"A beautiful place this _Segeste_ must be! One could undergo any thing to see it!" Such would be the probable exclamation of more than one reader looking over some _landscape annual_, embellished with perhaps _a view_ of the celebrated temple and its surrounding scenery; but find yourself at any of the inexpressibly horrid inns of _Alcamo_ or _Calatafrini_, (and these are the two principal stations between Palermo and Segeste--one with its 12,000, the other with its 18,000 inhabitants;) let us walk you down the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some other unclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken! The "_Relievo dei Cavalli_" at Alcamo offers no _relief_ for you! The _Magpie_ may prate on her sign-post about _clean_ beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "_Canova Divina_" Divine Canova! _He_ never executed any thing for the _Red Lion_ of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full of wrangling Sicilian boors. Or will you place yourself under the _Eagle's_ wing, seduced by its _nuovi mobili e buon servizio_? Oh, we obtest those broken window-panes whether it be not _cruel_ to expose _new furniture_ to such perils! For us we put up at the "_Temple of Segeste_," attracted rather by its name than by any promise or decoy it offers. Crabbe has given to the inns at Aldborough each its character: here all are equal in immundicity, and all equally without provisions. Some yellow beans lie soaking to soften them. There is salt-cod from the north, moist and putrid. There is no milk; eggs are few. The ham at the Pizzicarolo's is always bad, and the garlicked sausage repulsive. Nothing is painted or white-washed, let alone dusted, swept, or scoured. The walls have the appearance of having been _pawed_ over by new relays of dirty fingers daily for ten years. This is a very peculiar appearance at many nasty places _out_ of Sicily, and we really do not know its _pathology_. You tread loathingly an indescribable earthen floor, and your eye, on entering the apartment, is arrested by a nameless production of the fictile art, certainly not of _Etruscan_ form, which is invariably placed on the _bolster_ of the truck-bed destined presently for your devoted head. Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian _locanda_ is plainly out of question, and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said, verse and prose being alike incapable of the hopeless reality:--