tended to be dark. A few exceptions are sometimes to be found, for by subjecting the dead to a certain curative process—which costs about ten pounds sterling—the monks can preserve for a longer time the hair, eyes, and a semblance of the flesh which formerly clothed their mummies. Some wealthy belles, who died early, have had by this means their bodies preserved from hideous ugliness; and a few wealthy matrons can, owing to the same cause, pray before defunct babies who in some slight degree recal the faces and the forms which they bore when living. These objects are pointed out with considerable pride by the Capuchins. In them they evidently see so many chefs d’œuvres of art, and with the irresistible tendency of human beings to lavish favours on the well-conditioned, say twice as many prayers for their eternal happiness as they do for their more numerous but less flourishing companions.
The proverb, “What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” may thus be rendered in Palermo, “What’s poison to the living is preservation to the dead.” Among the Palermitans the arsenic, which in life would destroy, preserves them when dead from decomposition. They are, when able to afford it, carefully washed with soap of arsenic; and a strong preparation of salts of that mineral is injected into them previous to their being dried, and suspended from the walls. Glass eyes are, at considerable expense, stuck into the heads of these mummies. But of all the animal creation men, or women either, are the least becoming when they have departed from the land of the living. The hairy skin and ferocious character of the hyena or the tiger, exhibited in our museums of Natural History, do not allow their false optics to appear unnaturally glaring; but the glass eyes in the caves of Palermo glisten fearfully, and have in them all that wild and aimless stare which so alarmed Macbeth when Banquo’s ghost rose up before him.
By some decree of distributive justice the old, when washed and filled with salts of arsenic, last much longer than the young, and are less revolting to the senses of the visitors. Those who die of age preserve for centuries; but the victims of fever, small-pox, and accidental injuries, consume quickly to mere skeletons if not subjected to every curative process of the monks, and from the difficulty there is in drying them rarely do honour to the fathers’ skill. The same is said of children and of those who are carried off by consumption. The bones of the latter are also very perishable. They rarely last for more than twenty years, and frequently fall into dust in less than half that period.
The disorder already noticed should not be entirely thrown upon the shoulders of the unhappy monks who pass their lives in this Necropolis, the most dismal in the world. In Sicily, as elsewhere, there is a strong desire in the living to be placed when lifeless among their deceased progenitors and kindred. Relations have also their peculiar fancies about the most becoming attitude or posture for defunct friends. Some prefer to see them standing, others suspended, or perhaps sitting. It is therefore utterly impossible to make a general classification according to position, age, sex, or date of entrance. That can only be effected in dealing with those for whom nobody cares, or whose descendants are so far removed by time as to forget all about them.
But there are in Palermo some monks in whose heads the bump of order dominates, and who have preserved in an orderly condition several cases where the occupants are as regularly classified and catalogued as are the pictures in the Louvre or Versailles. The three first galleries contained in them, and exclusively devoted to monks, are submitted to certain regulations never infringed on by the confraternity or any member of it. So are those exclusively set apart for women. The virgins’ galleries are also very methodically arranged. They are well dusted, swept, and garnished, and hung round with walnut-cases, oblong and narrow, which remind one of an old-fashioned eight-day clock. The survivors of these maidens evidently thought that beauty was no vain thing, for in the cases alluded to, there is a curious display of the finery of the toilette. The widows are not in every instance very gaily attired, but the virgins invariably wear crowns of flowers which were once white, and carry palm branches in their hands. They are objects of peculiar veneration; and are prayed to as frequently as they were prayed for by their fellow citizens, although not one of them yet figures in the saintly calendar. White gowns are not the only ones they wear; some are clad in silks or satins or gauzes or tissues, flowered, watered, and brocaded in what were once the brightest colours. Their gauze veils are trimmed with the costliest embroidery, for Palermitan fathers and mothers are more particular about the funeral trousseaux of their children than they are about their wedding garments, and lovers whom death has deprived of their adored ones are allowed to spend their money in buying them handsome clothes. Ardent Sicilians are often to be found in floods of tears contemplating the faces of maidens along with whom they had hoped to have passed their lives, or not unfrequently apostrophising them in the most impassioned manner. A monk always accompanies them whenever they visit the virgins’ gallery. Many are the touching stories which the Capuchins tell of the constancy or ardour of lovers. If they be all true, it would be difficult to say whether constancy or inconstancy is attended in this world with the worst effects, for there are as often among the mummified maidens those who came there because they were the victims of misplaced affection, as those who are followed by despairing men or youths, many of whom very quickly find consolation in the smiles of others, while some end by assuming the cowl and frock for the purpose of passing the rest of their lives in watching, in the quality of Capuchins, the remains of their deceased inamoratas.
Traditions of a romantic tinge are associated with some Violettas, Julias, and Rosalies in walnut cases; but their charm is lost when told in the presence of those whose loveliness, faults, follies, or misfortunes, they hand down to posterity. A rude poem, through which runs the volcanic fire of the south of Europe, celebrates a