That the vegetation of Palermo excels that of Naples, partly depends
on the superior intelligence of the agriculturist, and partly upon
soil and climate: the fruits here are not only more advanced, but
finer in quality. We left a very meagre dessert of cherries beginning
to ripen at Naples; the very next day, a superabundance of very fine
and mature ones were to be had on all the stalls of Palermo. This
must be the result of industry and care in a great measure; for on
leaving that city, after a _séjour_ of three weeks, for Messina,
Catania, and Syracuse, although summer was much further advanced, we
relapsed into miserably meagre supplies of what we had eaten in
perfection in the capital; yet Syracuse and Catania are much warmer
than Palermo.
The vegetables here are of immense growth. The fennel root (and there
is no better test of your whereabouts in Italy) is nearly twice as
large as at Naples, and weighs, accordingly, nearly double. The
cauliflowers are quite colossal; and they have a blue cabbage so big
that your arms will scarcely embrace it. We question, however,
whether this hypertrophy of fruit or vegetables improves their
flavour; give us _English vegetables_--ay, and _English fruit_.
Though Smyrna's _fig_ is eaten throughout Europe, and Roman _brocoli_
be without a rival; though the _cherry_ and the Japan _medlar_
flourish only at Palermo, and the _cactus_ of Catania can be eaten
nowhere else; what country town in England is not better off on the
whole, if quality alone be considered? But we have one terrible
drawback; for _whom_ are these fruits of the earth produced? Our
_prices_ are enormous, and our supply scanty; could we _forget this_,
and the artichoke, the asparagus, the peas and beans of London and
Paris, are rarely elsewhere so fine. To our palates the _gooseberry_
and the _black currant_ are a sufficient indemnity to Britain for the
_grape_, merely regarded as a fruit to _eat. Pine-apples_, those
"illustrious foreigners," are so successfully _petted_ at home, that
they will scarcely condescend now to flourish out of England.
_Nectarines_ refuse to ripen, and _apricots_ to have any taste
elsewhere. Our _pears_ and _apples_ are better, and of more various
excellence, than any in the world. And we really prefer our very
figs, grown on a fine _prebendal_ wall in the close of _Winchester_,
or under _Pococke's_ window in a canon's garden at _chilly Oxford_.
Thus has the kitchen-garden refreshed our patriotism, and made us
half ashamed of our long forgetfulness of home. But there are good
things abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. An
enormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for a
halfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; and
wine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;[15] fuel
for almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages to
frugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government,
where one must read those revolting words _motu proprio_ at the head
of every edict, let us go back to our carrots and potatoes, our Peels
and our income-tax, our fogs and our frost. The country mouse came to
a right conclusion, and did not like the fragments of the feast with
the cat in the cupboard--
Give me again my hollow tree,
My crust of bread, and liberty."
[Footnote 15:
----_Lactuca_ innatat acri
Post vinum stomacho.--HOR.]
Fish, though plentiful and various, is not fine in any part of the
_Mediterranean_; and as to _thunny_, one surfeit would put it out of
the bill of fare for life. On the whole, though at Palermo and Naples
the pauper starves not in the streets, the gourmand would be sadly at
a loss in his requisition of delicacies and variety. Inferior bread,
at a penny a pound, is here considered palatable by the sprinkling
over of the crust with a small rich seed (_jugulena_) which has a
flavour like the almond; it is also strewn, like our caraway seeds in
biscuits, _into_ the paste, and is largely cultivated for that single
use. The _capsici_, somewhat similar in flavour to the pea, are
detached from the radicles of a plant with a flower strikingly like
the potatoe, and is used for a similar purpose to the jugulena.
This island was the granary of Athens before it nourished Rome; and
wheat appears to have been first raised in Europe on the plains of
eastern Sicily. In Cicero's time it returned eightfold; and to this
day one grain yields its eightfold of increase; which, however, is by
a small fraction less than our own, as given by M'Culloch in his
"Dictionary of Commerce." We plucked some _siligo_, or bearded wheat,
near Palermo, the beard of which was eight inches long, the ear
contained sixty grains, eight being also in this instance the average
increase; how many grains, then, must perish in the ground!
In Palermo, English gunpowder is sold by British sailors at the high
price of from five to seven shillings per English pound; the "Polvere
_nostrale_" of the Sicilians only fetches 1s. 8d.; yet such is the
superiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passion
for popping at sparrows, and other _Italian sports_, (complimented by
the title of _La caccia_,) prefers the dear article. When they have
killed off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in _the whole
country_, they go to the river side and shoot _gudgeons_.
The Palermo donkey is the most obliging animal that ever wore long
ears, and will carry you cheerfully four or five miles an hour
without whip or other _encouragement_. The oxen, no longer white or
cream-coloured, as in Tuscany, were originally importations from
Barbary, (to which country the Sicilians are likewise indebted for
the _mulberry_ and _silk-worm_.) Their colour is brown. They rival
the Umbrian breed in the herculean symmetry of their form, and in the
possession of horns of more than Umbrian dimensions, rising more
perpendicularly over the forehead than in that ancient race. The
lizards here are such beautiful creatures, that it is worth while to
bring one away, and, to _pervert_ a quotation, "UNIUS _Dominum sese
fecisse_ LACERTAE." Some are all green, some mottled like a mosaic
floor, others green and black on the upper side, and orange-coloured
or red underneath. Of snakes, there is a _Coluber niger_ from four to
five feet in length, with a shining coat, and an eye not pleasant to
watch even through glass; yet the peasants here put them into their
Phrygian bonnets, and handle them with as much _sang-froid_ as one
would a walking-stick.
The coarse earthen vessels, pitchers, urns, &c., used by the
peasants, are of the most beautiful shapes, often that of the ancient
_amphora_; and at every cottage door by the road-side you meet with
this vestige of the ancient arts of the country.
The plague which visited Palermo in 1624 swept away 20,000
inhabitants; Messina, in 1743, lost 40,000. The cholera, in 1837,
destroyed 69,253 persons. The present population of the whole island
is 1,950,000; the female exceeds the male by about three per cent,
which is contrary to the general rule. It is said that nearly
one-half the children received into the foundling hospital of Palermo
die within the first year.
Formerly the barons of Sicily were rich and independent, like our
English gentlemen; but they say that, since 1812, the king's whole
pleasure and business, as before our _Magna Charta_ times, have been
to lower their importance. In that year a revolt was the consequence
of an income-tax even of two per cent, for they were yet unbroken to
the yoke; but now that he has saddled property with a deduction,
_said_ to be eventually equal to fifteen per cent, if not more; now
that he doubles the impost on the native sulphur, which is therefore
checked in its sale; now that he keeps an army of 80,000 men to play
at soldiers with; now that he constitutes himself the only referee
even in questions of commercial expediency, and _a fortiori_ in all
other cases, which he settles _arbitrarily_, or does not settle at
all; now that he sees so little the signs of the times, that he will
not let a professor go to a science-congress at Florence or Bologna
without an express permission, and so ignorant as to have _refused_
that permission for fear of a political bias; now that he diverts a
nation's wealth from works of charity or usefulness, to keep a set of
foreigners in his pay--they no doubt here remember in their prayers,
with becoming gratitude, "the holy alliance," or, as we would call
it, the _mutual insurance company of the kings of Europe_, of which
Castlereagh and Metternich were the honorary secretaries.
In the midst of all the gloomy despotism, beautiful even as
imagination can paint it, is Palermo beautiful! One eminent advantage
it possesses over Naples itself--its vicinity presents more "drives;"
and all the drives here might contest the name given to one of them,
which is called "_Giro delle Grazie_," (the Ring or Mall of the
Graces.) It has a _Marina_ of unrivaled beauty, to which the noblesse
and the citizens repair and form a promenade of elegant equipages. A
fine pavement for foot passengers is considerately raised three or
four feet above the carriage road; so that the walking population
have nothing to annoy them. The sea is immediately below both, and
you see the little rock-encircled bays animated with groups of those
sturdy fishermen with bare legs; which you admire in Claude and
Salvator, throwing before them, with admirable precision, their
_épervier_ net, whose fine wrought meshes sometimes hang, veil-like,
between you and the ruddy sunset, or plashing, as they fall nightly
into the smooth sea, contribute the pleasure of an agreeable sound to
the magic of the scenery. Some take the air on donkeys, which go at a
great rate; some are mounted on Spanish mules, all mixed together
freely amidst handsome and numerous equipages; and the whole is
backed by a fine row of houses opposite the sea, built after the
fashion of our terraces and crescents at watering-places. And
finally, that blue _æquor_, as it now deserves to be termed, studded
over with thunny boats and coasting craft with the haze latine sail,
that we should be sorry to trust in British hands, is walled in by
cliffs so bold, so rugged, and standing out so beautifully in relief,
that for a moment we cannot choose but envy the citizen of
_Panormus_. But we may not tarry even here; _we have more things_ to
see, and every day is getting hotter than the last.