ivory palms, crucifixes, boxes for holy water,
and other spiritual guards for their souls. For the comfort of
their bodies he has had a machine made like a car, which is drawn
up by a chain from the bottom to the top of the house; it holds
about six people, who can be at pleasure elevated to any storey,
and at each landing-place there is a contrivance to let them in
and out. From thence to the Brignole Palace (called the Palazzo
Rosso), where I met M. and Madame de Brignole, who were very
civil and ordered a scientific footman to show us the pictures.
They are numerous and excellent, but we could only take a cursory
look at them; the best are the Vandykes, particularly a Christ
and a portrait of one of the Brignoles on horseback, and a
beautiful Carlo Dolce, a small bleeding Christ. I saw the
churches--San Stefano, Annunziata, the Duomo, San Ambrosio, San
Cyro. There are two splendid pictures in the Ambrosio, a Guido
and a Rubens; the Martyrdom in the San Stefano, by Julio Romano
and Raphael, went to Paris and was brought back in 1814. The
churches have a profusion of marble, and gilding, and frescoes;
the Duomo is of black and white marble, of mixed architecture,
and highly ornamented--all stinking to a degree that was
perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full;
it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human
odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say,
as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly
edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the
Catholic religion; the churches are always open, and, go into
them when you will, you see men and women kneeling and praying
before this or that altar, absorbed in their occupation, and who
must have been led there by some devotional feeling. This seems
more accordant with the spirit and essence of religion than to
have the churches, as ours are, opened like theatres at stated
hours and days for the performance of a long service, at the end
of which the audience is turned out and the doors are locked till
the next representation. Then the Catholic religion makes no
distinctions between poverty and wealth--no pews for the
aristocracy well warmed and furnished, or seats set apart for the
rich and well dressed; here the church is open to all, and the
beggar in rags comes and takes his place by the side of the lady
in silks, and both, kneel on the same pavement, for the moment at
least and in t