good _souvenirs_, to bring away with us. The height of Taormina is
sufficient to keep it from fever, which is very prevalent at Giardini
below. Its bay was once a great place for catching _mullet_ for the
Roman market. It seems to have been the _Torbay_ of Sicily. Some fish
love their ease, and rejoice not in turbulent waters. The _muræna_,
or lamprey, on the contrary, was sought in the very whirlpools of
_Charybdis_. The modern Roman, on his own side of Italy, has few
turbot, but very good ones are still taken off Ancona, in the
Adriatic, where the _spatium admirabile Rhombi_, as the reader will,
or ought to recollect, was taken and sent to Domitian at Albano by
_Procaccio_ or _Estafetta_. Juvenal complains that the Tyrrhene sea
was exhausted by the demand for fish, though there was no _Lent_ in
those times. If the Catholic clergy insist that there _was_, we beg
to object, that the keepers thereof were probably not in a condition
to compete with the _Apiciuses_ of the day, who bought fish for their
_bodies'_, and not for their SOULS' SAKE.


CATANIA.

Tum Catane nimium ardenti vicina Typhæo.

After a pleasant drive of twenty miles, we find ourselves at
_Aci-Reale_, where a street, called "Galatea," reminds us
unexpectedly of a very classical place called Dean's Yard, where we
once had doings with _Acis_, as he figures in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.
We were here in luck, and, having purchased some fine coins of
several of the tyrants of Sicily from the apothecary, proceeded on
our way to Catania. In half an hour we reach the basaltic Isles of
the Cyclops, and the Castle of Acis, whom the peasants hereabouts