with gilded scroll balconies (it is a nuns’ church) mingle with the bold discs and oblong panels of porphyry and green serpentine.  In the nave of the small church sat in comfortable arm-chairs two monks, one black, one white, leaning their ears to gilded grates and receiving the confessions of the sisterhood.  The paschal candlestick stood in front of the high altar,—­Ascension-Day not being past; but here, as in other Sicilian churches, it assumes the form of a seven-branched tree, generally of bronze bedecked with gold.  These same nuns’ balconies are not confined to the interior of churches, but form a distinct and picturesque feature in the long line of the Toledo.  Projecting in a bold curve whose undersurface is gaily painted in arabesque, their thick bars and narrow openings nevertheless leave a gloomy impression on the mind, while they add to the Oriental character of the city.  A somewhat unsuccessful effort to identify the church whose bell gave signal for the Sicilian Vespers closed our day’s labor.  The spot is clearly defined and easily recognizable, and a small church, now shut up, occupies the site.  So far, so good; but the cloister which is distinctly mentioned cannot now be found, nor is it easy to perceive where it could have stood.  Perhaps some change in the neighboring harbor may have swept it away.

[Footnote a:  The e in Rex is here rendered by the Greek eta,—­a proof that the pronunciation of that letter was similar to that of our long a, and not like our double ee; although the modern Greeks support the latter pronunciation.]

23d April.  To those who take interest in the efforts of that age when Christianity, devoid at once of artistic knowledge and of mechanical, strove from among the material and moral wreck of Paganism to create for herself a school of Art which should, despite of all short-comings, be the exponent of those high feelings which inspired her mind, the Royal Chapel of Palermo offers a delightful object of study.  Less massive than the gloomily grand basilicas of Rome and Ravenna, surpassed in single features by other churches, as, for instance, the Cathedral of Salerno, it contains, nevertheless, such perfect specimens of Christian Art in its various phases, that this one small building seems a hand-book in itself.  The floor and walls are covered with excellently preserved and highly polished Alexandrine mosaic, flowing in varied convolutions of green and gold and red round the broad crimson and gray shields, whose circular forms recall the mighty monolith columns of porphyry and granite which yielded such noble spoils.  The honey-combed pendentines of the ceiling must be due to Arab workmen; their like may yet be found in Cairo or the Alhambra; while below the narrow windows, and extending downwards to the marble panelling, runs a grand series of gold-grounded mosaics, their subjects taken from the Old and New Testaments.  But far older than even these are the colossal grim circles