"Has he told you about Taormina?"

I believe I want to see that more than Taormina and the Italian Lakes.

She told herself that she hadn't lied; that she had been thinking of Colin; that she had thought of him first; that she had refused to go to Taormina before she knew that Jerrold was coming back for the hay harvest.

ii In the last week of April they had gone, Jerrold and Maisie, Eliot and Colin, to Taormina.

They had left Colin by himself at Taormina.

And here in Taormina he had come upon the place that he could bear to be alone in.

Jerrold looked wretchedly ill all the time he was at Taormina.

Towards the east the mountains of Calabria, the sea stretching from Taormina to Catania, bathing the sides of Etna, covered with vineyards, woods and villages: northward rises the mountain itself, surrounded by its progeny of pigmy mountains; these have been thrown up in various forms, composed principally of cinders, and covered with rich vegetation.

"Taormina in Winter" more nearly resembled her earlier pictures.

PREFACE OF the papers contained in this volume "Taormina" was published in the Century Magazine; the others are new.

CONTENTS TAORMINA A NEW DEFENCE OF POETRY DEMOCRACY THE RIDE TAORMINA

CONTENTS TAORMINA A NEW DEFENCE OF POETRY DEMOCRACY THE RIDE TAORMINA

Come then, since Etna gives a fair, pure morning, up over the shelving bank to the great eastern spur of Taormina, where stood the hollow theatre, now in ruins, and above it the small temple with which the Greeks surmounted the highest point.

This hill of my station falls down for half a mile with broken declivities, and then becomes the Cape of Taormina, and takes its steep plunge into the sea.

All this ground, with in several villages, from Sant' Alessio to the Alcantara, and beyond into the plain, was anciently the territory of Taormina.

Here beneath, where the main ravine of Taormina cuts into the earth between the two spurs of the city, are terraces of fruit trees and vegetables, and, wherever the naked rock permits, similar terraces are seen on the castle hill and every less steep slope, looking as if they would slide off.

My friend the librarian told me also, with his Sicilian burr, of the wine of Taormina, the Eugenaean, which was praised by Pliny, and used at the sacred feasts of Rome; but now, he said sadly, the grape had lost its flavour.

It is stated in Sallust and other Latin authors, as well as by writers throughout the Middle Ages, that all which was swallowed up in the whirlpool of the straits, after being carried beneath the sea for miles, was finally cast up on the beach beneath the hill of Taormina.

Not only with brave deeds did Taormina begin, but, as a city should, with a great man.

He disembarked on our beach, and forthwith threw Lissone's image into the waves, and with it a holy dragon which was coiled about it like a garment and was fed with sacrifices; and he shattered with his cross the great idol Scamandro: and so Taormina became Christian, welcomed St. Peter on his way to Rome, and entered on the long new age.

The Saracens were in the land, and every city had fallen except Syracuse and Taormina.

Taormina, compared with what it had been, was now a place of the desert; but not the less for that did the tide of war rage round it for five hundred years to come.

And here I shut in my pages the one laurel leaf that Taormina bore.

It seldom yielded, and always by treachery or mutiny; for more than once, when Taormina was sacked, its citadel and Mola remained untaken and unconquerable on their extreme heights.

The Messenians came and surprised the lower city of Taormina, but they could not gain Mola nor persuade Matteo to yield Riccardo up to them.