a_ from their cold and
gloom. During the day they are deserted by every one but babies and
witchlike old women--some gossiping, some sitting vacant at the house
door, some spinning or weaving, or minding little children--ugly and
ancient as are their own homes, yet clean as are the streets. The
younger population goes afield; the men on mules laden for the hills,
the women burdened like mules with heavy and disgusting loads. It is
an exceptionally good-looking race; tall, well-grown, and strong.--But
to the streets again. The shops in the upper town are few, chiefly
wine-booths and stalls for the sale of salt fish, eggs, and bread,
or cobblers' and tinkers' ware. Notwithstanding the darkness of their
dwellings, the people have a love of flowers; azaleas lean from their
windows, and vines, carefully protected by a sheath of brickwork,
climb the six stories, to blossom out into a pergola upon the roof.
Look at that mass of greenery and colours, dimly seen from beneath,
with a yellow cat sunning herself upon the parapet! To reach such a
garden and such sunlight who would not mount six stories and thread
a labyrinth of passages? I should prefer a room upon the east side of
the town, looking southward to the Molo and the sea, with a sound
of water beneath, and a palm soaring up to fan my window with his
feathery leaves.

The shrines are little spots of brightness in the gloomy streets.
Madonna with a sword; Christ holding His pierced and bleeding heart;
l'Eterno Padre pointing to the dead Son stretched upon His knee; some
souls in torment; S. Roch reminding us of old plagues by the spot upon
his thigh;--these are the symbols of the shrines. Before them stand
rows of pots filled with gillyflowers, placed there by pious, simple,
praying hands--by maidens come to tell their sorrows to our Lady rich
in sorrow, by old women bent and shrivelled, in hopes of paradise or
gratitude for happy days, when Madonna kept Cecchino faithful to his
home, or saved the baby from the fever.

Lower down, between the sea and the hill, is the municipal,
aristocratic, ecclesiastical quarter of San Remo. There stands the
Palace Borea--a truly princely pile, built in the last Renaissance
style of splendour, with sea-nymphs and dolphins, and satyric heads,
half lips, half leafage, round about its doors and windows. Once it
formed the dwelling of a feudal family, but now it is a roomy
anthill of a hundred houses, shops, and offices, the Boreas of to-d