After a long journey by land, such scenes are peculiarly delightful; but
description tangles, not communicates, the sensations imbibed upon the
spot. Here are so many things to describe! such churches! such palaces!
such pictures! one would imagine the Genoese possessed the empire of the
ocean, were it not well known that they call but fix galleys their own,
and seventy years ago suffered all the horrors of a bombardment.

The Dorian palace is exceedingly fine; the Durazzo palace, for ought I
know, is finer; and marble here seems like what one reads of silver in
King Solomon's time, which, says the Scripture, "_was nothing counted
on in the days of Solomon_" Casa Brignoli too is splendid and
commodious; the terraces and gardens on the house-tops, and the fresco
paintings outside, give one new ideas of human life; and exhibits a
degree of luxury unthought-on in colder climates. But here we live on
green pease and figs the first day of November, while orange and lemon
trees flaunt over the walls more common than pears in England.

The Balbi mansion, filled with pictures, detained us from the churches
filled with more. I have heard some of the Italians confess that Genoa
even pretends to vie with Rome herself in ecclesiastical splendour. In
devotion I should think she would be with difficulty outdone: the people
drop down on their knees in the street, and crowd to the church doors
while the benediction is pronouncing, with a zeal which one might hope
would draw down stores of grace upon their heads. Yet I hear from the
inhabitants of other provinces, that they have a bad character among
their neighbours, who love not the _base Ligurian_ and accuse them of
many immoralities. They tell one too of a disreputable saying here, how
there are at Genoa men without honesty, women without modesty, a sea
with no fish, and a wood with no birds. Birds, however, here certainly
are by the million, and we have eaten fish since we came every day; but