Syracuse attracted notice for the sake of the past rather than the present. The very cathedral was formed out of the old temple of Athene; the fountain of Arethusa, shorn of its glories, appeared only as “a great pool, full of washerwomen;” the town itself, shrunk to the little island of Ortygia, was but a symbol of the wretched and degraded state in which the island then was.[17] The two harbours (“the smaller paved with marble, with rings for the fastening of galleys”) and the distinct traces of the other quarters of the old city were the only objects of much interest. Taormina (Tauromenium) struck them more forcibly by its magnificent position, and its strange juxta-position of the great Greek theatre, Roman baths, Saracenic tombs, and Franciscan convent. Messina, putting aside its beauty of situation, showed them little except the great hospitals (grand in conception, scale, and revenue, but miserable in arrangement, and restricted in usefulness), and the great prison, with its horrible dungeons and torture chambers, full of memories of recent cruelty, and even then unworthy of a civilized Government. At Girgenti (Agrigentum) the profusion of remains, and the magnificent scale of the temples, especially the great temple of the Olympian Zeus, invited very careful study and criticism, in which are clearly seen the effects of his Egyptian travels. But of all places in Sicily, Palermo was clearly far the richest in interest, and not unworthy “of one of the finest situations in the world.”[18] The cathedral at Palermo, and the palace and chapel at Monreale, gave him his first introduction to that peculiar architecture, full of Saracenic and Byzantine influence, which is so interesting to all students of the early Gothic styles. He was much struck with its picturesque character, and especially with the richness of the mosaic decorations, and the use of external colours. It hardly approved itself to his taste; for it was too irregular, and too merely picturesque. Still it was examined with a care and respect, which showed the growing importance of Gothic in his mind, and the recollection probably bore fruit in after-times. But the choicest records of his Sicilian expedition were unhappily lost. A large portfolio of sketches (probably some of the best he ever made) was stolen from the vessel in which he was to return home; and, in spite of all inquiry and search, no trace of it was ever recovered.