Tum Catane nimium ardenti vicina Typhæo.
After a pleasant drive of twenty miles, we find ourselves at
_Aci-Reale_, where a street, called "Galatea," reminds us
unexpectedly of a very classical place called Dean's Yard, where we
once had doings with _Acis_, as he figures in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.
We were here in luck, and, having purchased some fine coins of
several of the tyrants of Sicily from the apothecary, proceeded on
our way to Catania. In half an hour we reach the basaltic Isles of
the Cyclops, and the Castle of Acis, whom the peasants hereabouts
tell you was their king, when Sicily was under the Saracenic yoke.
The river _Lecatia_, now lost, is supposed formerly to have issued
hereabouts, in the port of Ulysses. Our next move placed us amidst
the silk-slops of Catania. We have hardly been five minutes in the
town, when offers abound to conduct us up Ætna, in whom, as so much
national wealth, the inhabitants seem to take as much interest as in
her useful and productive silk-looms. Standing fearless on the
pavement of lava that buried their ancient city, they point up with
complacency to its fountains above. The mischievous exploits of Ætna,
in past times, are in every mouth, and children learn their Ætnean
catechism as soon as they are breeched. Ætna here is all in all.
Churches are constructed out of his quarried _viscera_--great men lie
in tombs, of which the stones once ran liquid down his flames--snuff
is taken out of lava boxes--and devotion carves the crucifix on lava,
and numbers its beads on a lava rosary--nay, the apothecary's mortar
was sent him down from the great mortar-battery above, and the
village _belle_ wears fire-proof bracelets that were once too hot to
be meddled with. Go to the museum, and you will call it a museum of
Ætnean products. Nodulated, porous, condensed, streaked, spotted,
clouded, granulated lava, here assumes the colour, rivals the
compactness, sustains the polish, of jasper, of agate, and of marble;
indeed it sometimes surpasses, in beautiful veinage, the finest and
rarest Marmorean specimens. You would hardly distinguish some of it,
worked into jazza or vase, from _rosso antico_ itself. A very old and
rusty armoury may, as here, be seen any where; but a row of
formidable shark skulls, taken along the coast, and some in the very
port of Catania, are rarities on which the _ciceroni_ like to
prelect, being furnished with many a story of bathers curtailed by
them, and secure a large portion of attention, especially if you were
just thinking of a dip. A rather fine collection of bronzes has been
made from excavations in the neighbourhood, which, indeed, must
always promise to reward research. A figure of Mercury, two and a
half feet high, and so exactly similar to that of John of Bologna,
that his one seemed an absolute plagiarism, particularly attracted
our attention on that account. The great Italian artist, however, had
been dead one hundred and fifty years before this bronze was dug up.
Next in importance to the bronzes, we esteem the collection of
Sicilian, or Græco-Sicilian vases, though inferior in number and
selectness to those of the Vatican, or Museo-Borbonico. There is also
some ancient sculpture, and some pretty mosaic. Of this composition
is a bathfloor, where a family of Cupids, in the centre of the
pavement, welcome you with a _utere feliciter_, (may it do you good.)
Round the border, a circle of the personified _"months"_ is
artistically chained together, each bearing his _Greek_ name, for
fear of a mistake--names not half so good as Sheridan's translation
of the Revolutionary calendar--snowy, flowy, blowy--showery, flowery,
bowery--moppy, croppy, poppy--breezy, sneezy, freezy. In Catania, we
find no lack of coins, nor of sharp-eyed dealers, who know pretty
generally their value throughout Europe; but, in order to be quite
sure of the price _current,_ ask double what they take from one
another, and judge, by your abatement of it, of the state of the
market elsewhere. Now mind, sir, when they present you the most
impudent forgeries, you are not to get into a passion; but, glancing
from the object to the vender, quietly insinuate your want of
_absolute_ conviction in a _"che vi pare di questa moneta."_ He now
looks at it again, and takes a squint at _you;_ and supposing you
smell a rat, probably replies that certainly he _bought_ it for
_genuine;_ but you _have suggested a doubt,_ and the piece really
begins, even to _him_, to look suspicious, _"anzi à me."_ You reply
coolly, and put it down--"That was just what I was thinking;" and so
the affair passes quietly off. And now you _may_, if you happen to be
tender-hearted, say something compassionate to the poor innocent who
has been _taken in_, and proceed to ask him about another; and when
you see any thing you long to pocket, enquire what can he afford to
let a _brother collector_ (give him a step in rank) have _it_ for;
and so go on feeling your way, and never "putting your arm so far out
that you cannot comfortably draw it back again." He will probably ask
you if you know Mr B---- or C----, (English collectors,) with whom he
has had dealings, calling them "_stimabili signori;_" and, of course,
you have no doubt of it, though you never heard of them before. It is
also always conciliative to congratulate him on the possession of
such and such rare and "_belle cose;_" and if you thus contrive to
get into his good graces, he will deal with you at _fair prices_, and
perhaps amuse you with an account of such tricks as he is not ashamed
to have practised on _blockheads_, who will buy at any cost if the
die is fine. Indeed, it has passed into an aphorism among these
_mezzo-galantuomini_, as their countrymen call them, that a fine coin
is always worth _what you can get for it._
We heard the celebrated organ of St Benedict, which has been praising
God in tremendous hallelujahs ever since it was put up, and a hundred
years have only matured the richness of its tones. Its voice was
gushing out as we entered the church, and filling nave and aisle with
a diapason of all that was soft and soothing, as if a choir of
Guido's angels had broke out in harmony.
A stream of fresh water issues under the old town-wall, and an
immense mass of incumbent lava, of at least ninety feet high, impends
just above its source, the water struggling through a mass of rock
once liquefied by fire, in as limpid a rill as if it came from
limestone, and so excellent in quality that no other is used in
Catania. Women with buckets were ascending and descending to fetch
supplies out of the lava of the dead city below, for the use of the
living town above. Moreover, this is the only point in Catania where
the accident of a bit of wall arresting for some time the progress of
the lava current, has left the level of the old town to be rigidly
ascertained.
Here, as at _Aci-Reale_, balconies at windows, for the most part
supported by brackets, terminating in human heads, give a rich,
though rather a heavy, appearance to the street. Much amber is found
and worked at Catania. It has been lately discovered in a fossil
state, and in contiguity with fossil wood; but we were quite
_electrified_ at the price of certain little scent-bottles, and other
articles made of this production. You see it in all its possible
varieties of colour, opacity, or transparency. The green opalized
kind is the most prized, and four pounds was demanded for a pair of
pendants of this colour for earrings. Besides the yellow sort, which
is common every where, we see the ruby red, which is very rare: some
varieties are freckled, and some of the sort which afforded subjects
for Martial, and for more than one of the Greek anthologists, with
insects in its matrix. _This_ kind, they say, is found exclusively on
the coast of Catania. There are such pieces the size of a hand, but
it is generally in much smaller bits. Amber lies under, or is formed
_upon_ the sand, and abounds most near the _embouchure_ of a small
river in this neighbourhood. Many beautiful shells, fossils, and
other objects of natural history, appear in the dealers' trays; and
polished knife-handles of Sicilian _agate_ may be had at five dollars
a dozen.