y
glory of mosaics nor the gemmed fretwork of storied windows was
needed to attune the souls of Hellenic worshippers to devotion.

Less vast than Monreale, but even more beautiful, because the charm
of mosaic increases in proportion as the surface it covers may be
compared to the interior of a casket, is the Cappella Palatina of
the royal palace in Palermo. Here, again, the whole design and
ornament are Arabo-Byzantine. Saracenic pendentives with Cuphic
legends incrust the richly painted ceiling of the nave. The roofs of
the apses and the walls are coated with mosaics, in which the Bible
history, from the dove that brooded over Chaos to the lives of S.
Peter and S. Paul, receives a grand though formal presentation.
Beneath the mosaics are ranged slabs of grey marble, edged and
divided with delicate patterns of inserted glass, resembling drapery
with richly embroidered fringes. The floor is inlaid with circles of
serpentine and porphyry encased in white marble, and surrounded by
winding bands of Alexandrine work. Some of these patterns are
restricted to the five tones of red, green, white, black, and pale
yellow. Others add turquoise blue, and emerald, and scarlet, and
gold. Not a square inch of the surface--floor, roof, walls, or
cupola--is free from exquisite gemmed work of precious marbles. A
candelabrum of fanciful design, combining lions devouring men and
beasts, cranes, flowers, and winged genii, stands by the pulpit.
Lamps of chased silver hang from the roof. The cupola blazes with
gigantic archangels, stationed in a ring beneath the supreme figure
and face of Christ. Some of the Ravenna churches are more
historically interesting, perhaps, than this little masterpiece of
the mosaic art. But none is so rich in detail and lustrous in
effect. It should be seen at night, when the lamps are lighted in a
pyramid around the sepulchre of the dead Christ on Holy Thursday,
when partial gleams strike athwart the tawny gold of the arches, and
fall upon the profile of a priest declaiming in voluble Italian to a
listening crowd.

Such are a few of the monuments which still remain to show of what
sort was the mixed culture of Normans, Saracens, Italians, and
Greeks at Palermo. In scenes like these the youth of Frederick II.
was passed:--for at the end, while treating of Palermo, we are bound
to think again of the Emperor who inherited from his German father
the ambition of the Hohenstauffens, and from his Norman mother the
f