Italy, which is so eager to build grandiose
banks and every sort of public building, is yet so regardless of old
things that one might fancy her history only began in 1860. Mr. Le
Mesurier, in the interesting book already referred to, has suggested
that this old palace, so full of memories of Genoa's greatness, should
be used by the municipality as a museum for Genoese antiquities. I
should like to raise my voice with his in this cause so worthy of the
city we have loved. Is it still true of her, that though she is proud
she is not proud enough? Is it to be said of her who sped Garibaldi on
his first adventure, that all her old glory is forgotten, that she is
content with mere wealth, a thing after all that she is compelled to
share with the latest American encampment, in which competition she
cannot hope to excel? But she who holds in her hands the dust of St.
John Baptist, who has seen the cup of the Holy Grail, whose sons stormed
Jerusalem and wept beside the Tomb of Jesus, through whose streets the
bitter ashes of Augustine have passed, and in whose heart Columbus was
conceived, and a great Admiral and a great Saint, is worthy of
remembrance. Let her gather the beautiful or curious remnants of her
great days about her now in the day of small things, that out of past
splendour new glory may rise, for she also has ancestors, and, like the
sun, which shall rise to-morrow, has known splendour of old.

As you leave the Banca di S. Giorgio, if you continue on your way you
will come on to the great ramparts, where you may see the sea, and so
you will leave Genoa behind you; but if, returning a little on your way,
you turn into the Piazza Banchi, you will be really in the heart of the
old city, in front of the sixteenth-century Exchange, Loggia dei Banchi,
where Luca Pinelli was crucified for opposing a Fregoso Doge who wished
to sell Livorno to Florence. Passing thence into the street of the
jewellers, Strada degli Orefici, where every sort of silver filigree
work may be found, with coral and amber, you come to Madonna of the
Street Corner, a Virgin and Child, with S. Lo, the patron of all sorts
of smiths, a seventeenth-century work of Piola. These narrow shadowy
ways full of men and women and joyful with children are the delight of
Genoa. There is but little to see, you may think,--little enough but
just life. For Genoa is not a museum: she lives, and the laughter of her
children is the greatest of all the joyful poems of