he desperately laid down
while he ran his helpless hands over the clustered columns, and which
he then desperately caught up again, in fear of losing them. At other
times he paused, and wildly clasped his hands upon his eyes, or wildly
threw up his arms; and then began to run to and fro again uneasily,
while the crowd laughed and jeered. Doubtless a taint of madness
afflicted him; but not the less he seemed the type of a blind soul
that gropes darkly about through life, to find the doorway of some
divine truth or beauty,--touched by the heavenly harmonies from
within, and miserably failing, amid the scornful cries and bitter glee
of those who have no will but to mock aspiration.

The girl turning somersaults in another place had far more popular
sympathy than the blind madman at the temple door, but she was hardly
a more cheerful spectacle. For all her festive spangles and fairy-like
brevity of skirts, she had quite a work-a-day look upon her honest,
blood-red face, as if this were business though it looked like sport,
and her part of the diversion were as practical as that of the famous
captain of the waiters, who gave the act of peeling a sack of potatoes
a playful effect by standing on his head. The poor damsel was going
over and over, to the sound of most dismal drumming and braying,
in front of the immense old palace of the Genoese Doges,--a classic
building, stilted on a rustic base, and quite worthy of Palladio, if
any body thinks that is praise.

There was little left of our day when we had dined; but having seen
the outside of Genoa, and not hoping to see the inside, we found even
this little heavy on our hands, and were glad as the hour drew near
when we were to take the steamer for Naples.

It had been one of the noisiest days spent during several years in
clamorous Italy, whose voiceful uproar strikes to the summits of her
guardian Alps, and greets the coming stranger, and whose loud Addio
would stun him at parting, if he had not meanwhile become habituated
to the operatic pitch of her every-day tones. In Genoa, the hotels,
taking counsel of the vagabond streets, stand about the cavernous
arcade already mentioned, and all the noise of the shipping reaches
their guests. We rose early that Sunday morning to the sound of a
fleet unloading cargoes of wrought-iron, and of the hard swearing of
all nations of seafaring men. The whole day long the tumult followed
us, and seemed to culminate at last in the screams