tects the faithful of Giardini. Lucky in his _architects_ has
been St Pancras; for many of our readers are familiar with his very
elegant modern church in the New Road, modelled, if we have not
forgotten, on the Erechtheum, with its _Pandrosean Vestries_, its
upright tiles, and all the subordinate details of Athenian
architecture. We _met_ here the subject of many an ancient _bas
relief_ done into flesh and blood--a dozen men and boys tripping
along the road to the music of a bagpipe, one old _Silenus_ leading
the jocund throng, and the whole of them, as the music, such as it
was, inspired, leaping about and gesticulating with incredible
activity. It was a bacchanalian subject, which we had seen on many a
sarcophagus, only that the fellows here were not _quite_ naked, and
that we looked in vain for those nascent horns and tails by which the
children of Pan and Faunus ought to be identified. We always look out
for _natural history_. Walking in a narrow street, we saw a tortoise,
awake for the season, come crawling out to peep at the poultry; his
hybernation being over, he wants to be social, and the hens in
astonishment chuckle round him, and his tortoiseshell highness seems
pleased at their kind enquiries, and keeps bobbing his head in and
out of his _testudo_ in a very sentimental manner. Women who want his
shell for _combs_ do not frequent these parts, and so, unless a cart
pass over him as he returns home, he is in clover.

A bird frequents these parts with a blue chest, called _Passer
solitarius;_ he abounds in the rocky crevices. The notes of one,
which was shown to us in a cage, sounded sweetly; but, as he was
carnivorous, the weather was too hot for us to think of taking him
away. We saw two snakes put into the same box: the one, a viper,
presently killed the other, and much the larger of the two. Serpents,
then, like men, do _not_, as the _Satirist_ asserts, spare their
kind. We are disappointed at not finding any coins, nor any other
good _souvenirs_, to bring away with us. The height of Taormina is
sufficient to keep it from fever, which is very prevalent at Giardini
below. Its bay was once a great place for catching _mullet_ for the
Roman market. It seems to have been the _Torbay_ of Sicily. Some fish
love their ease, and rejoice not in turbulent waters. The _muraena_,
or lamprey, on the contrary, was sought in the very whirlpools of
_Charybdis_. The modern Roman, on his own side of Italy, has few
turbot, bu