Turin, it is
only at sunset you will see her, suddenly in a cleft of the mountains,
the sun just gilding the Pharos before night comes over the sea,
opening like some great flower full of coolness and fragrance.

It was by sea that John Evelyn came to Genoa after many adventures; and
though we must be content to forego much of the surprise and romance of
an advent such as that, yet for us too there remain many wonderful
things which we may share with him. The waking at dawn, for instance,
for the first time in the South, with the noise in our ears of the bells
of the mules carrying merchandise to and from the ships in the _Porto_;
the sudden delight that we had not felt or realised, weary as we were on
the night before, at finding ourselves really at last in the way of such
things, the shouting of the muleteers, the songs of the sailors getting
their ships in gear for the seas, the blaze of sunlight, the pleasant
heat, the sense of everlasting summer. These things, and so much more
than these, abide for ever; the splendour of that ancient sea, the
gesture of the everlasting mountains, the calmness, joy, and serenity of
the soft sky.

Something like this is what I always feel on coming to that proud city
of palaces, a sort of assurance, a spirit of delight. And in spite of
all Tennyson may have thought to say, for me it is not the North but the
South that is bright "and true and tender." For in the North the sky is
seldom seen and is full of clouds, while here it stretches up to God.
And then, the South has been true to all her ancient faiths and works,
to the Catholic religion, for instance, and to agriculture, the old
labour of the corn and the wine and the oil, while we are gone after
Luther and what he leads to, and, forsaking the fields, have taken to
minding machines.

And so, in some dim way I cannot explain, to come to Italy is like
coming home, as though after a long journey one were to come suddenly
upon one's mistress at a corner of the lane in a shady place.

It is perhaps with some such joy in the heart as this that the fortunate
traveller will come to Genoa the Proud, by the sea, lying on the bosom
of the mountains, whiter than the foam of her waves, the beautiful gate
of Italy.

II

The history of Genoa, its proud and adventurous story, is almost wholly
a tale of the sea, full of mystery, cruelty, and beauty, a legend of sea
power, a romance of ships. It is a narrative in which sailors, half
mercha