Letters on Sicily Author:William Irvine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III. JL HE Sicilians, like the rest of the Italians are accustomed to the superlative in words and in thoughts. Nothing is moderate or simple in their ... more »expressions. Towns are never mentioned without some adjective of praise: even the most paltry village has its epithet of exaggerated flattery, though perhaps known to none, but the historian of the hamlet, or the cicerone who shows its ruins. Messina, fortunately for itself, has no ruins to show, except the few yet left from the devastations of the earthquake of 1783, and of which the vestiges are rapidly disappearing. Its opulence, its extent, its antiquity, would induce us to listen with complacency to a moderate portion of eulogium. But, J fear, an English taste will never learn to accommodate itself to the hyperbole of the Italians; according to whose established rules of good breeding, an artisan is called a magnificent lord, and he who is not " illustrious" is, one may be certain, good for very little. Messina is supposed to have been the former capital of the kingdom, and all its public inscriptions still call it " Caput regni." I have, however, now before me a history of this city, which describes it much better than I could, or would attempt to do. It commences thus;—I am translating literally,—"Messina, first begotten of Fame, mother of heroes, ancient residence of the Muses, abode of Bellona and of Mars, Queen and head of the kingdom of Sicily, ornament and splendor of the Hesperian sky, fair eye of Italy, flower of Europe, and delightful scene of the world," andc. andc. Perhaps you will suppose all this to have been poetry, and be willing to grant the licence, which, as Horace says," we give and seek by turns;" but I assure you it is prose; I leave you to add, prose run mad. I cannot help wondering what h...« less