Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/454

464 every portion of the building with the loveliest symbols of life. Every pillar possesses individuality, every ornament significance and language. The whole history of creation is exhibited in pictures on a gold ground—childish in conception, laughable in execution, but in which the eyes, the glances, often beam with wonderful power. So in particular in the head of Christ in the great fresco painting on the roof of the choir. And this glance, this expression of the spirit, I have often observed in many paintings here. It occurs to me that it lies latent in the people, whose expression of earnestness and mildness strikes one very agreeably after the street population of Naples. At Palermo one sees the churches full of devout people, though the devotion may be somewhat sleepy—but can it be otherwise, during a spiritless form of worship.

The male population—almost the only one you see in the streets—appears, for the rest, to have a particular enjoyment in doing nothing. You see them sitting in long rows, or hanging to the stone-benches, of which there are so many, in the squares and along the Marina, talking leisurely or saying nothing. You often see on the Marina a crowd of two or three hundred sitting, as in a little theatre, round an improvisatore or story-teller, who relates, with animated gestures, some legend or historical romance, to which they listen attentively and silently. Guitar players or shepherds with the zampogna—the bag-pipe which is now heard every day in Palermo, as at this time in Rome, are always sure of collecting a little audience around them; but whether from mere inoccupation or