text:  Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian _locanda_ is plainly out of question and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said verse and prose being alike incapable of the hopeless reality:-- "Lodged for the night O Muse! begin To sing the true Sicilian inn Where the sad choice of six foul cells The least exacting traveller quells (Though crawling things not yet in sight Are waiting for the shadowy night To issue forth when all is quiet And on your feverish pulses riot;) Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground By crusts stale-bones and garbage bound; Where unmolested spiders toil Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil; Where the cheap crucifix of lead Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed; Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep Its promise to confiding sleep Till you have forced it to its goal In the bored brick-work's crumbling hole; Where in loose flakes the white-wash peeling From the bare joints of rotten ceiling Give token sure of vermin's bower And swarms of bugs that bide their hour! Though bands of fierce musquittos boom Their threatening bugles round the room To bed! Ere wingless creatures crawl Across your path from yonder wall And slipper'd feet unheeding tread We know not what! To bed! to bed! What can those horrid sounds portend? Some waylaid traveller near his end From ghastly gash in mortal strife Or blow of bandit's blood-stained knife? No! no! They're bawling to the _Virgin_ Like victim under hands of surgeon! From lamp-lit _daub_ proceeds the cry Of that unearthly litany! And now a train of mules goes by! "One wretch comes whooping up the street For whooping's sake! And now they beat Drum after drum for market mass Each day's transactions on the _place!_ All things that go or stay or come They herald forth by tuck of drum