r plate, turned
out the knights, and left the island in possession of a French garrison.
Nothing could be less sagacious and less statesmanlike than this act;
for, by extinguishing the neutrality of the island, he exposed it to an
immediate blockade by the English. The result was exactly what he ought
to have foreseen. An English squadron was immediately dispatched to
summon the island; it eventually fell into the hands of the English, and
now seems destined to remain in English hands so long as we have a ship
in the Mediterranean. Malta is a prodigiously pious place, according to
the Maltese conception of piety. Masses are going on without
intermission--they fast twice a-week--religious processions are
constantly passing--priests are continually seen in the streets,
carrying the Host to the sick or dying. When the ceremonial is performed
within the house, some of the choristers generally remain kneeling
outside, and are joined by the passers-by. Thus crowds of people are
often to be seen kneeling in the streets. The Virgin, of course, is the
chief object of worship; for, nothing can be more true than the
expression, that for one prayer to the Deity there are ten to the
Virgin; and confession, at once the most childish and the most perilous
of all practices, is regarded as so essential, that those who cannot
produce a certificate from the priest of their having confessed, at
least once in the year, are excluded from the sacrament by an act of the
severest spiritual tyranny; and, if they should die thus excluded, their
funeral service will not be performed by the priest--an act which
implies a punishment beyond the grave. And yet the morals of the Maltese
certainly derive no superiority from either the priestly influence or
the personal mortification.

The travellers now embarked on board the Neapolitan steamer,
Ercolano--bade adieu to Malta, and swept along the shore of Sicily.
Syracuse still exhibits, in the beauty of its landscape, and the
commanding nature of its situation, the taste of the Greeks in selecting
the sites of their cities. The land is still covered with noble ruins,
and the antiquarian might find a boundless field of interest and
knowledge. Catania, which was destroyed about two centuries ago, at once
by an earthquake and an eruption, is seated in a country of still more
striking beauty. The appearance of the city from the sea is of the most
picturesque order. It looks almost encircled by the lava which