senses and ordered him to ring the bell for his master, in order to make out my bill, for I could not stay in a house where I was thus brutally insulted. He would do nothing of the kind. I rang the bell, most violently, myself. The poor fellow began to beg a thousand pardons, and besought, and cried, and promised wonderful obedience; I could not stand all that, and forgave him. This will give you an idea what Maltese Roman Catholics think. To me this little episode is voluminous.

I have already extended this letter longer than I intended; I must, therefore, without any further preliminaries to my conclusion, say farewell.

Had I any time to spare whilst at Malta, I would assuredly have written to you from thence; but multifarious were the engagements I had to attend to; numerous and diversified were the queries I was called upon to answer; so that I could not possibly manage such a letter as I should have liked to have penned to you from that island. However, I am at perfect liberty at present, and have a good deal of time on hand; and as the weather is so perfectly beautiful as to enable me to do anything I like with my time, I devote therefore the first of the same to your Ladyship's service. This being Sunday-the first

one during my present expedition that I am deprived of the attendance of the house of God-I feel rather lowspirited. Never did I feel the force of the Psalmist's strong expressions of desire for the house of God as I do this day. Well might the sweet and pathetic royal singer of Israel have envied the sparrow and the swallow, when he was debarred from attending the "courts of the Lord."*

Unfortunately there is only one Protestant on deck, and he a mere Christian by name; I could not, therefore, read our beautiful Liturgy and appointed lessons publicly; but I was not prevented doing so privately. Jehovah is accessible to the meanest of his servants, so that the lonely wanderer, be he in the desert or on the ocean, is sure at any moment of a gracious audience. And as our beautiful Liturgy is suitable for all sorts and conditions of men, I determined to hold communion with "the Lord of the Sabbath" and my fellow-Christians by the means of the service appointed for this day, in the doing of which I found great comfort and consolation. The Psalms, LXXXVI-LXXXVIII; the Lessons, Joel II. Luke III; Epistle and Gospel, Eph. v. 15-21; Matt. XXII. 1-14, are all fraught with the most important and essential instruction, as well as with the most heart-stirring interest.

Since my head is now running on churches, I will take the opportunity of giving your Ladyship a bird's-eye view of San Giovanni, in the Fior del Mondo, as the ardent and devoted Maltese surname their island. It is the church of which Lord Lindsay and M. Alphonse de Lamartine speak in the most rapturous terms. I visited that noble edifice several times. Diverse were the impressions

* Psalm LXXxiv. 3.

ones.

which were produced upon me at my different visits. I shared largely in your noble cousin's enthusiasm during my first view into it; but not so during the subsequent The reason is simply this: at my first inspection of that gorgeous structure, I found it almost empty; an overpowering stillness reigned within it, which proved conducive to the exercise of contemplation; and my mind was allowed to indulge, without interruption, in the examination of the various relics, which still adorn its walls and ceilings. But not so during my subsequent visits. My attention was distracted by the conduct of the worshippers within its walls, and my thoughts dwelt more particularly on the melancholy condition of those deluded devotees. Poor, poor people! how dark their understanding is studiously kept!

Were I to put to paper all the reflections which such spectacles caused me to make, some would stigmatize me as an arrant cant; others would brand me as an outrageous bigot, I thought it therefore best to leave my mind's cogitations whilst inside San Giovanni, in the inside of my large portfolio, and not submit them to the criticism of my friends, especially as I cannot be present to vindicate and justify my statements. However, those lamentable reflections did not altogether obliterate the impressions my mind received at my first examination of that church. Some vestiges remain still moving before me. Indeed, it were an unpardonable shame, to allow the parapharnalia of so sumptuous and august a building wholly to escape one's memory in so short a time, be the obliterating cause ever so great. It is sober and unvarnished truth, and by no means fictitious or poetical, when I tell your Ladyship that whilst I am penning these lines to you, the effect of my first visit to that church is flashing upon my mind most

brilliantly, and I fancy that I have the whole of the curiously beautiful furniture and ornaments of San Giovanni vividly before me just now. It is pictured before

me in all its correctness. I behold its vaulted roof of gilded arabesque, painted in fresco, representing the acts of St. John, the patron saint of that church. I almost fancy before me the delighted features of Mattia―a Calabrian priest; the artist, after gazing proudly on his finished work, which must have sent a thrill of peculiar gratefulness into his high feelings and creative master-mind. I also remember a very fine picture in the Chapel of Election, by Michel Angelo de Carravaggio, the subject of which is the beheading of St. John the Baptist. M. de Lamartine, who never speaks but in the superlative, of whom, therefore, you can never be positive, makes use of the following words respecting that picture: "C'est le tableau que cherchent les peintres de l'école actuelle. Le voilà, il est trouvé. Qu'ils ne cherchent plus." I feel a sort of pleasure that the rapacious French did not get hold of the splendid silver rails which guard the chapel of the Madonna. I think the monk, who painted them over with wood colour, deserves great credit for his ingenuity. The Knights used to exhibit, in that Church, the hand of St. John. Grand Master Homepesch, when he surrendered the island to the French, bargained for leave to remove that extraordinary curiosity with him. Permission was granted, as far as the useless hand was concerned; but the permission did not extend to the ornamental part of it. The magnificent ring, with the inestimable diamond, which decorated the middle finger of that canonized hand, Napoleon secured, with his usual insatiable grasp.

In view of the Island of Pantellaria.

The pavement of that building is strikingly beautiful. It consists of the tombstones of the Knights, which are of the finest marble, exquisitely polished; the epitaphs and the arms on the respective tablets, as well as the colouring and precious stones which adorn them, form in their united effect one vast escutcheon on a rich mosaic expanse; many of the tablets contain jasper, agate, and other precious stones, the cost of which must have amounted to no small sum. When dining with the Bishop of Gibraltar, the other day, he related a circumstance which illustrated the appreciation of the native Maltese for the pavement of that church. When Dr. Tomlinson visited Rome last, he was accompanied by a Maltese pet servant. The Bishop took him to see St. Peter's, which church rather startled the native of "Fior del Mondo," who thought nothing could surpass St. John's, of Malta. Dr. and Miss Tomlinson asked him, saying: "Well, Giovanne; which church is more stupendous and gorgeous, this or that of San Giovanni, of Malta?" The Bishop's domestic dropped his eyes upon the floor of the church, and said, "Who would ever think of comparing the pavement of those two churches ?" The Gibraltar diocesan considered that evasion and equivocation remarkably well done. But I must not indulge in many digressions, notwithstanding I am at sea. To return therefore to the grand Church of La Valetta. The principal altar, which is situated at the top of the oblong nave, is very sumptuous. It is composed

of various coloured marble, and other valuable stone. Before the altar, on the right and on the left, there is a sort of platform, on which stand chairs covered with rich canopies of crimson velvet; the former is occupied