is a fine statue of St. Pancrazio, the first Bishop of Sicily, ordained by St. Peter in the year 40, and called the Apostle of Sicily, as he first converted it to the Christian faith. Crossing a succession of rapid streams, fed by the snows of Etna, whose eruptions sounded day and night like the detonation of artillery, they drove through a region almost unequalled in fertility, and yielding grain and wine of all kinds in the greatest abundance. On the right was the famous stone pine and chestnut wood, of which the chestnut trees are the largest in the known world, being between 60 and 70 feet in circumference. After this the road enters on a waste of lava, the remains of former eruptions; the coast breaks into bold and rugged cliffs, which show where the fiery torrent has been checked by meeting the adverse element, which has worn them into grotesque forms and hollowed them. (as in the Giant's Causeway or the island of Portland) into numerous caverns, supported by natural piers and columns, which it is hard to believe are not hewn by the hand of man. This kind of scenery continues up to the very gates of Catania, which town our travellers reached soon after dark.

Earthquakes and eruptions have combined to overthrow and destroy this bright and beautiful city; but nevertheless, it always rises again from its ruins, and at this moment is one of the cleanest and gayest towns in Sicily, abounding in commerce and manufactures and with a very agreeable society. The Catanese have a proverb:

"Se Catania avesse porto,
Palermo sarebbe morto.'

"

Be that as it may, the glistening white houses against the dark lavabeds which surround the city, and the many towers and palms which rise up against the bright blue sky, give it an Eastern appearance, which

The morning after their arrival found some of the party very early at the great church of the magnificent Benedictine convent, said to be the largest monastic building in Europe. The Superior, the Abbate D—, a man of high birth, first-rate ability, and singular personal holiness, received his guests with the greatest kindness and hospitality.

After Mass and Benediction were over, the latter being most beautifully sung, the Abbate requested the organist, Prince C, to play something to his guests; with which request he instantly complied, and most goodnaturedly went on for more than an hour with every description of music. It is difficult to conceive a more magnificent instrument, and it is, in fact, declared to be the finest in Europe, certainly exceeding those at Haarlem and at Freiburg, both in the sweetness of its tone and its marvellous power. After hearing the organ, the Superior took them into the sacristy, where there is a fine picture, by Novelli, of Tobias and the Angel. The relics are very valuable, especially one of the nails of the True Cross, which is preserved in an exquisite reliquary of the fifteenth century. From the sacristy, the party, by papal permission, visited the abbey, going through the cloisters and up a fine staircase to the corridors, opening out of which are the cells and refectories. But the glory of the monastery is its garden, with its terraces and fountains, its myrtles and oleanders, its orange-trees and cypresses, and its exquisite and varied flowers. The monks are all of noble families, and do not exceed fifty in number. They have a museum, chiefly of Sicilian antiquities and natural products, and a magnifi

cent library, containing many most beautiful manuscripts, and including a very curious copy of Cæsar's Commentaries, a Psalter of the thirteenth century, a fine illustrated Dante, and a beautifully illuminated Bible of the fifteenth century, besides some wonderful Breviaries and martyrologies. The Abbate then kindly entertained his guests at breakfast in his own charming rooms, where he receives audiences and virtually transacts most of the diocesan business.

From the convent he good-naturedly undertook to escort our party to the Santo Carcere, or prison where St. Agatha was confined, and finally martyred. The church has nothing remarkable in it but a fine Norman portal, which was originally brought from the cathedral. The cell of the martyr is inclosed in a little chapel to the right of the high altar. St. Agatha was tortured at fifteen, in the time of the Decian persecution, by order of the Prefect, who wished to marry her. Enraged at her constancy, he caused her breasts to be cut off. But God healed her wounds in the prison, and the inhuman judge, untouched by the miracle, then caused her to be laid on a gridiron, and consumed by a slow fire, under which torment she expired. The exact spot of her sufferings and death is pointed out. From thence the Abbate took our travellers to see the church and convent of St. Placida, a very beautiful Benedictine convent, where the nuns received them most

kindly, giving them ices and fruit, and showing them all the treasures of their house. The cathedral is uninteresting, badly kept and badly served. Built by Count Roger, it has been almost entirely destroyed by a succession of earthquakes, and contains now nothing worth looking at but the relics of St. Agatha, which are kept in a silver shrine in a side chapel dedicated to the saint; and

which are carried in procession on the day of her martyrdom.

Our travellers next visited the Museo Biscari, which contains the largest known collection of Sicilian antiquities, and some very beautiful statues and terra-cotta vases. Catania still boasts of the remains of a very fine amphitheatre, theatre, and baths, although nearly buried by successive earthquakes. After Benediction at the cathedral, the evening was spent listening to a very good military band, under the kind chaperonage of their German friend, Colonel E- (to whom they have brought letters of introduction), and sitting eating ices in the Piazza del Duomo, which has a European reputation. In the centre is the famous fountain of the elephant, the device of Catania, and on its back rises an obelisk, evidently of Egyptian origin, supposed to have been brought by the Crusaders from the East. This piazza is in the centre of the town, and from the streets which radiate from it, the views are equally beautiful on all sides.

Some friends having arrived the following day in their yacht, tempted the party to go down to the port, which is small, and can only contain vessels of small tonnage. It is picturesquely overhung by old walls and gates, said to have been constructed by Charles V. The quay has been turned into a promenade, with avenues of acacia and seats of marble; a very pleasant evening lounge for those who have been toiling all day in the intense heat of the centre of the town. The Prince and Princess Ralso arrived that day with the last news from Rome, and agreed to accompany our party to Nicolosi, where, by the advice of the Prefect, they had settled to go that afternoon in order to make arrangements for the ascent of Etna.

THE vegetable world bears inscribed upon its glorious front a threefold purpose. The first implies that which Emerson would delight to call the culinary use of plants. Under this aspect we regard the plant as ministering to the sustenance of the whole animal world, and above all, of mankind: not alone furnishing the basis of the existence of the human race, but affording the materials for boundless appliances of comfort and convenience. This material relation of the vegetable world, although most important, socially considered, æsthetically must be regarded as the meanest ; since it ultimately concerns the animal requirements of each individual, however much these may be glossed over by refinement. Far more lofty is the part which the plant world plays in the regulation of the all-embracing operations of the universe. The scorched and rainless desolation of the Sahara and the overflowing wealth of vitality in the humid forests of the gorgeously clothed tropics, partly owe their characteristic peculiarities to the action of the plant creation. Varying states of climate, dry or humid atmosphere, parched or moist soil, scanty or abundant development of animal, and especially of human, life, in the mass, find their mastering conditions in the nature and extent of local vegetation. Herein the vegetable world is related to the wellbeing and actual existence of whole races, and the great physical features of entire regions.

But the most sublime and exalted mission of the vegetable creation is as the material interpreter of the spiritual; the veil which conceals but yet declares the mighty Author and Sustainer-the gorgeous tapestry of God's great temple; the emblem of the Eternal, teaching us to look for

the permanent through the mutable and fleeting. The spiritual ordinance of eternal being is nobly symbolized to us in the immutable law of vegetable nature, which decrees that death shall proceed out of life, and life out of death; that the living animal shall feed its vitality upon the dead plant; and the living plant upon the dead animal; that decomposition shall be but the commencement of recomposition; and putrefaction but the symbol of renewed production.

"For though to every draught of vital breath, Renewed throughout the bounds of earth or ocean, The melancholy gates of death

Respond with sympathetic motion:
Though all that feeds on nether air,

Howe'er magnificent or fair,
Grows but to perish and intrust
Its ruins to their kindred dust;

Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care

Her procreant vigils nature keeps
Amid the unfathomable deeps,
And saves the peopled fields of earth

From dread of emptiness or dearth.”

The inexhaustible fertility of the vegetable world affords matter for profound wonder and admiration to the naturalist. Does a volcanic island rise from the ocean, bare and devoid of aught that can allure man to take up his habitation on its soil, or that can furnish food for his sustenance or implements for his use, yet when years have rolled on, it will be covered by a peculiar form of vegetation, to which will succeed others more perfect; and the sun that glared upon a smoking rocky mass may smile upon an earthly paradise. What have been the weapons which nature has here employed to battle against want and desolation, to cast out death and implant the germs of life? The waves have wafted the seeds of vegetation, and the winds have carried them on their wings. Strangely fashioned insects and brilliantly plumed birds have paused in their flight to wonder or to rest, and, pursuing their careless way, have left

precious traces of their visit-the
seeds of a teeming host of plants.
"Thus in the earth, in water, and in air,

In moisture and in drought, in heat and cold,
Thousands of germs their energies unfold."

To us, then, it is of the deepest interest to investigate the means by which the limits of the vegetable kingdom are extended, and the multiplication of plants is effected. And even if the relation which this allimportant process bears to the life of the universe were less lofty than we have seen it to be, the phenomena accompanying it might well arrest our attention. The function of reproduction is performed in all flowering plants, by the aid of the blossom. In nature everything has a meaning and a purpose; nothing which is superfluous or useless finds a place in its economy; even the flowers that calm race, all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion or pain, desire or disappointment, whose life is beauty and whose breath is perfume are destined to play no idle part in the workshop of nature. To them is committed the task of perpetuating vegetable existence; upon their active industry depends the life of every bird that soars in air, of every beast that stalks across the plain, of every insect that crawls over the surface of the earth; the life of man himself; the very existence of the universe as at present constituted. Well may we ask with Tennyson,

"Who is it that could live an hour

If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of a flower?”

Displaying in their form and essence a union of the sweetest utilitarianism with the most ideal beauty, the flowers preside over the birth of the plants under conditions giving rise to fancies that have fed the imagination of generations of poets, and have inspired the gravest botanical philosophers of former ages with pleasant thoughts. Many hundred years have passed since it was first noticed that in several species of plants two differing forms are devel

oped, and that the one plant never perfects its seed, unless an individual of the other kind flowers simultaneously in its vicinity. Thus, Pliny and Theophrastus relate that the country people hung flowering branches of one kind of date on two boughs of the other, in order to secure full crops; and Kompfer recounts that an inroad of Turks into Bassora was checked by the felling of all the date trees of one kind; when the others refused to bear fruit. Yet more romantic is the account furnished us by the Italian Micheli, of the Vallisneria spiralis, an inhabitant of the rivers. Here the flowers of the one kind float on the water, those of the other are bound to the bottom of the river, until at the period of flowering they burst from their bondage, float up to the object of their affection, exchange a gentle kiss of love, and are borne away by the rippling wavelet soon to breathe out their life-fit emblems of the ardent lover, consumed by inward flame, and expiring even at the moment when he has attained the consummation of his vows. Alas, that earnest truth-loving science should step in to crush this graceful fabric of the imagination, to strip this history of all its glowing passion, and all its mystery of almost human love! And yet we have no real cause for lamentation. The highest truth is in itself the highest poetry. The simple but eternal and therefore sublime truths which science substitutes for the visionary beauties of the human imagination, far transcend the inventions of the greatest masters of poetry. In the place of isolated and mysterious facts, without visible connection or harmony, it has given us all-embracing principles, and has furnished us with a mastery which will unlock the secret chambers of Nature, and enable us to behold all her operations, regulated by a universal frame of laws.

The minute vegetable cell, artificer of the world of plants, here again comes before us, as the agent by