My first day I strolled over the town and delivered my letters to Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Fagan. The latter is an antiquarian and a great digger. He told me, I think, that he had dug up over two hundred statues in his time. I called on him several times afterwards, pleased with his conversation and hoping to learn something of Sicily from him, and found him exceedingly polite. A return of the fever I had in Malta confined me again for a few days, after which I managed to keep it at bay with plenty of port wine and bark. My chief friends in Palermo were General and Mrs. Campbell, Sir Robert Laurie, captain of a 74 lying here, Lord William Bentinck, generalissimo of the British army of occupation in Sicily, and Fagan. After a fortnight in Palermo I started on a trip to Segeste. I could not but be very much struck by the difference between the richness of Sicily, and the desolation of Greece under Turkish rule. Mahomet II. desired that on his tomb should be written that had he lived he proposed in the ensuing summer to conquer 'the beautiful Italy and the island of Rhodes.' Sicily must have followed, and I pictured in my mind the landscape as it would then have looked. A few ruined mosques would have supplied the place of the splendid churches and monasteries, and a wretched khan and a few low huts the rich towns of Sala and Partinico. The temple of Segeste is the largest I have seen, but it looks as if it had never been finished. The style of workmanship is good and exact, but as far inferior to Athenian execution as its rough stone is to Pentilican marble. The turn of the capital is very inferior in delicacy to Athenian examples, and there is no handsome finish to the ceiling of the peristyle, which was probably of plaster like Ægina. The circular sinking cut in the plinth to receive the column, leaving a space all round to give a play, it is said, in case of earthquake, is certainly curious if that was the purpose of it. Nothing whatever remains of the cella. In the evening we returned to Alcamo and next day breakfasted with Colonel Burke, who is in command of a regiment of 1,400 fine men, all Piedmontese and Italians, not Sicilians. One finds Englishmen in command everywhere. Returned to Palermo. My fame had spread in my absence, and on my return I found my table covered with cards and invitations--the most conspicuous being from General Macfarlane and Lord Montgomery. The palaces of the Sicilian nobles are exasperatingly pretentious and tasteless; that of Palagonia is an unforgetable nightmare. Though a paradise compared with Greece, I find Sicily seething with discontent; and were it not for Lord W. Bentinck, to whom the people look up as the only honest man amongst the authorities, there would be an insurrection.