were to be introduced yesterday." "Yes, sir," says Jack, "and here he comes," glancing up the street. We now see a personage, whose staid deportment and gait declare him to be much beyond the age when it may be thought allowable to swear. "You rascal, you have been telling us a lie; that gentleman could never have said, damn the whole world." "He did not speak it in English, sir." "Not speak it in English? why, what did he say?" "Sir, he say, 'Cazzo! questa é una minchioneria!' that means 'damn fool,' sir,—'dettia tutti d' andare al diavolo,' that be the same as tell every body go to h-ll!!" (the translation in this case we thought not so bad;) we had not, however, time to discuss the matter, for the Professor of Eloquence, who had indulged our servant pro re nata with so very unusual a specimen of his art, was at our elbow. We saluted him courteously, but offended dignity was apparent in a grave face of considerable church power; we therefore subjoined to the ordinary salutation much regret at the awkwardness of our guide, and apologised for intruding on his repose; which apologies, and further explanations, immediately changed the current in our favour. Jack, too, regretted he had been so indiscreet as to be misled by current reports; but this was to rouse the calmed resentment into a new explosion. "Who," he demanded, in very Demosthenic accents—"who had dared to affirm that he had ever sold a coin?" We went in, saw his very beautiful collection, the Professor himself doing the honours with so much obligingness, that we left him convinced that he neither sold coin nor dispensed anathemas.
Ear of Dionysius.
"Lautumias Syracusanas omnes audistis; plerique nostis. Opus est ingens magnificum regumac tyrannorum. Totum est ex saxo in mirandam altitudenem depresso, et multorum operis penitus exciso. Nihil tam clausum ad exitus, nihil tam septum undique, nihil tam tutum ad custodias, nec fieri nec cogitari potest."
Half an hour's shaking in a lettiga brings us without a stumble, by the old forum of Syracuse, to the Ear of Dionysius, and those other stone quarries so well described in the above passage from Cicero in Verrem. We alight at the embouchure of these most striking excavations, and, descending a very steep short hill, wind through a small garden of exquisite vegetation, and are in the first lautumia of the series. Here, deeply embayed in a colossal cave, we behold the marks of the ancient pick-axe, and the niches, as it were, in which the labourers sat while they chiselled out the extraordinary work, fresh as if they had been done yesterday! Shapeless and half-fashioned masses, ebauches of columns for temples which never came into the possession of capitals, or the support of entablatures—unborn Dorics of the Greek portfolios are here. The sun striking obliquely from the mouth into the interior of the cavern, made the green vegetation all hoary in the slanting light. Fires in dark caverns are favourite subjects with some painters. We admire them not, but we would have liked to take a sketch of one here for the sake of poor Nicias and his fellow captives. A party of men is collected round a caldron with a fire blazing beneath it; another group is seated at a long table eating; some feed the immense boiler with new supplies from a heap of dirty-looking earth-stained salt. Others test the quality from time to time of that which has been purged and crystallized. It was the native nitre of the country on which they were occupied, and the test was its deflagration. In passing out of the first of the line of quarried caverns to go to the Ear, which is the last, we are struck with the beauty of the garden into which it opens, which is found in possession of many unfrequent flowers and plants, such as had not prospered even here, but for the singularly sheltered disposition of the spot. Against the wall there grew a magnificent Smilax sarsaparilla in full maturity. A decoction of the twigs of that tree cured the gardener, as he assured us, of an obstinate pain in both shoulders that no other medicine would touch; which testimony in its favour made us look with an added interest on the cordate leaf, and small white verbena-looking flower, of certainly the first, and in all probability the last, Smilax sarsa we should ever see growing. We cut off from the main stem an arm about the thickness of an ordinary-sized bamboo, and, like it, knotted, for a souvenir of the place and the plant. In this same garden the tea-plant thrived; the proprietor, Count S——, makes an annual racolte of its leaves, which he keeps for his own teapot. Another curiosity is the Celtis australis or favaragio, a tree that bears fruit of the size of a pea, with a stone kernel; a trumpet-flower of spotless white, belonging to the Datura arborea, measured a whole foot and a half from lip to stalk! But it were vain to dwell on the novelties of a garden which is all novelty to an English eye, and full of variety to the Italian himself; a garden equally unique in its position and productions. The Ear is probably the most wonderful acoustic contrivance in existence; and that it was the work of studious design, is proved by a second one commenced in a neighbouring quarry—commenced, but not further prosecuted, evidently because it would not answer, from the soft, chalky material of the wall on one side. Its external shape of the conch is that of the ass's ear. The aperture, through which the light now enters from its further end, and from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, was till lately not known to exist; it not being supposed that the Ear had any meatus internus corresponding with the external one. The accidental removal of a quantity of loose stones from above, revealed a narrow passage of from twenty to thirty feet in length, and opening directly into the cave. This internal opening is situated almost immediately over the amphitheatre, one hundred and twenty feet above the floor of the cavern, and (measuring in a plane) is one hundred and eighty feet from the external opening.
Having rent paper, which made an incredible noise, and let off a Waterloo cracker, which reverberated along the walls like thunder, and done other deeds of the same kind below, we ascended, and walking over the back of the cavern, presently came upon the passage which leads to its inner opening; and there, leaning over a parapet wall, (in doing which we almost exclude the feeble light that penetrates into the cavern from behind,) we are startled by a very audible but faint whisper, which comes from our friend below, asking us to declare our present sensations. We reply in the same faint whisper; and are immediately apprised of its safe arrival by another. One hundred and eighty feet separate the parties. In the stillness of that half-lit cavern, not only were our faintest whisperings conveyed, but we could hear each other breathe! This was a place to come and see!
Santa Lucia and the Capucin Convent, &c.
Some Franciscans told us that Saint Lucia was stabbed close to a granite column, in a subterranean chapel in their church, in the fourth century, and under Nero!—so ignorant are these men even about what it concerns them to know. They show a silver image, which a dozen men can, they assure us, scarcely lift. The body of the saint is not, however, here, but at Venice. "No; we have but one rib and a thumb," said the padré! "but we have two very handsome dresses which she wore—one red, the other blue." Cast-off clothes, then, will do for relics! In returning to the church, they tell us of a blind old general who came hither on purpose to obtain the intercession of: Santa Lucia, (who had her own eyes put out,) to remove this calamity; with success of course, for they never record failures in church clinique. "Do you believe the cure?" we ventured to ask. "Why not? il miracolo e autenticato." "No!" said his companion, "autorizzato!" The distinction is, that the church authorizes the declaration of some lies as miraculous, but declines to make herself responsible for the reality of others!" Round the Capucian church certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently neither poetry nor common sense:—