studies were confirmed in many instances by personal observation, and the practical value of whose undertaking was established by his scientific attainments as well as by the copious erudition of the illustrious monarch by whose command it originated and was brought to a successful termination. In the exact sciences the Arabs of Sicily attained to a proficiency unsurpassed by any nation since the glorious days of the Alexandrian Museum, and, in fact, they appropriated and absorbed much of the knowledge bequeathed to posterity by that immortal institution. Their geometers applied that knowledge to the improvement of hydraulic apparatus, to the increase in power and efficiency of military engines, to astronomical observations which facilitated the explorations of the navigator, to a thousand inventions which promoted the convenience and the happiness of domestic life. The leisure of the emirs and of the Norman princes was amused, and the literary ambition of their accomplished courtiers excited, by the recitations of famous bards, who, in a land which still cherished the memory of the incomparable poetic inspiration of Greece and Rome, competed for the applause of an audience in whose eyes ready improvisation and extravagant metaphors were infallible tokens of the highest excellence. Of such a character were the material civilization, the scientific achievements, the intellectual culture of Moorish and Norman Sicily. Its glories have long since departed. Of the hundreds of palaces and mosques whose majestic and elegant proportions were the pride of the Moslem cities, not one has escaped the destructive touch of plebeian vandalism and ecclesiastical hatred. The Sicilian population, from being one of the most cultivated, has degenerated into the most ignorant of Catholic Europe. The suburbs of Palermo, once the abode of every science and of every art, are now so infested with brigands that they cannot be traversed in safety by the traveller without the protection of an armed guard. For the medical experience and skilful offices of the surgeon have been substituted arduous penance and the application of suspicious, often spurious relics. Intellectual liberty and religious toleration have been supplanted by the repression of thought, by the discouragement of every noble impulse, by the tyranny of a superstition which degrades the mind and enfeebles every aspiration which can promote the material welfare of humanity.