once stood the New Phenicia, the Western Tyre, which covered the sea with its ships?' The Strand bridge,' says he,' will remain to reply to generations the most remote

Here stood a wealthy, industrious, and powerful city. The traveller, at sight of it, will suppose that a great prince had been desirous, by many years of labour, to shed a lustre on the end of his reign, and to consecrate the glory of his actions by this imposing structure. But if tradition should inform him, that six years were sufficient for the commencement and termination of this work; if he should learn, that a simple company of merchants built this mass, worthy of the Sesostrises and the Cæsars, he will admire still more that nation where undertakings of this nature can be the fruit of the efforts of a few tradesmen and capitalists. Then, if lastly he shall have reflected on the causes of the prosperity of empires, he will acknowledge that such a people must have possessed wise laws, powerful institutions, and liberty prudently secured to them: they are imprinted in the grandeur and utility of the monuments erected by simple citizens.'-vol. i. p. 259.*

ART. V.--Memoir descriptive of the Resources, Inhabitants, and Hydrography of Sicily and its Islands, interspersed with Antiquarian and other Notices. By Captain W. H. Smyth, R. N. London. 1824. 4to. pp. 370.

CAPTAIN Smyth is an experienced navy-officer who has for many years, we believe, been employed by the Admiralty to survey various parts of the Mediterranean coasts, of which the charts were hitherto defective. The circumstances, however, under which his book is brought out will be best told in his own words:

'The lords commissioners of the Admiralty having determined in their laudable zeal for promoting nautical science, to present to the public an atlas containing my survey of Sicily and the adjacent islands, I obtained permission from their lordships to publish the following memoir containing the substance of those remarks which my long residence in those parts, and the station I filled, enabled me to make; and, as an encouragement, their lordships, with a marked liberality and condescen

* We copy this with peculiar pleasure, on account of the consolation which, we trust, it will afford to Mrs. Barbauld. That venerable Sybil (see No. XIV. of this Journal) took up her parable against England in 1811, and prophesied that her last hour was come; that her baseless wealth was dissolved in air;' that the golden tide of commerce had deserted her shore,' and that she would soon

'be only known

By the gray ruin, and the mouldering stone.'

Some ingenuous American, fired by fancy, will then,' she vaticinates, make a pilgrimage from the Blue Mountains to this country,' (provided he can find it,) in the hope of tracing out the ancient bounds of its capital, by the assistance of a few scattered hamlets.' Mrs. Barbauld will now discover that this high-souled youth from the Ontario' will not need, as she tremblingly anticipates, to hazard his neck, in climbing some broken stair to ascertain the spot on which London once stood,' since the Strand Bridge will favour his guesses, and abridge his archeological labours in a surprizing manner.

sion, have been pleased to subscribe for 100 copies. In executing this task I have rather aimed at giving general information, than a mere set of sailing directions, because the charts being constructed trigonometrically and the various dangers distinctly pointed out, an inspection of them will be less liable to misconception than verbose instructions.'-Introduction. Leaving, therefore, the nautical observations to the attention of those whose business it will be to ascertain experimentally their truth and accuracy, we shall consider the Memoir' as an essay on Sicily addressed principally to the general reader, and embracing the usual topics of a volume of Sicilian travels. It does not, indeed, provide us with so many credible stories of children wearing three heads, or of women littering thirty babies at a birth as the learned Fazzello-nor is it interlarded with critical emendations of Greek texts, and operose corrections of Cluverius, like D'Orville-nor is it so sprightly and picturesque as Brydone-though not so dull as Swinburne-neither does it display the mature scholarship, nor impart to the reader the classical ardour of Hughes; yet as a practically useful work, it may take precedence of them all, on the principle, that he who wore a civic crown ranked above those who were otherwise his betters-and even as a literary work it has a certain value of its own, arising from the scientific observations it contains, calculated to correct the exaggerations of poets and poetical travellers, whose assertions will often find much difficulty in maintaining their ground against this modern Archytas, this

Maris et terræ numeroque carentis arenæ

Mensorem.

And though Captain Smyth may think this very limited commendation of a book which evidently aspires to a character for scholarship, yet we cannot help considering that those parts of it which are most learned are least praiseworthy. We care little about Archias and Ducetius-or whether Deucalion and Pyrrha did or did not found Catania :-all such matters, together with anecdotes about Typhoeus or his Cyclops, we are content to leave to Lempriere and the minute mythologists of our grammar-schools.

Still, however, if Captain Smyth enters upon these topics more frequently and with an air of more authority than necessary, he errs with great names: If we consider Jupiter's politics,' says Shuckford with the utmost gravity, we must allow him to have been a man of as great natural wisdom and sagacity as perhaps any age ever produced.'* And afraid (as well he might be) that this is not sufficiently specific, he next tells us, that Jupiter had a genius for business as well as for speculation, and knew how both to project what was proper to be agreed upon and to give Connection of Sacred and Profane History, v. ii. p. 86.

BB 4

his

his schemes a full effect among the people; and in order hereto he married the lady who had the province of forming the reasonings of the Cretans, and this was undoubtedly a wise step,' &c. We could have dispensed with sundry passages in the Memoir of Sicily' a little too much after this fashion, and would willingly have received in exchange for such solemn trifling, those coinci dences between the manners and customs of ancient and modern times which our author's long comection with Sicily might have enabled him to remark, a country wearing throughout a singular air of antiquity, whilst the treatment of such a subject would have called forth classical learning of a far more attractive kind than that which relates to half-fabulous heroes, or wholly fabulous demi-gods.

It is true, that Captain Smyth has touched upon this topic; but in most of his remarks he has already been anticipated;-and in those which are new we have generally to regret a want of distinctness and detail. The Rogation ceremony corresponds in many respects with the rites of Terminus; for while the former consisted of prayers for a blessing on the fruits of the earth, the purpose of the latter was to fix beyond dispute the boundaries of their land that so they might enjoy without contention, in the fruits of the opening spring, the reward of the labour they had bestowed on the earth. Yet we are not furnished with a single fact that enables us to trace the resemblance for ourselves. So again, The grand jubilee is but another name for the Secular Games, while the Martinalia is a palpable substitute for the Lesser Dionysia, by which St. Martin has succeeded to the devotion heretofore lavished on the jolly Bacchus.' It may be so; but we naturally ask,

Quibus indiciis, quo teste, probavit ?— We should have been glad to hear more particulars of the following curious fact, that the festival instituted on occasion of the surrender of Nicias to Gylippus has been preserved through all changes of fortune, government, and religion, and is still celebrated (though now in honour of a saint) at Syracuse, in May, when two olive trees are borne in triumph into the city, and during the fortnight they are allowed to remain there, debtors can roani about, free from molestation.'-p. 179.

The Sicilians still, it seems, by amulets, carefully protect themselves and their herds from persons possessing the evil eyenever marry in the ill-omened month of May-cast nuts and almonds on the happy pair at the bridal feast-strew flour or ashes at the threshold of their friend or foe, on New Year's eve -think it lucky to have a palpitation in the right eye-are fearful of spilling salt-and, like the Romans, do not respect the pro

fession

fession of a 'carnifex,' or executioner-(p. 65.)—this last circumstance might have been safely omitted. We are not Romans; but in England, and we suppose elsewhere, Jack Ketch is not popular. In the useful arts, as in fishing, traces of the olden time are detected, both by Captain Smyth and Mr. Hughes. The thunny is driven successively through four chambers of a net in the shape of a parallelogram 1500 feet long, by 300 feet wide, and from 40 to 100 deep;' in the last chamber or 'corpo,' he is transfixed by suitable instruments; the whole agreeably to the account of Oppian, (lib. iii. 640.) The sword-fish is harpooned, his approach, like that of the thunny-shoals, being indicated by a man on the look out at the mast-head, the Olpis of Theocritus.* That practice too, (also described in the Halieutica, lib. iv. 641.) of attracting the fish to the boats at night, by means of a perpetual blaze kept up in an iron crate fixed at the prow, is still followed with success.

There may be persons who look upon such investigations as puerile and beneath the notice of a man of letters. We do not, however, profess to be of that number; on the contrary, we hold, that one point of resemblance between the living and the dead (trifling though it be in itself) properly established, derives a value from affording us some grounds for believing that the like resemblance exists in many other more important points which we cannot determine for want of evidence; and that thus we are enabled to collect the face and expression of the father of glorious memory, in the features of his surviving descendants. For this reason we read with more delight that simple fact in the Travels of Mr. Hughes, that whilst his party were regaling themselves in the Ear of Dionysius, the peasants brought them beans which they had roasted over a fire kindled for the purpose, to eat with their wine, after the manner of the times of Theocritus; than we should have felt by the perusal of pages of fabulous, or even authentic, history.

But we must proceed to graver matters. Our countrymen, especially such as are imbued with Grecian literature, giving way to the natural feelings of freemen, are apt to mourn over the fortunes of Sicily which subjected her to the dominion of Rome. (See Hughes's Travels, i. 65. Smyth, p. 118.) We doubt, however, whether this pity is not misplaced, or at least extravagant. The truth is, that the provincial policy of the Romans has been much misrepresented; and as this is a subject closely connected with the right understanding of many ancient authors, both sacred Idyll. iii. 25.

† τον πτελεατικον οίνον απο κρητηρος άφύξω,

and profane, we shall avail ourselves of the opportunity which a review of a work on Sicily affords for saying a few words upon it.

Sicily was the first in point of time, as well as the most important in point of value, of all the Roman provinces; it was the granary of the republic; and by its geographical position, its commodious harbours, and abundant supplies, was of infinite assistance to Italy in bringing to a successful issue its Carthagibian wars.* For these reasons it was manifestly the interest of Rome to attach that province as closely as possible by every means of kindness and conciliation, and she succeeded in so doing; hence whatever resources she had in Sicily, Cicero tells us, were counted on with certainty. Corn was always paid to the day-her wants were even anticipated-her laws implicitly obeyed-her tax-gatherers almost welcomed. Nor is it improbable, that the treatment of Sicily regulated in some measure the system subsequently pursued in the management of the provinces in general.

The religion, the laws, and the property of the country were de jure inviolate; the municipal magistrates were not changed;† private litigations between man and man were settled before native judges, unless the parties chose to appeal. In an affair between two Sicilians of different cities, judges were appointed by the prætor, or Roman governor, not through favour but by lot. All contentions between an individual and the people were submitted to the senate of some one town agreed upon by the parties after mutual challenge. In disputes between a Roman and Sicilian, where the Roman was plaintiff, a Sicilian judge was appointed; where the Sicilian was plaintiff, a Roman. For weightier matters, especially for all state-offences, assizes were annually held at particular towns convenient for the purpose-(at Lilybæum, Palermo, Messina, and Syracuse). At these assizes the prætor presided, assisted by certain officers who accompa nied him from Rome, and subject to the check of a council com posed of twenty persons chosen by ballot from the most respectable of the inhabitants of the district. To this court, and to this only (except in the case of free cities, which had special privileges) was committed the power of life and death. In order to expedite business in these judicial circuits of the prætor, as well as for the more easy conveyance of troops and merchandize, roads were established-the Via Valeria extending from Messina to Lilybæum, whilst mention is made in the Itinerary of

Cic. in Verr. 2.

In medals and inscriptions, both Greek and Latin, mention is constantly made of the posts and offices, the senate, people, and decrees, of provincial towns.

‡ In Verr. 2. § 13. 15. 17. See Middleton on the Roman Senate, v. iii. p. 415. Antonine,