He chiefly lodges in convents during his rambles through Sicily, the inns being so very bad that they drive travellers away. He and his companion sleep in different convents, and are very well treated; but that scarcely evokes a word of thanks. Poor monks! they have a bad name in Protestant nations, and what would be praiseworthy in others is only an equivocal quality in them. This is very sad; that men who have bid farewell to the world should, on that very account, be considered hardly entitled to the bare rights of human beings. Yet go on, poor souls, in your vocation; your Master before you received the same treatment from the world, and you are not greater than He. Spencer meets one or two monks whom he likes pretty well--one was the superior of the Carmelites at Grirgenti. The rest he calls "stupid friars," "lazy monks," and so forth, according to the tone of mind he happens to be in. In one monastery they shut the door of the room allowed them in the face of one of the brethren, because, forsooth, they were "bored by visits from the monks." His journey does not always lie through convents, and he meets others who are not monks; one of these was a wine-merchant at Marsala, a native of England. It seems the pair of tourists were received as handsomely by their countryman as they had been by the "stupid friars," for he is thus described in the journal: "He seems to think himself commissioned to keep up the English character in a strange land, for he is a John Bull in caricature in his manner." We are also told, a little lower down, that he is very hospitable to all English who pass by that way. They had the novelty of seeing an {76} Italian Good Friday in Marsala; the impression is thus noted: "Friday, Mar. 31.--This was Good Friday. The first, and I hope the last, I shall spend without going to church; not that I should not like to be abroad another year. We were reminded of the day by quantities of groups representing the Passion and Crucifixion, almost as large as life, carried about on men's shoulders, which, absurd as they are, seemed to make an impression on the populace. Men dressed in black accompanied them, with crowns of thorns and crosses. It strikes me as direct idolatry, nearly. The gentry were all in mourning, and the sentinels had their muskets with the muzzles inverted. We all three (Sir H. Willoughby accompanied Barrington and Spencer) took a walk up to the top of Monte di Trapani, the ancient Eryx, where is a town of the same name. We examined what was to be seen there, and came down again to dinner. We dined at 6½, and had _some meat_, which we have not been able to get for some days, it being Passion Week." He spent Easter Sunday in Palermo, and here are his comments on its observance: