22

GULF OF GENOA.

public improvement which distinguishes the Sardinian Sovereign.

We were destined to traverse that interval by water; and it is no trifling testimonial to the superlative beauty of this luxuriant coast, to aver, that not even the annoyances of steam, the turbulence of a boisterous Mistrale, and the ungentle tossing of the blue Ligurian sea, could disparage in our opinion its features of Fairyland.

These dazzling shores of amphitheatric figure, sweeping upward from the Gulf of Genoa, resemble, to a fanciful eye, some immense Mosaicwork of the gaudiest colours, or the florid imagery of some tapestried chamber.

"The purple there that Tyrian cauldrons knew,
Shifts in fine shades its variegated hue;

Thus, pierced with solar beams, the stormy bow
Stains with huge arc the sky's cærulean glow;
There, though a thousand various colours vie,
The soft transitions cheat the admiring eye.
Where the streaks join, the tinctures seem the same,
But, as they spread, a separate title claim.
Thus through the tapestry shoots the plastic gold,
And the rich loom prolongs the Tales of Old."

TRANS. FROM OVID'S METAM.

Alternately revealed and vanishing, (gray Olive woods, and groves of Cypress, solemnly overshadowing every space between) you distinguish large glittering links of towns and castles, churches and palaces, betraying their enamelled argentry of many colours, like the burnished

spires of some great serpent, while terraces, balustrades, and gardens intermingle their fascinations of form and colour amongst the most refulgent tissue of foliage and fruits. Sovereigns of the scene, and recognized in their separate stateliness from the distant waters, the landscape receives its supreme distinction from the colossal trunks and massive verdure of the Pinaster, and the airy feathery branches of the Oriental Palm.

It was midnight; precisely as the bells of every campanile were chiming for "Lauds," that we cast anchor in that crescent of the Gulf, which, with the Bay of Naples, and the Golden Horn of Constantinople, completes the "Graces" of our European Harbours.

The roar of the emancipated monster steam had ceased, the voice of the waters agonizing beneath the wheels was no more; the cries of the sailors had successively died away, and before me reposed, in necromantic slumbers, the City of the "Clarissimi" flinging out eastward and westward, her long low silver horns, which she gathered up with queenly pride into a superb central tiara of lofty palaces, all illumined with the magic of Moonlight, all hallowed by the spell of her sister Silence.

"Enquire for Strada Nova," saith an old MS. in the Harleian Miscellany," in which street are twelve most excellent fair Palaces, built all of square pieces, being white and black marblestone

richly adorned with pleasant gardens, and certain of them have houses of artillery, well furnished, and stately antiquities and statues."

A TRUE DESCRIPTION AND DIRECTION OF WHAT IS MOST WORTHY TO BE SEEN IN ALL ITALY.

And so runs on the title-page of a pamphlet which exceeds the length of its pompous harbinger, pretty nearly as much as the Spring does the note of the cuckoo, which heralds her approach; that is to say, the one is about as long as the other.

Think of this worthy wanderer of the Sixteenth Century, going to bed with a safe conscience, that he had written all which need be read about Italy think of him, I say, visited in dreams by the awful spectres of future voyageurs; only fancy his sapient self-satisfied pate, pelted and bruised by the pondrous quartos of Misson, Blainville, Keysler and Stolberg; the visionary octavos of Eustace,

The glory of the Classics, and the shame.”

the heavy artillery of Forsyth, the epigrammatic shafts of poor dear Matthews, and the random darts of those Velites of Literature,

"The mob of gentlemen who write with ease."

The main difficulty, to a desperate enthusiast like myself, in striving to make another fancy as I feel the intense magnificence of Genoa, con

sists absolutely in the equality of its lordly piles; the universal suffrage of its palatial mansions, in behalf of the magnificence, the affluence, and the taste of those prince-merchants, who bade them rise and shine.

You look around in vain for three or four objects, distinguished from the rest whereon you may

Hang the web of lucubration ;"

but there are none greater or less than another of these most sumptuous Ligurian palaces. You find it impossible to select; to take an inventory will never do!

The Carignano, lofty and noble as it looks, and the Pharos, useful and beautiful as it is, would scarcely yield the palm of preeminence one to the other. And the marvellous fabrics which enfilade that peerless Strada Nuova on either side of a smooth pavement, of broad granite slabs, as if they were the walls of some vast chamber, will not endure more than a general panegyric upon the gigantesque frontispieces, their telamonian doors and massive window-frames, their portly architraves, and the solemn elaboration of ornament which brocade their glowing stonework; while the rosy flush of the Oleander, and the scarlet lamps of the Pomegranate, the blossoms and fruitage of Orange and Lemon trees gleam indiscriminately amidst the terraces and loggie of

all.

Undoubtedly Genoa is as much an architectural as she once was a political republic; and you pass from the Palazzo Durazzo, to the grand Duomo with its magpie marbles; from that superb combination of antique grandeur with modern luxury, the Palazzo Palavicino, to the moody majesty of the turretted Palazzo Ducale; from the Brignole Rosso, with its illumination of paintings, to that golden assemblage of open-arched corridors, and pillared courts, embowered with trellices of vines and fig-trees-the Doria Tursi, and what do you see? verily, a display of palatial glory, which dazzles the eye, but whose magnificence is so monotonous, that even your admiquarter;"

ration cries for "

"And Memory (the warder of the brain)
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only!"

And what can you say? Why, simply, congratulate Genoa, that not a single knosp has dropped from her mural coronet, that not a fold of her antique golden garment with the purple bordure is tarnished, but that, embraced by her glorious Bay, embroidered by her mighty palaces, and exalted above her peers in the unrivalled dignity of her tall sculptured streets, she is still externally at least Genova la Superba.

Perhaps the Banca di San Giorgio is sufficiently prominent to demand a separate notice, not only from the lead which Genoa took in the origination