ed is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his
time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for
the Athenians.

MALTA[41]

BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER

The city of Valetta, founded in 1566, by the grand master whose name it
bears, is the capital of Malta. The city of La Sangle, and the city of
Victoria, which occupy two points of land on the other side of the
harbor of the Marse, together with the suburbs of Floriana and Burmola,
complete the town; encircled by bastions, ramparts, counterscarps,
forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible!
If you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step
that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. Gibraltar
itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. The
inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast
radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous
garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the mother
country.

From the height of the ramparts, one sees in the distance the blue and
transparent sea, broken into ripples by the breeze, and dotted with
snowy sails. The scarlet sentinels are on guard from point to point, and
the heat of the sun is so fierce upon the glacis, that a cloth stretched
upon a frame and turning upon a pivot at the top of a pole, forms a
shade for the soldiers, who, without this precaution, must inevitably be
roasted on their posts....

The city of Valetta, altho built with regularity, and, so to speak, all
in one "block," is not, therefore, the less picturesque. The decided
slope of the ground neutralizes what the accurate lines of the street
might otherwise have of monotony, and the town mounts by degrees and by
terraces the hillside, which it forms into an amphitheater. The houses,
built very high like those of Cadiz, terminate in flat roofs that their
inhabitants may the better enjoy the sea view. They are all of white
Maltese stone; a sort of sandstone easy to work, and with which, at
small expense, one can indulge various caprices of sculpture and
ornamentation. These rectilinear houses stand well, and have an air of
grandeur, which they owe to the absence of (visible) roofs, cornices,
and attics. They stand out sharply and squarely against the azure of the
heavens, which their dazzling whiteness renders only the more intense;
but that which chiefly gives them a character of origina