The houses are generally well built, with flat roofs; the streets, with few exceptions, are narrow, small, and very dirty.  An uncommonly broad street runs parallel with the harbour, and contains, on one side at least, some very handsome houses.  This is a favourite place for a walk, for we can here see all the bustle and activity of the port.  Several of the palaces also are pretty; that appropriated to the senate is the only one which can be called fine, the staircase being constructed entirely of white marble, in a splendid style of architecture:  the halls and apartments are lofty, and generally arched.  The regal palace is also a handsome pile.

In the midst of the town I found an agreeable public garden.  The Italians appear, however, to choose the streets as places of rendezvous, in preference to enclosures of this kind; for every where I noticed that the garden-walks were empty, and the streets full.  But on the whole there is not nearly so much life here as at Catanea.  In order to obtain a view of the whole of Messina and its environs I ascended a hill near the town, surmounted by a Capuchin convent; here I enjoyed a prospect which I have seldom seen equalled.  As I gazed upon it I could easily imagine that an inhabitant of Messina can find no place in the world so beautiful as his native town.

The promontory against which the town leans is clothed with a carpet of the brightest green, planted with fruit-trees of all kinds, and enlivened with scattered towns, villages, and country seats.  Beautiful roads, appearing like white bands, intersect the mountains on every side in the direction of the town.  The background is closed by high mountains, sometimes wooded, sometimes bare, now rising in the form of alps, now in the shape of rocky masses.  At the foot of the hills we see the long-drawn town, the harbour with its numerous ships, and beyond it groups of alps and rocks.  The boundless sea flows on the spectator’s right and left towards Palermo and Naples, while in the direction of Catanea the eye is caught by mountains, with Etna towering among them.

The same evening I embarked on board the Duke of Calabria, for the short trip of twelve or fourteen hours to Palermo.  This steamer has only engines of 80 horse-power, and every thing connected with it is small and confined.  The first-class accommodation is indeed pretty good, but the second-class places are only calculated to contain very few passengers.  Though completely exhausted by my long and fatiguing walk through Messina, I remained on deck, for I could not be happy without seeing Stromboli.  Unfortunately I could distinguish very little of it.  We had started from Messina at about six o’clock in the evening, and did not come in sight of the mountain until two hours later, when the shades of night were already descending; we were, besides, at such a distance from it that I could descry nothing but a colossal mass rising from the sea and towering towards heaven.  I stayed on deck until past ten o’clock in the hope of obtaining a nearer view of Stromboli; but we had soon left it behind us in the far distance, with other islands which lay on the surface like misty clouds.