Just a step from the theatres, in another of these unforgettable gardens of long ago, the _Villa Landolina_, the German poet, Count Von Platen, is buried. And in the Museum of Siracusa there is a lovely object, likewise from this same garden, the _Landolina Venus_. Headless, without arms, she stands upon a pedestal in a dim, pink room in which there is no other object. After you look at it in the twilight, they open a window and fling the day upon it, and the marble is of a texture so unusual it seems upon the moment to palpitate, to breathe, to live again, because beauty never dies. It is form divine. It was made in an age when there were still many people who could appreciate form. It is said to have been one of the treasures of Heliogabulus who gave it to Siracusa, a city he loved. What heart-fire in the antique world! And in how many ancient tongues we have heard men say they loved cities. The next morning early I went back again to the Museum. I offered my entrance fee, five lire. The keeper shook his head. Are you not going to let me see it? I gasped. Yes Madame. But you who know beauty may go in always free. Over Siracusa, in summer, bends a sky of blue enamel as unbroken and changeless in hue as the sky of Africa. And along the streets and country ways are flowering trees, wisteria-blue, gold and white, and hibiscus-pink, which add to the enchantment. It was to a friend in Sicily, I think his name was Lucillus, that Seneca wrote letters of wisdom. And once in a while he used to mention what he termed _the world renowned mountain, Ætna_. Seneca wrote to him: If you would be free you must be poor, or else you must make yourself like unto the poor. Wisdom is a peculiar treasure, Seneca goes on to explain; you begin to acquire it as you lose everything else. And Tu Fu, a Chinese poet of the Eighth Century, wrote: _It is only the beggar who sings._ That kind of perception and that freedom of mind is lost. One finds the minds of these great thinkers of old something firm among the shifting ages. In the present flux they are safe to anchor to. As a nation, as a people, we are not old enough to appreciate such statements. Money can not buy anything that is genuinely fine. Only the invisible coin of the soul can purchase the genuine. The age that worships money, measures with money, is an age both base and stupid. José Maria de Heredia wrote some of his most splendid sonnets about Sicily. He says in one of them, that it is Ætna that ripens best the purple and gold of the wine. We learn that here Greek blood unites in the veins with Saracen fury, and imperial pride of France. But time passes and everything dies. Even marble grows old and worn. Agrigenti (_Girgenti_) is nothing but a shadowy ruin, and Great Siracusa, (once most populous and powerful city of the Mediterranean world), dozes dully under the too blue sky. But metal lives. And today metal coins keep the rare perfection of profile of Sicilian maids.