It was a stronghold originally; built on these heights for the greater security of the islanders against Saracenic inroads. When a more peaceful era drew night the population began to decline; they found it more convenient to establish themselves in the new settlement lower down. Then came the Good Duke Alfred--that potentate who, as Mr. Eames was wont to say, NIHIL QUOD TETIGIT NON ORNAVIT. He took a fancy to this quaint old citadel which, before his day, could only be reached b a rough mule-track easily defended against invaders. After constructing a fine road of access with many twists and turnings, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his roomy state carriages driving abreast, he turned his mind to other improvements. Professing to be an admirer of the good old times, he decided to keep up its traditional character--it was to remain a fortress, in appearance if not reality. A massive crenellated rampart, furnished with four gateways and watch-towers at convenient intervals but serving no purpose in particular, grew up around the place; every one of its houses which failed to fit in with the design of this battlemented structure--and there were a good many of them--was ruthlessly demolished. The Old Town was enclosed in a ring. Desirous, next, of putting an end to the annoying exodus of the natives, he fixed by law the number of inhabitants; there were to be five hundred souls, neither more nor less. If in any one year the population exceeded that figure, the surplus was taken away, from among the adult males, to work as galley-slaves in his fleet; a deficiency in the requisite number was met by giving new husbands from the lower town, often three or four at a time "with a view to ensuring good results," to those of the native women who had hitherto failed to produce offspring. The system worked well. With some trifling but reprehensive fluctuations, the birth-rate and the death-rate remained even; things were at a standstill; a fact which caused His Highness to be compared, by a courtly panegyrist, to Joshua who bade the sun arrest his march across the heavens. Another of these gentlemen calls the Duke's action a "triumph of art over nature," adding, not without a grain of malice, that "never have the generative capacities of mankind adapted themselves with more conspicuous success to the shape of an unnecessary wall." Monsignor Perrelli, unfortunately, has nothing whatever to say on the subject. For reasons which will appear anon, he is remarkably silent on all that concerns the reign of his great contemporary.