manifest, that the summer sun used to come there through some unknown ravine; to say nothing of Wordsworth's

"Calm pleasures and majestic pains."

We do not, to be sure, see what good Tantalus's eternal thirst could have been to him, or the everlasting wheel to Ixion; but, probably, on coming up to those gentlemen, we should have found they were visions, put there to make us "snatch a fearful joy" at thinking we were not among them in propriâ personá.

And so we take leave of the beautiful ancient fables of Sicily, having found honey for our Jar even in the fields of Pluto.

CHAPTER III.

GLANCES AT ANCIENT SICILIAN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

VICISSITUDES

GOVERNMENT.-GLANCES

OF SICILIAN AT PHALARIS, STESICHORUS, EMPEDOCLES, HIERO I., SIMONIDES, EPICHARMUS, DIONYSIUS I., DAMON AND PYTHIAS, DAMOCLES, DIONYSIUS II., DION, PLATO, AGATHOCLES, HANNIBAL, HIERO II., THEOCRITUS, ARCHIMEDES, MARCELLUS, VERRES; AND PARTICULARS RELATING TO GELLIAS.

ICILY being one of

those small, beautiful, and abundant countries which excite the cupidity of larger ones, has had as many foreign masters as the poor Princess of Babylon in Boccaccio, who, on her way to be married to the King of Col

chos, fell into the

hands of nine hus

bands. First, in all probability, came subjugators from the Italian continent; then Phoenicians, or commercial invaders;

then, undoubtedly, Greeks; then Carthaginians; then Romans, Goths, Saracens, Normans, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Gallo-Spaniards, Frenchmen again, Gallo-Spaniards again; and in the possession of these last it remains. Under the Greeks, its cities grew into powerful independent states. Syracuse was once twenty-two miles in circumference. The most prominent names in the ancient history of Sicily are touched upon in the following list.

Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, who roasted people in a brazen bull, in which he was ultimately made to roar himself. That is to say, if the bull be true. For the reign of this prince was at so remote a period, and the excitement of exaggeration is so tempting, that the sight of the bull in after times proves no more than was proved by the brazen wolf of Romulus and Remus. The age of Phalaris was that of the prophet Daniel.

Stesichorus, a majestic lyrical poet, in one of whose fragments is to be found the beautiful fiction of the Golden Boat of the Sun. The Sun-God sails in it, invisibly, round the northern sea in the night-time, so as to be ready, to re-appear in the east in the morning.

Empedocles, the Pythagorean philosopher. He is accused of leaping into Etna, in the hope of being supernaturally missed, and so taken for a god-a project betrayed by the ejection of one of his brazen sandals. But a philosopher may perish by a volcano, as Pliny did, without giving envy a right to make him a laughing-stock.

Hiero the First, of Syracuse; a bad prince, but a possessor of good horses and charioteers; for whose victories in the Olympic games his name has become celebrated by means of Pindar. Hiero is the great name in the Racing Calendar of antiquity.

Simonides, the elegaic poet. He was a native of Ceos, but lived much, and died, in Sicily, where he was a great favourite. His repeated delays and final answer to Hiero, when desired to give a definition of the Deity, have been deservedly celebrated, and are a lesson to presumption for all time. He first requested a day to consider; then two more days; then doubled and redoubled the number; till the king, demanding the reason of this conduct, was told by the poet, that "the longer he considered the question, the more impossible he found it to answer."

Epicharmus, the supposed founder of comedy. He was a great philosopher as well as poet, and furnished no little matter to Plato. He died at ninety, some say at ninety-seven, a longevity attributable to the moderation of his way of life, and the serenity of his temper. He says in one of his frag

"A darling and a grace is Peace of Mind;

She lives next door to Temperance."

Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, (the Elder.) He wrote bad verses; slept in a bed with a trench round it and a drawbridge; and, for fear of a barber, burnt away his beard with hot walnut-shells. What a razor! What a razor! Dionysius had abilities enough to become the more hateful for his capricious and detestable qualities. Probably he had a spice of madness in him, which power exasperated. Ariosto has turned him to fine account in his personification of Suspicion.

Damon and Pythias, the famous friends. One of them became surety to Dionysius for the other's appearance at the scaffold, and was not disappointed. Dionysius begged to be admitted a third in the partnership!-the most ridiculous thing, perhaps, that even the tyrant ever did.

Damocles, the courtly gentleman, who pronounced Dionysius the happiest man on earth. He was treated by his master to a "proof of the pudding" which tyrants eat. He sat crowned at the head of a luxurious banquet, in the midst of odours, music, and homage; and saw, suspended by a hair over his head, a naked sword. This, it must be confessed, was a happy thought of the royal poet-a practical epigram of the very finest point.

Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, (the Younger,) who, on his ejection from the throne, is said to have become a schoolmaster at Corinth; "in order," says Cicero, "that he might still be a scourger somehow."

Dion, his relation, and Timoleon of Corinth, the great but unhappy fratricide; both of whom advanced the liberties of Syracuse.

Plato; who visited both the Dionysiuses, to induce them to become philosophers! He might as well have asked tigers in a sheepfold to prefer a dish of green peas.

Agathocles the Potter, tyrant of the whole island; who piqued himself on outdoing the cruelties of Phalaris. His objection to the brazen bull was, that you could not see the face of the person tortured; so he invented a hollow iron man with an open visor, in order that he might contemplate the face of the occupant, while heating over a slow fire. But let us hope the story is not true; for, though things as horrible have taken place in the world, the wicked themselves have been calumniated.

Hannibal, during the Punic wars. You see him, at this period of time, looming in the distance over every other object, and standing in Sicily like a great visiting giant. He is accounted, we believe, on military authority, the greatest cap