The museum of Palermo is a small but very interesting collection of
statues and other sculpture, gathered chiefly, they say, from the
ancient temples of Sicily, with a few objects bestowed out of the
superfluities of Pompeii. In the lower room are some good
bas-reliefs, to which a story is attached. They were discovered
fifteen years ago at _Selinuntium_ by some young Englishmen, the
reward of four months' labour. Our guide, who had been also theirs,
had warned them not to stay after the month of June, when malaria
begins. They did stay. All (four) took the fever; one died of it in
Palermo, and the survivors were deprived by the government--that is,
by the king--of the spoils for which they had suffered so much and
worked so hard. No one is permitted to excavate without royal
license; _excavation_ is, like _Domitian's fish, res fisci_. Even Mr
Fagan, who was consul at Palermo, having made some interesting
underground discoveries, was deprived of them. We saw here a fine
Esculapius, in countenance and expression exceedingly like the _Ecce
Homo_ of Leonardo da Vinci, with all that god-like compassion which
the great painter had imparted without any sacrifice of dignity. He
holds a poppy-head, which we do not recollect on his statue or gems,
and the Epidaurian snake is at his side. Up-stairs we saw specimens
of fruits from Pompeii, barley, beans, the carob pod, pine kernels,
as well as bread, sponge, linen: and the sponge was obviously such,
and so was the linen. A bronze Hercules treading on the back of a
stag, which he has overtaken and subdued, is justly considered as one
of the most perfect bronzes discovered at Pompeii. A head of our
Saviour, by Corregio, is exquisite in conception, and such as none
but a person long familiar with the physiognomy of suffering could
have accomplished. These are exceptions rather than specimens. The
pictures, in general, are poor in interest; and a long gallery of
_casts_ of the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of antiquity possessed by the
capitals of Italy, Germany, England, and France, looks oddly here,
and shows the poverty of a country which had been to the predatory
proconsuls of Rome an inexhaustible repertory of the highest
treasures of art. A VERRES REDIVIVUS would now find little to carry
off but toys made of amber, lava snuff-boxes, and WODEHOUSE'S
MARSALA--one of which he certainly would not guess the _age_ of, and
the other of which he would not _drink_.