Two of these, the Archpriest Monsignore Simone Fortuna, confessor of the Duke of Urbino, and Cavaliere Ercole Cortile, the ambassador of Ferrara, have recorded their visits and their pleasure at seeing "La Serena Signora" in genial company and philanthropically employed.

"Monsignore,Your lordship sends to tell me that I must begin to paint, and have no anxiety.

When at the end of the three years Fabrice, now a Monsignore, returned to Parma, matters there were at a crisis; the Raversi party were gaining ground, and Count Mosca was in danger.

Lord Beaconsfield, describing Monsignore Berwick in Lothair, says that he "could always, when necessary, sparkle with anecdote or blaze with repartee."

Monsignore knows a great deal more than that, if the truth were said; though, I suppose, these noble signori are acquainted with the right reverend father's great infirmity?" "Not wenone of us, I fancy, ever had the honor to be in his company.

Surely, fellow, your bishop is a man of truth?" "Truth!Yes, eccellenza, so true is he that if he were to tell me that the thing I saw myself had not and could not happen, I should rather believe Monsignore than believe my own eyes.

When Monsignore tells us that so and so is Gospel, we all believe it, for we know the time has been when he could read; but we never think of going to his door to ask which way a ship is steering, having the use of our own senses.

My author is Monsignore Giovanni di Giovanni, a Taorminian, who flourished in the last century.

I will not, however, ask any one of more serious mind to go back with Monsignore and myself to the era of autochthonous Sicily, when the children of the Cyclops inhabited the land, and Demeter in her search for Proserpina wept on this hill, and Charybdis lay stretched out under these bluffs watching the sea.

With horror Monsignore relates that they were so resolved not to yield that, starving, they ate their children, their wives, and one another; and he rejoices when they were at last betrayed and massacred, and this disgrace was wiped away.

I am sorry to record that Monsignore believed his report, for only here is there mention of such a matter.

The catastrophe deserves to be told in Monsignore's own words: "This people, accustomed to rapine, allured by the riches of the Taorminians and the promises of the king, with the aid of the traitors entered unexpectedly into the city, and with bloody swords and mighty cries and clamour assailed the citizens.

Monsignore, indeed, believes that Ham, the son of Noah, who drove Japhet out of Sicily, was the first builder; but I do not doubt its antiquity was very great, and it seems likely that this was the original Siculian stronghold before the coming of the Greeks, and the building of the lower city of Taormina.