by any person who has witnessed the religious processions in honour
of the favourite saints, both at Valetta and at Messina or Palermo,
and who must have been struck with the contrast between the apparent
apathy, or at least the perfect sobriety of the Maltese, and the
fanatical agitations of the Sicilian populace. Among the latter each
man's soul seems hardly containable in his body, like a prisoner
whose gaol is on fire, flying madly from one barred outlet to
another; while the former might suggest the suspicion that their
bodies were on the point of sinking into the same slumber with their
understandings. But their political deliverance was a thing that
came home to their hearts, and intertwined with their most
impassioned recollections, personal and patriotic. To Sir Alexander
Ball exclusively the Maltese themselves attributed their
emancipation; on him too they rested their hopes of the future.
Whenever he appeared in Valetta, the passengers on each side, through
the whole length of the street, stopped, and remained uncovered till
he had passed; the very clamours of the market-place were hushed at
his entrance, and then exchanged for shouts of joy and welcome. Even
after the lapse of years he never appeared in any one of their
casals, which did not lie in the direct road between Valetta and St.
Antonio, his summer residence, but the women and children, with such
of the men who were not at labour in their fields, fell into ranks
and followed or preceded him, singing the Maltese song which had been
made in his honour, and which was scarcely less familiar to the
inhabitants of Malta and Gozo than "God save the King" to Britons.
When he went to the gate through the city, the young men refrained
talking, and the aged arose and stood up. When the ear heard then it
blessed him, and when the eye saw him it gave witness to him, because
he delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and those that
had none to help them. The blessing of them that were ready to