six miles up the Ciana to its source, a limpid pool some forty feet deep with the springs welling up in its bottom. The New River head, near Ware in Hertfordshire, is not unlike it; only here the water is so translucent that you may see shoals of the "cefalo" swimming about full fathom five. I regretted on this jaunt that I had not a fowlingpicce with me; summer-snipe, whole snipe, moorhen, dabchick, and yellow wagtail flirted around the boat: I even put up some wild-duck; and an enormous buzzard rose leisurely from the flagstubble, where he had no doubt been doing his best to flout the game-laws.

The "Latomie," in the Tica district, were originally the Syracusan quarries, from which they cut many thousand cubic feet of stone, to rear their city walls and temples.

After the defeat of the Athenian army, these were used as prisons to confine the unhappy captives, and proved the condemned cells of such as could not recite Euripides. Some of them are now converted into rope-walks, others, appertaining to the convents, are dressed as gardens, and present a singular scene of verdure. The "Silva," of the Capuccini is the most beautiful; here the tops of

the pines and orange trees barely reach half way up the cliff which their convent crowns. The crypt here has relics of undoubted authenticity, the natural mummies of some twenty of the holy fathers of other days; cach of these lifeless forms is fastened to the wall by a belt round the waist; some have collapsed and fallen, presenting the appearance of a martyr at the stake. I was vexed to find such lack of reverence and true discernment. What parent or brother could endure to meet the form and features he had known and loved thus exposed as curiosities in a musty vault? If I were Sua Maestà, I would insist with the superior on their interment. Our guide here was a Capucin of four-and-twenty, who, for zeal and kindness with simplicity of manners, might have sat for the portrait of Cristoforo in the "Promessi Sposi." San Giovanni had the honour of having S. Marziale for its bishop, the first Christian prelate who filled a chair in Sicily. In the primitive church below we saw the identical cross of masonry set by this bishop, when he consecrated the building; and a rare old eagle in stone, meant for that of St. John, with the first three verses of his gospel below. The mixed architecture here resembles the cross

ings and overlappings of some of the geological strata. You can see huge Grecian columns. peeping out from under a mask of Roman cement and brickwork. The catacombs are hewn in the tufo, and reach, it is said, to Catania.

St. Lucia's church is full of interest.

Here is

the picture by Caravaggio, of her interment, with the aged mother kneeling beside the corpse: his strong lights and shadows suit the subject well. This Lucia was a poor girl, but of great personal attractions: there is a story extant of her refusing to hearken to the suit of one who was attached to her, lest she should miss the cross of Christ. Her day is now the great "festa" of this city, whose principal quarter bears her name as patroness; including the fortress where the king's cannon thunder from the ramparts. It is impossible not to honour Roman Catholic Christians for the honour which they invariably pay to the memories of those whom they hold to have been foremost in the good fight.

Dionysius's Ear is the finest of all the caverns; whose "ear," however, it never was, but probably an echo-vault for a theatre, or odeon above. It is true, that in form it resembles an ear, more,