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318  actly those previously applied by his Norman ancestors in Sicily. And there, instead of fitfully for a few months or years at a time, this rapprochement lasted continuously for two centuries. There the peoples came really to know one another, and to react upon one another. It was the stronger elements in each of these various civilizations that survived. In art, science, and manufacture, in culture and philosophy, Orientalism, Greek and Arabic, prevailed. In war and politics Latinism was victorious. It was the high privilege of the Normans to preside over this fusion of the streams of mind, and right worthy directors of the movement they proved themselves to be. The Nemesis of history seems, however, to have grudged Sicily her good fortune. For the last time east and west, north and south, had met in arms upon the Trinacrian soil. Victory had remained with the west, and the allegiance to Constantinople, to Bagdad, to Cordova, and to Kairoan was forever broken. Nevertheless, the glorious independence of Sicily was but short-lived, and since she has ceased to be the battle-ground of rival civilizations she has remained outside the main stream of history.

We cannot resist noticing in a sentence or two how the three elements of which civilization in the Norman kingdom consisted have impressed themselves on the architecture of the country. Though the fusion itself is concealed by the mists of a distant past, at Palermo, Monreale ,and Cefalù we have abiding memorials of the fact. The interest of the subject has brought most competent observers into the field, and in the works of Hittorf and Zanth, of Gally Knight, and above all of Serra di Falco and Gravina, the principal buildings are laid before us in all their detail. With a few trifling exceptions, of which the most important is the baths at Cefalù, we have the high authority of Signor Amari for stating that no building of importance at present survives in Sicily which can be with certainty attributed to the period of Mussulman rule. The claims of the Cuba and the Zisa at Palermo have been conclusively disposed of. Nevertheless the great buildings of the period are in their essence, that is to say in the principle of construction, which is almost invariably that of the pointed arch, Saracenic. A typical example is to be found in the well-known Ponte d' Ammiraglio near Palermo. The Normans ordered the buildings, but it was the Saracens who were the actual builders. On the other hand Greek influence shows itself in the mosaic ornamentation, Latin in the form — the basilican — given to the ecclesiastical edifices. The wooden roofs at Cefalù and Monreale as contrasted with the Saracenic ceiling of the Capella Regia and the gradual but very slight admixture of figure sculpture in the west door of Monreale show that in some departments there was a struggle in progress. Into such details, and into the interesting subject of the south-Italian architecture of the period, illustrated by the magnificent work of Schulz, it is impossible to enter.

We have endeavoured to call attention to that part of the subject which is of most interest to the general reader — the condition of the subject nationalities. But there are many other respects in which the Norman kingdom in Sicily is well worthy of study. The jurist and political philosopher will find a mine of study in the constitutions of Roger, William, and Frederic, whilst the practical reformer may derive some useful hints therefrom on such subjects as medical education and sanitary regulation. The high-sounding title claimed by Roger of "king of Sicily, Italy, and Africa," suggests the manifold foreign relations in which a central Mediterranean state would be involved, a state holding in its dominion both shores of the inland sea. Many of the enigmas of the life and reign of Frederic II. can only be solved by a knowledge of the history of what was his true fatherland. It was the union of the crowns of the empire and "the kingdom" upon a single head that brought the struggle of the empire and the papacy to a crisis. The possession of the kingdom was worth the struggle; the loss of it was the loss of Italy. To the history of municipal institutions, to the history of commerce and of social life in Italy, the annals of the Norman kingdom make considerable contributions. And it was in Norman Sicily that the first words of Italian poetry were uttered, that Italian literature began. These subjects and others are all touched upon more or less by Signor Amari, whose work we cannot, in conclusion, on account of both its historical and literary value, too strongly recommend to our readers.

 

 From Chambers' Journal.

in the Hiogo News lately paid a visit to the great silver-mines of 