fix inches wide; they walk fide-ways like the fea-crab, dna are shaped like them: fome are black, fome yellow, fome red, and others variegated with red, white, and yellow, mixed. Some of these are poisonous; and feveral people have died of eating of the crabs, particularly of the black kind. The light-coloured are reckoned beft; and, when in full flesh, are very well tafted. In fome of the fugarislands they are eaten without danger; and are no small help to the negro flaves, who, on many of these islands would fare very hard without them.

SINGULAR CHARACTER at BAGARIA, near PALERMO.

(From Brydone's Tour through Sicily and Malta.) THE Prince of P, a man of immenfe fortune, has devoted his whole life to the study of monfters and chimeras, greater and more ridiculous than ever entered into the imagination of the wildeft writers of romance or knighterrantry.

The amazing crowd of ftatues that furround his houfe, appear at a distance like a little army drawn up for its defence; but when you get amongst them, and every one af fumes his true likeness, you may imagine you have got into the regions of delufion and enchantment; for of all that immenfe group, there is not one made to represent any object in nature; nor is the abfurdity of the wretched imagination that created them lefs aftonishing than it's wonderful fertility. It would require a volume to defcribe the whole, and a fad volume indeed it would make. He has put the heads of men to the bodies of every fort of animal, and the heads of every other animal to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a compound of five or fix animals that have no fort of resemblance in nature. He puts the head

of

AT BAGARIA, NEAR PALERMO.

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of a lion to the neck of a goofe, the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail of a fox. On the back of this monster, he puts another, if poffible ftill more hideous, with five or fix heads, and a bush of horns, that beats the beast in the Revelations all to nothing. There is no kind of horn in the world that he has not collected; and his pleasure is to fee them all flourishing upon the fame head. This is a ftrange fpecies of madnefs; and it is truly unaccountable that he has not been fhut up many years ago; but he is perfectly innocent, and troubles nobody by the indulgence of his phrenzy; on the contrary, he gives bread to a number of ftatuaries and other workmen, whom he rewards in proportion as they can bring their imaginations to coincide with his own; or, in other words, according to the hideousness of the monsters they produce. It would be idle and tiresome to be particular in an account of thefe abfurdities. The ftatues that adorn, or rather deform, the great avenue, and furround the court of the palace, amount already to fix hundred, notwithstanding which, it may be truly faid, that he has not broken the fecond commandment; for of all that number, there is not the likeness of any thing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. The old ornaments which were put up by his father, who was a fenfible man, appear to have been in a good tafte. They have all been knocked to pieces, and laid together in a heap, to make room for this new creation.

The infide of this inchanted caftle correfponds exactly with the out; it is in every respect as whimsical and fantastical, and you cannot turn yourself to any fide, where you are not stared in the face by fome hideous figure or other. Some of the apartments are spacious and magnificent, with high arched roofs; which, instead of plaifter or stucco, are compofed entirely of large mirrors, nicely joined to

gether.

gether. The effect that these produce (as each of them makes a small angle with the other) is exactly that of a multiplying glass; fo that, when three or four people are walking below, there is always the appearance of three or four hundred walking above. The whole of the doors are likewife covered over with fmall pieces of mirror, cut into the most ridiculous fhapes, and intermixed with a great variety of crystal and glafs of different colours. All the chimney-pieces, windows, and fide-boards, are crowded with pyramids and pillars of tea-pots, caudle-cups, bowls, cups, faucers, &c. ftrongly cemented together; fome of these columns are not without their beauty: one of them has a large china chamber-pot for its bafe, and a circle of pretty little flower-pots for its capital; the fhaft of the column, upwards of four feet long, is compofed entirely of tea-pots of different fizes, diminished gradually from the base to the capital. The profufion of China that has been em ployed in forming these columns is incredible; I dare fay there is not less than forty pillars and pyramids formed in this ftrange fantastic manner.-Most of the rooms are paved with fine marble tables of different colours, that look like fo many tomb-ftones. Some of these are richly wrought with lapis lazuli, porphyry, and other valuable ftones; their fine polifh is now gone, and they only appear Jike common marble; the place of these beautiful tables he has fupplied by a new fet of his own invention, fome of which are not without their merit. finest tortoife-shell mixed with and a variety of metals; and are mounted on fine stands of folid brass.

Thefe are made of the mother of pearl, ivory,

The windows of this inchanted caftle are composed of a variety of glafs of every different colour, mixed without any fort of order or regularity. Blue, red, green, yellow, purple, violet.-So that at each window, you may have the

heavens

AT BAGARIA, NEAR PALERMO.

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heavens and earth of whatever colour you chufe, only by looking through the pane that pleafes you. The houseclock is cased in the body of a statue; the eyes of the figure move with the pendulum, turning up their white and black alternately, and make a hideous appearance.

His bed-chamber and dreffing-room are like two apartments in Noah's ark; there is fcarcely a beaft, however vile, that he has not placed there; toads, frogs, ferpents, lizards, fcorpions, all cut out in marble, of their respective colours. There are a good many bufts too, that are not lefs fingularly imagined.-Some of these make a very handsome profile on one fide; turn to the other, and you have a skeleton; here you fee a nurse with a child in her arms; its back is exactly that of an infant; its face is that of a wrinkled old woman of ninety.

For fome minutes one can laugh at thefe follies, but indignation and contempt foon get the better of your mirth, and the laugh is turned into a fneer. I own I was foon tired of them; though some things are so strangely fancied; that it may well excufe a little mirth, even from the most rigid cynic.

The family ftatues are charming; they have been done from fome old pictures, and make a moft venerable appearance; he has dreffed them out from head to foot, in new and elegant fuits of marble; and indeed the effect it produces is more ridiculous than any thing you can conceive. Their fhoes are all of black marble, their stockings gene rally of red; their clothes are of different colours, blue, green, and variegated, with a rich old-fashioned lace. The perriwigs of the men and head-dreffes of the ladies are of fine white; fo are their fhirts, with long flowing ruffles of alabafter. The walls of the houfe are covered with fome fine baffo relievos of white marble in a good tafle; thefe he could not well take out, or alter, fo he has only

added

added immense frames to them. Each frame is compofed of four large marble tables.

The author and owner of this fingular collection is a poor miferable lean figure, fhivering at a breeze, and seems to be afraid of every body he speaks to. He is one of the richest subjects in the island, and it is thought he has not laid out less than 20,000l. in the creation of this world of monsters and chimeras.-He certainly might have fallen upon fome way to prove himself a fool at a cheaper rate. However, it gives bread to a number of poor people, to whom he is an excellent master. His houfe at Palermo is a good deal in the fame ftyle; his carriages are covered with plates of brafs, fo that fome of them are musquetproof.

The government have had ferious thoughts of demolishing the regiment of monsters he has placed round his house; but, as he is humane and inoffenfive, and as this would certainly break his heart, they have as yet forborne. However, the feeing of them by women with child is faid to have been already attended with very unfortunate circumstances; and ladies complain that they dare no longer take an airing in the Bagaria; that fome hideous form always haunts their imagination for fome time after: their hufbands too, it is faid, are as little fatisfied with the great variety of horns.

Remarkable Inftances of the SAGACITY of DOGS. The following Singular Account we have tranflated from the Semanier, a Paris Paper.

WILL it be unworthy of history-Will it be a departure from the respect I owe my readers, to preserve the memory of a Dog, who poured out his life with grief upon the afhes of the man whofe hand had nourished him? A few

days