One of the most celebrated rock-churches is the grotto of St. Rosolia, the patroness of Palermo. This illustrious lady was niece to King William the Good, and, as the legends inform us, no less remarkable for her beauty than for her virtues, which made her the admiration of all Sicily. Never was a princess more fitted to adorn society; but the world had so few attractions for a spirit that could only breathe in the pure regions of piety, that, at the age of fifteen, she retired to the solitary mountains, and, from the date of her disappearance, in 1159, was never more heard of for about five hundred years. The people thought she had been taken up to heaven, as the fitting abode for her more than human perfections; but in the year 1624, during the time of a dreadful plague, a holy man had a vision that the saint’s bones were lying in a cave near to the top of the Monte Pellegrino, and that if these were taken up with due reverence and carried in procession thrice round the walls of the city, they should immediately be delivered from the scourge. The bones were accordingly sought and found, thrice carried round the town, as the vision had described, and the plague suddenly ceased. From that time St. Rosolia was revered as the patron saint of Palermo, and the remote cave where she probably spent many years of her solitary life, became one of the most renowned sanctuaries of the Catholic Church, and the resort of innumerable pilgrims. The mountain is extremely high, and so steep that before the discovery of St. Rosolia it was looked upon as almost inaccessible; but a fine road, very properly termed La Scala, or the stair, has been cut out in the rock, and leads from terrace to terrace, over almost perpendicular precipices, to the entrance of the holy grotto, which is situated near the very top of the mountain, and commands a magnificent prospect. Within two miles of the foot of the mountain, the eye discerns the city of Palermo, with its beautiful villas and luxuriant gardens, and then, taking a wider range, glances to the north, over the dark blue sea bounded by the Lipari Islands and the ever-fuming cone of Stromboli; while to the east a large portion of Etna, although at the distance of almost the whole length of Sicily, towers like a giant above the minor mountain chains. A church and other buildings, forming a kind of court yard, where some priests reside, appointed to watch over the treasures of the place, and to receive the offerings of pilgrims that visit them, have been erected round the grotto.