The following day our party arrived at Palermo. So pleasurable had been their voyage, that it was with a feeling akin to regret, that they heard the rumbling chains of the anchor, rush through the hawse-hole, as their vessel took her station in the bay. After going through those wearisome forms, which a foreign sea-port exacts; and which appear purposely intended, to temper the rapture of the sea-worn voyager, as he congratulates himself on once more treading terra firma; our party found themselves the inmates of the English hotel; and spent the remainder of the day in engaging a cicerone, and in discussing plans for the morrow. The morrow came--sunny and cloudless--and the cicerone bowed to the ground, as he opened the door of the commodious fiacre. "Where shall I drive to, Sir?" "What were our plans, George?" said Sir Henry. "I think," replied George, "that we only formed one plan to change it for another. Let the cicerone decide for us." _He,_ nothing loath, accepted the charge; and taking his station on the box of the carriage, directed the driver. The carriage first stopped before a large stone building. The bell was rung--a veteran porter presented himself--and our party entered the court yard. "What place is this?" said Delmé. "This," rejoined his guide, with the true cicerone fluency, "is the famous lunatic asylum, instituted by the illustrious Baron Pisani. This, gentlemen, is the Baron!" Here a benevolent-looking little man with a large nose, took off his hat. "So much approved of was his beneficent design, that our noble King, and our paternal Government, have not only adopted it; but have graciously permitted the Baron, to continue to preside over that institution, which he so happily commenced, and which he so refulgently adorns." During this announcement, the Baron's face flushed with a simple, but honest pride. These praises did not to him appear exaggerated; for his intentions had been of the purest, and in this institution was his whole soul wrapt up. Acmé became somewhat pale, as she heard where they were, and looked nervously at George; who could not forbear smiling, as he begged they would be under no apprehensions. "Yes! gentlemen," said the Baron, "circumstances in early life made me regard mental disease as the most fearful of all. I observed its victims struggling between reason and insanity; goaded on by the ignorance of empirics, and the harsh treatment of those about them, until light fled the tortured brain, and madness directed its every impulse. You, gentlemen, are English travellers, I perceive! In _your_ happy land, where generosity and wealth go hand in hand, there are, I doubt not, many humane institutions, where those, who--bowed down by misfortunes, or preyed on by disease--have lost the power to take care of themselves, may find a home, where they may be anxiously tended, and carefully provided for. "Here we knew not of such things.