The clergy are wealthy, the bishop's salary is 18,000 scudi, and many of the convents are very opulent; but there is scarcely one of the churches which you care to visit twice. Most of them are disgraced by vulgar ornaments, in which respect they surpass even the worst specimens at Naples! Gilt stucco, cut and stamped into flowery compartments, shows off like a huge twelfth cake! but the _Matrice_ or _Duomo_, and the Saracenic _Chapel of the Palazzo Reale_, and the cathedral of _Monreale_, four miles beyond the town, are noble exceptions; these in their several ways are all interesting, both within and without. The old Siculo-Norman archway of _Monreale_, and its fine bronze gates crusted with a beautiful hard polished _coin-like patina_, would repay the excursion, even were the interior less fine. Here we have columns from whose high architraves the Gothic arch springs vigorously; walls perfectly covered with old Byzantine mosaics; a roof of marvellous lightness, and almost modern elegance; still the critic, who is bound by _métier_ to find fault with violated canons, will, we must own, be at no loss for a text in the church of Monreale--a building which is, however, of sufficient importance in ecclesiastical architecture to have been designed, measured, and engraved, in whole and in part, in a splendid volume, published in folio, by the Duke of Serra di Falco. VISIT TO THE GARDEN OF THE DUKE OF SERRA DI FALCO, NEAR PALERMO. After a delicious half hour's drive through country lanes hedged with cactus, aloes, and pomegranates, we find ourselves in front of a small villa distant about two miles from the sea. As to the house, many an English gentleman, in very moderate circumstances, has a far better; but on passing the archway of this Sicilian country-box into its garden, two trees, which must be astonished at finding themselves out of Brazil--trees of surpassing beauty--are seen on a crimson carpet of their own fallen petals, mixed with a copious effusion of their seeds, like coral. At the northern extremity of Italy (Turin) this _Erythinia corallodendron_ is only a small stunted shrub; nor is it much bigger at Naples, where it grows under cover. Six years in the _open air_ have in Sicily _produced_ the tree before you: it is, in fact, larger than most of our fruit-bearers. We next recognise an agreeable acquaintance, formed two years ago, in the _Neapolis Japonicus_; it bears a delicate fruit, of the size of a plum, whose yellow, freckled skin contains such a nectar-like juice that the pine-apple itself scarcely excels it. Our fellow-passenger, the infallible voice of a new-made cardinal of the warlike name of Schwarzenburg, who tasted it here, as he told us, for the first time, has already pronounced a similar opinion, and no dissentients being heard, the Japan medlar passed with acclamation. The _Buggibellia spectabilis_ of New Holland, calls you to look at his pink _blossoms_, which are no other than his leaves in masquerade. We grub