Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-05-03

| life, the entire nobility ana aristocracy of
Sicily. rich or beggared, seem housed within
Palmeros walls. While the shops and
cafes are very beautiful, the street facades
above present grotesque commingling oi
sunken galleries like cioisters, colon.
naded fronts of the most classic severity
and projecting balconies as graceful and
delicate as may anywhere be found in
Southern Spain.
At all hours of the day the streets, which
for the most part are exceedingly narrow,
swarm with priests, officers, mobiles and pic
turesque mountaineers, with every manner
of the lowly city folk of the south; while
carpenters, tailors, coopers, cobblers lock-
smiths, and the various petty artisans, un-
concerned for the comfort of pedestrians,
pursue their several vocations with delight
full conscious Importance entirely outside
their shop doors. gossipiHg, whistling and
singing, adding much to the picturesque
confusion of the thoroughfares. Indeed in
no other part of the world have come upon
such melodious activities. Everybody
huns, whistles or sings as he labors; and
not infrequently is the passer halted and en-
thralled by the delicious abandon with
which some laborer, unconscious o. his own
melodic power, pours forth unframed but
perfect notes rising as clear and loud above
the distracting sounds of the street as the
lark's song above the chIrpings about farm
house and meadow.
Unlike the custom in Spain and some
| Italian provinces, where women are treated
as persons requiring never-endIng sur
veillance, in Sicily, and particularly in
Palermo, no hateful restrictions of this ma
ture seem to be required. Women are seen
| in the streets, shops and cafes as tree from
| any restraint, and universally treated with
as much respect and consideration, as in
America. Indeed, if there is difference it
is in favor of the SiciIian man, whose
courtesy and chivalry are astounding and
endless.
CHARMING SICILIAN WOMEN.
This gives the traveller most gratifying OPP
portunity for the study of Italian women in
Sicily; and most unhesitatingly pronounce
these of Palermo more vivacious than
French women, more beautiful than
the best examples of Spanish female
loveliuess; and more graceful and al
together sparkling and charming than
any have elsewhere seen. NV own OBJ
servation disclosed singular condition OF
Contrasts. 1t would seem that the aristo-
cratic women of Palermo possess all the
beauty to be found among the women of the
city; the females among the lowly being a
sad lot of mournful-faced, slow-paced, idle
scrags. The reverse is usually true, as the
painters will tell you, in Mediterranean
countries. On the other hand, the male
members of the nobility and aristocracy, and
even the clergy, who as class are usually
men of hne stature and bearing, are a most
Insignificant lot of swarthy skin-and-bone
fellows, ''chicken-breasted" or bumped,
with cadaverous faces, claw-like hands, and
limbs that would discredit the skeleton de-
partment Of a well-ordered anatomical mu-
scum. A singular contrast to these are the
men among the lowly-excepting the fisher
men, who seem to be as skinny set as the
nobilitv-whose forms and bearing illustrate
the real aristocracy in which nature often
molds her least-iavored creations. They are
perfect In form, straight 1.-the, beaming
with good nature, and in all but dress and
environment, seem prototypes OF the real
cavaliers that romance and chivalry picture
to us as having existed sin days OF old when
knights were bold, and barons held their
sway"
But if the sunny days in Palermo are full
of light, beauty and picturesqueness, the
nights bring with them the real splendor
and luxuriousness of this matchless city of
the South. There is music everywhere. In
a thousand halflighted balconies are groups
of men and women chatting in low. musical
tones or listening to the sweet notes OF man
dolin or guitar; in countless entrades backed |
by courts filled with rich lights, plants,
flowers and quaint corridors in an almost |
Oriental perspective, are families with |
friends seated half out upon the street. and |
and here, there and everywhere. |
upon the housetops,
IN LUXURIOUS GARDENS
are merry crowds singing, playing, dancing. |
Melody in word, laugh and song. and from
musical instrument of every kind-nothing |
load and sonorous, but everything soft and |
In harmonious chords |
above and over and through the soundful |
streets. You may be alone and not OF it, but |
it is all-compassing and it possesses you.
You know it not, yet it has the loving |
of the universal voice of mirth
and music. 1t is in strange tongue, yet 1t
Is as plain to you as the unthought joy OF
blessed childhood. Then, from the half
seen, wholly ielt scenes of melodious mirth,
look upon the splendid nightly carnival
pouring out of the Corso into the glorious
Marina. Fully 10000 equipages, filled with
richly attired and merry occupants may be
seen. Three times that number of pedes-
trians look down from the upper Marina.
Military bands discourse the sensuous airs
IF Italy. In this concourse OF per-
naps $4,000 souls rudeness and clamor
ire unknown. Every frequenter of
;he Marina only intensifes the everywhere
mani est chivalrous courtesy and considera-
ion so Distinguishing this great outdoor re-
,eption room of great city. 1t Is not until
after midnight that the crowds seem to di-
ninish; Tor it is made a sort of social obliga-
lion upon every gentleman and lady of the
,ity to be present at some time during the
evening. Then from midnight on, by an
1nwritten law, another sort of life has the
.tfrhf nf .-Ao
which Italians have few agonized philoso-
Dhies: but it is as much part OF this South
,rn life and cline as that strange brown
lower of the South, which only exhales
,dor from its dropping foliage by starlight,
S an enchanting and sensuous type of
lime and nature that In no hour cease their
warm and glowing activities.
FAMOUS OLD MONASTERY.
Of the hundreds of religious edifces of
great age and exceeding interest in and
lbout Palermo, the stranger will lincer
Ongest at the church and monastery of Sam
% Spirito famous as the scene of the sad
ragedy of the Sicilian Vespers, on March
90 1882, and its Campo Santo for the lowIy
lead, where there are 365 stone pits, COW
,red with stone slabs, into one OF which the
lead of n single day of the year are cast with
consuming quicklime, to remain undis-
uFUeu uuIll tho salut udy OI Tie succeeding |
rear; the huge convent of San Martine and
of Monreale. built by William
I, to outrival the greatest religious edfices
# Northern Europe; the Royal Chapel,
With its marvellous mosaics, finished in 1882;
he interesting Saracenic relics of La Cuba
md La Elsa; and the magnificent Cathedral
II Duomo) with its mighty sarcophagi
where repose the ashes of the royal
Iormans, King Roger l., his daugh-
er, Constantia, and Emperor Fred
rick IL; but the most weird and
fas Ill hn falt In Al.. L