must not forget, that among the musical instruments were violins. One set of friars wore cowls over their faces, having holes only to see through, and looking extremely hideous, like executioners. Among those that shewed their faces, and did not seem at all ashamed of them, was one goodnatured, active personage, who ran back, with much vivacity, to encourage the machine-bearers. He looked as much as to say, "It is hot enough for you, God knows ;" and so it was. Somebody has said, that in the South all the monks look like soldiers, and all the soldiers like monks. I dare say this might have been the case before the late spread of liberal opinions; but it is so no longer. In Spain and Portugal it cannot be so; though the Sardinian troops at present quartered in Genoa are for the most part under-grown and poor, looking men. The officers however are better. They have a propensity, common I am told in the South, to over-grown caps and epaulets; but they have otherwise a manly aspect, and look more like gentlemen than any one else. This indeed is always the case, where there is any difference; military habits begetting an air of self-possession. The Piedmontese soldiery are remarkably well-dressed. They have a bad way of learning their exercise. They accompany every motion, the whole set of men,-with a loud Ho! just as if a multitude of quick paviours were at work. This, be sides encouraging noise, must take away from a ready dependance on the eye. I went into the churches every day, when I was on shore. I liked their quiet, their coolness, and their richness. Besides, I find my own religion in some part or other of all imaginative religions. In one of the churches are pillars of porphyry, and several are very imposing; but they struck me upon the whole as exhibiting the genius of a commercial rather than a tasteful country, and as being more weighty and expensive than any thing else. There are some good pictures; but by far the greater number adorn the houses of the nobility. In all Catholic churches, there is an unfortunate mixture of petty ornaments with great, of dusty artificial flowers with fine altar-pieces, and of wretched little votive pictures, and silver hearts and legs, stuck up by the side of the noblest pieces of art. This is another custom handed down from antiquity. I was reminded of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha, by a painting of a shipwreck, in which the wind blew one way, and the sails another. If a man has got rid of a pain in the pericardium, he dedicates a little silver heart to the saint whose assistance he prayed for. If a toe has been the complaining party, he hangs up a toe. The general feeling is good, but not so the detail. It is affecting, however, to think, that many of the hearts hung up (and they are by far the most numerous) have been owing to pangs of the spirit. The most interesting thing I met with in the Genoese churches, next to a picture by Raphael and Giulio Romano in that of St. Stephen, was a sermon by a friar on Weeping. He seemed a popular preacher, and held the attention of his audience for a good hour. His exordium was in a gentle and restrained voice, but he warmed as he went on, and became as loud and authoritative as the tenderness of his subject could well allow. He gave us an account of all sorts of Tears,-of the tears of joy, and the tears of sorrow, of penitent tears, tears of anger, spite, illtemper, worldly regret, love, patience, &c. and from what I eould collect, with an ear unaccustomed to hear Italian spoken, a very true, as well as full and particular account, it was. The style was much more florid than in our northern sermons. He spoke of murmuring rills and warbling nightingales, and admitted all the merits of poetical luxury; but in denouncing luxury in general, it was curious to hear a stout, jovial-looking friar exhorting his auditors to value above all other enjoyments that of weeping in solitude. The natives are not likely to be too much softened by injunctions of this description. (I find I have not dated my journal between the 16th and 22nd.) The houses in Genoa are very high as well as large. Many of them are painted on the outside, not only with pictures, but with imitations of architecture; and whatever we may think of such a taste, must have looked magnificent when the paintings were first executed. Some of them look so now, colours in this beautiful climate retaining their vividness for centuries out of doors. But in some instances, the paintings being done upon stucco, the latter has partly crumbled away; and this gives a shabby, dilapidated appearance to houses otherwise excellent. Nobody seems to think of repairing them. It is the same with many of the houses unpainted, and with common garden walls, most of which must have once made a splendid appearance The mere spirit of commerce has long succeeded to its ancient mixture with a better one; or Genoa would not be what it is in many respects. But a Genoese must have grand notions of houses, especially as in this city as well as the rest of Italy, shopkeepers sometimes occupy the ground floors of the finest mansions. You shall see a blacksmith or a carpenter looking out of a window where you should expect a duchess. How I hailed the first sight of the vines and orange-trees! Neither Genoa nor even the country about it abounds in either. It is a splendid sea-port of stone and marble, and the mountains immediately about it are barren, though they soon begin to be clothed with olive-trees. But among the gigantic houses and stone walls you now and then detect a garden, with its statues and orange-trees; some of the windows have vines trailed over them, not in the scanty fashion of our creepers, but like great luxuriant green hair hanging over the houses' eyes: and sometimes the very highest stories have a terrace along the whole length of the house embowered with them. Calling one day upon a gentleman who resided in an elevated part of the suburbs, and to get at whose abode I had walked through a hot sun and a city of stone, I was agreeably surprised, when the door opened, with a long yellow vista of an arcade of vines, at once basking in the sun and defending from it. In the suburbs there are some orchards in all the southern luxuriance of leaves and fruit. In one of these I walked among heaps of vines, olives, cherry, orange and almond trees, and had the pleasure of plucking fresh lemons from the bough, a merry old brown gardener, with a great straw-hat and bare legs, admiring all the while my regard for those common-places, and encouraging me with a good-natured paternity to do what I pleased. The cherries were Brobdignagian, and bursting with juice. Next the orchard was a wine-garden, answering to our teagardens, with vine-arbours and seats as with us, where people come to drink wine and play at their games. Returning through the city, I saw a man in one of the bye streets alternately singing and playing on a pipe, exactly as we conceive of the ancient shepherds. One night I went to the opera, which was indifferent enough, but I understand it is a good deal better sometimes. The favourite composer here, and all over Italy, is Rossini; for which, as well as the utter neglect of Mozart, some national feelings may enter into others less pardonable. But Rossini is undoubtedly good enough to make us glad to see genius of any sort appreciated. My northern faculties were scandalized at seeing men in the pit with fans! Effeminacy is not always incompatible with courage, but it is a very dangerous help towards it; and I wondered what Doria would have said, had he seen a captain of one of his gallies indulging his cheeks in this manner. 23. To-night the city was illuminated, and bonfires and rockets put in motion, in honour of St. John the Baptist. The effect from the harbour was beautiful; fire, like the stars, having a brilliancy in this pure atmosphere, of which we have no conception. The scent of the perfumes employed in the bonfires was very perceptible on board ship. 24. You learn for the first time in this climate, what colours really are. No wonder it produces painters. An English artist of any enthusiasm might shed tears of vexation, to think of the dull medium through which blue and red come to him in his own atmosphere, compared with this. To-day we saw a boat pass us, which instantly reminded us of Titian, and accounted for him: and yet it contained nothing but an old boatman in a red cap, and some women with him in other colours, one of them in a bright yellow petticoat. But a red cap in Italy goes by you, not like a mere cap, much less any thing vulgar or butcher-like, but like what it is, an intense specimen of the colour of red. It is like a scarlet bud in the blue atmosphere. The old boatman, with his brown hue, his white shirt, and his red cap, made a complete picture; and so did the women and the yellow petticoat. I have seen pieces of orange-coloured silk hanging out against a wall at a dyer's, which gave the eye a pleasure truly sensual. Some of these boatmen are very fine men. I was rowed to shore one day by a man the very image of Kemble. He had nothing but his shirt on, and it was really grand to see the mixed power and gracefulness with which all his limbs came into play as he pulled |