New England Religious Herald

CONDITION OF SICILY.

A letter dated Messina, March 10th, published in the Newark Daily Advertiser, contains the following paragraphs:

The other day was the King's birth-day, and by way of commencing the festivities they shot one poor fellow in whose possession a musket had been found the day before. Summary justice this! They made quick work with one armed man, but not so with a large body of armed people; witness Ferdinand at Rome, when Garibaldi came out with his undisciplined four thousand, against thirty thousand Neapolitan regulars: why the blood-thirsty bombastic and coward rode to death two horses in scampering back to Naples! What a waste of honest brutes to save the life of such a beast as King Ferdinand! He will need to ride to death more horses still or lose his anointed head, for never was hatred more intense than that which pervades nine-tenths of his wretched subjects and victims. I have witnessed this feeling at Naples as well as here. Down in the dust as the people are, they still gnash their teeth on their oppressors with an intense hatred. To us they fondly look for aid. Ah! it is pitiful to hear their complaints, to receive their embraces—bestowed when no Neapolitan spy is near—to see them kiss our flag, our epaulettes, and even our buttons.

They bide their time patiently, not in hope, but in thirst for vengeance. Remnants of old and noble families, of which the flower has been cut off and their rich possessions confiscated, 'for the crime of emulating the heroes who founded our republic,' still devote the lives that are left to them in nursing the thought of liberty, and hoard, as the last and most precious of their wealth, a few rusty muskets, hidden among the tombs, or buried in the bosom of the earth, awaiting the resurrection which shall yet raise them to a terrible use. All Sicily is planted full of these dragon's teeth; they will spring up some day, and at some vesper hour. There is a reality about all this that makes our northern and southern questions, tariff and bank questions, seem all but ridiculous, and our congressional spoutings about patriotism appear like mere stage-mouthing or puppet show. Let those mad disunionists come here, contemplate and weep over the funeral state of this goodly land, and then return to weep over their follies and their sins.