sky like a mere ribbon of light, far above your
head, where the tops of the tall houses on either side of the street bend
almost together. You feel as if you were at the bottom of some
tremendous abyss, with all the world far above you. You wind in and out
and here and there, in the most mysterious way, and have no more idea of
the points of the compass than if you were a blind man. You can never
persuade yourself that these are actually streets, and the frowning,
dingy, monstrous houses dwellings, till you see one of these beautiful,
prettily dressed women emerge from them--see her emerge from a dark,
dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over, from the ground away
halfway up to heaven. And then you wonder that such a charming moth
could come from such a forbidding shell as that. The streets are wisely
made narrow and the houses heavy and thick and stony, in order that the
people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay
so. And while I think of it--the men wear hats and have very dark
complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a
gossamer's web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general thing.
Singular, isn't it?

The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied by one family,
but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They are relics of
the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days--the days when she was a great
commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses, solid
marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color,
outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle
scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar
illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded to age
and exposure and is peeling off in flakes and patches, the effect is not
happy. A noseless Cupid or a Jupiter with an eye out or a Venus with a
fly-blister on her breast, are not attractive features in a picture.
Some of these painted walls reminded me somewhat of the tall van,
plastered with fanciful bills and posters, that follows the bandwagon of
a circus about a country village. I have not read or heard that the
outsides of the houses of any other European city are frescoed in this
way.

I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive
arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering
broad-winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great