Among the most striking peculiarities of the interior or street views, presented to the stranger's eye at Palermo, are its very unusually situated convents, buildings which, even in cities, are commonly and naturally in _retirement_; but here, in whichever of the most public ways you walk, a number of extraordinary trellised balconies are observed on the upper stories of almost every large house, while business and bustle of all kinds are transacted as usual in the street below. You may well be surprised to see the nunnery over the _Marchande de Modes_! The unhappy inmates thus tormented by the sight and sound of worldly activity, have not in Palermo even the solace of a garden; and if these places of more than usual mortification have any connexion with the world without, it is by an under-ground passage to some church in the neighbourhood! Thither repair the poor victims of superstition to warble _Aves_ to the Virgin behind their screens, and then back again to their monotonous cloister. There are twenty-four nunneries in the city of Palermo alone, each containing from thirty to sixty women, and there are as many monasteries! With open doors like coffee-houses, full upon the street, are placed at Palermo innumerable _consulting shops_ of so many _lawyers_; the earliest to begin business, the last to close, you may have the luxury of law at any hour of the day till bedtime. Nay, your Sicilian lawyer, unlike the lazy tradesman who puts up his shutters and sleeps from twelve to four, takes no _siesta_; his _atra janua lilis_ is always open, and there sit the _firm_, one listening to a client, another smoking a cigar, a third chatting with an acquaintance over his coffee or the newspaper. Scarcely less mischievous than these sowers of dissension, is the _barber-surgeon_, who still flourishes in Trinacria. The bleeding arm over the peruke shop is often to be seen in Rome and Naples; but at Palermo almost at every third house, you read _Salassatore_ over a half-naked figure in wood or canvass, erect like Seneca in his bath, or monumentally recumbent, the blood spouting, like so many Tritons, from twenty orifices at once. Led by professional curiosity, we enter one of these open doors; and, desiring the ordinary service of the razor, and intending to ask some questions parenthetically touching the double craft, we have scarcely occupied the chair, when a smart youth comes up with a razor and a lancet, and quietly asks "_Which_?" Why, surely he could not think of _bleeding_ us without a warrant for our needing it. "_Eperchè? Adesso vi le dîrò subito_--Why not? I'll tell you whether you want it without a doctor,"--feeling for our pulse. "_Non c'è male_--not so much amiss," pursued the functionary; "but a few ounces bleeding would do you _no harm_! Your hand is hot, it must be _several months_ since you were last bled!" "A year." "Too long: you should be bled, at your age, at least _twice a-year_ if you would keep your health!" "What amount of depletion did he recommend?" "_Depende--di sei a dieci oncie_," at which portion of the dialogue our mouth was shut to all further interrogations by a copious supply of soap-suds, and now he became the tonsor only, and declares against the mode in which we have our hair cut: "They have cut your hair, Signor, _à condannato_--nobody adopts the toilette of the guillotine now; it should have been left to grow in front _à la Plutus_, or have been long at the sides _à la Nazarène_, which is the mode most of our Sicilian gentlemen prefer." We were about to rise, wash, and depart, but an impediment is offered by the artist. "_Non l'ho_ raffinato _ancora, Signor, bisogna_ raffinarlo _un poco_!" and before we could arrive at the occult meaning of _raffinare_, his fingers were exploring very technically and very disagreeably the whole surface over which his razor had travelled, and a number of supplementary scrapings were only stopped by an impatient _basta_ of the victim. _Still_ he was unwilling to part with us. _Would_ we like, now that we are on the spot, to _lose a few ounces of blood_ before he takes a stranger in hand, (who is waiting for the one or other operation;) and, as we most positively declined, he turned to the latter to ask him whether he was come for his "_piccolo salassio di sei oncie_." "_Gia_!" said Signor Antonio, taking off his coat, and sitting down with as much _sangfroid_ as if he were going to take his breakfast. "Can you shave _me_?" asks a third party, standing at the door. "_Adesso_," after I have _bled_ this gentleman.