its daily reception of dead bodies. Amonging there, when we arrived; and, after the troops in the town, there are usually their departure, a second-rate opera comsome Swiss more or less. When any of pany came. The great season is not until these die, they are buried out of a fund the carnival time-in the spring. Nothing maintained by such of their countrymen as has impressed me so much, in my visits are resident in Genoa. Their providing here, (which have been pretty numerous,) aз coffins for these men is matter of great as- the uncommonly hard and cruel character of tonishment to the authorities. the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good humoredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the actors. But as there is nothing else of a public nature, at which they are allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are resolved to make the most of this opportunity.

When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of death, their nearest relations generally walk off: retiring into the country for a little change, and leaving the body to be disposed of, without any superintendence from them. The procession is usually formed, and the coffin borne, and the funeral conducted, by a body of persons called a Confraternita, who, as a kind of voluntary penance, undertake to perform these offices, in regular rotation, for the dead; but who, mingling something of pride with their humility, are dressed in a loose garment covering their whole person, and wear a hood concealing their faces; with breathing holes and apertures for the eyes. The effect of this costume is very ghastly; especially in the case of a certain Blue Contraternita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are very ugly customers, and who look-suddenly encountered in their pious ministration in the streets-as if they were ghoules or demons, bearing off the body for themselves.

There are a great number of Piedmontese officers, too, who are allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next to nothing-gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these gentlemen being insisted on, by the governor, in all public or semi-public entertainments-and who are lofty critics in consequence, and infinitely more exacting than if they made the unhappy manager's fortune.

The TEATRO DIURNO, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in the open air, where the performances take place by day-light, in the cool of the afternoon; commencing at four or five o'clock, and lasting some three hours. It is curious, sitting among the auAlthough such a custom may be liable to dience, to have a fine view of the neighborthe abuse attendant on many customs here ing hills and houses, and to see the neigh-of being recognized as a means of estab- bors at their windows looking on; and to lishing a current account with heaven, on hear the bells of the churches and convents which to draw, too easily, for future bad ring at most complete cross-purposes with actions, or as an expiation for past misdeeds, the scene. Beyond this, and the novelty of it must be admitted to be a good one, and a seeing a play in the fresh pleasant air, with practical one, and one involving unques- the darkening evening closing in, there is tionably good works. A voluntary service nothing exciting or characteristic in the like this, is surely better than the imposed performances. The actors are indifferent : penance (not at all an infrequent one) of giving so many licks to such and such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral; or than a vow to the Madonna, to wear nothing but blue for a year or two. This is supposed to give great delight above; blue being (as is well known) the Madonna's favorite color. I have seen three or four women in the streets lately, who have devoted themselves to this act of Faith. Upon the whole, I think I like them nearly as well as some "Blue ladies" in England.

There are three theatres open in the city. The most important-the Teatro Carlo Felice: the opera-house of Genoa-is a very splendid, commodious, and beautiful theatre A company of comedians were act

and though they sometimes represent one of Goldoni's comedies, the staple of the drama is French. Any thing like nationality is dangerous to despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered kings.

The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionettia famous company from Milan-is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever beheld in my life. I never saw any thing so exquisitely ridiculous. They look between four and five feet high, but are really much smaller; for when a musician in the orchestra happens to put his hat on the stage, it becomes alarmingly gigantic, and almost blots out an actor. They usually play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I saw the other night,

is a waiter at an hotel. There never was such a locomotive actor, since the world began. Great pains are taken with him. He has extra joints in his legs and a practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated audience, mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do every thing else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a man. His spirits were prodigious. He continually shakes his legs, and winks his eye. And there is a heavy father, with grey hair; who sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his daughter in the regular conventional way, who is tremendous. No one would suppose it possible that anything short of a real man could be so tedious. It is the triumph of

art.

parte;" to which the latter replied with the deepest tragedy, "Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not thus. Repeat that phrase and leave me! I am Napoleon, Emperor of France!" Sir Yew ud se on, nothing daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of the British Government, regulating the state he should preserve, and the furniture of his rooms and limiting his attendants to four or five persons. "Four or five for me!" said Napoleon. "Me! One hundred thousand men were lately at my sole command; and this English officer talks of four or five for me!" Throughout the piece, Napoleon, (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and was for ever having small soliloquies by himself,) was very bitter on" these English officers," and "these English soldiers "to the great satisfaction of the audience, In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away who were perfectly delighted to have Low with the Bride, in the very hour of her nup-bullied; and who, whenever Low said, tials. He brings her to his cave, and tries" General Buonaparte" (which he always to soothe her. They sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa! in the regular place, O. P. Second entrance!) and a procession of musicians enter; one creature playing a drum, and knocking himself off his legs at every blow. These failing to delight her, dancers appear-four first; then two; the two; the flesh-colored two. The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it; the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn; and the lady's retiring up, when it is the gentleman's turn; the final passion of a pas de deux; and the going off with a bound!-I shall never see a real ballet, with a composed countenance again.

did: always receiving the same correction) quite execrated him. Though it would be hard to say why, for Italians have little cause to sympathize with Napoleon, heaven knows.

a

There was no plot at all, except that French officer, disguised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape; and being discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to steal his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged. In two very long speeches which Low made memorable, by winding up with "Yas!" to show that he was English, which brought down thunders of applause. Napoleon was so affected by this catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out by two other puppets. Judging from what followed, it would appear that he never recovered the shock, for the next act showed him in a clean shirt in his bed, (curtains crimson and white,) where a lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children, who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent end; the last words on his lips being "Vatterlo." "Sir Yew ud se on Low!" (the ow as It was unspeakably ludicrous. in cow.) Sir Hudson (that you could have parte's boots were so wonderfully beyond seen his regimentals!) was a perfect mam-control, and did such marvellous things of moth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly; with a monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lower jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate naHe began his system of persecution by calling his prisoner "General Buona

I went another night to see these Puppets act a play called "St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon." It began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet entered, with this obscure

announcement:

ture.

Buona

their own accord; doubling themselves up; and getting under tables; and dangling in the air; and sometimes skating away with him, out of all human knowledge, when he was in full speech-mischances which were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled

melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end to one conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read a book; when it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to see his body bending over the volume like a boot-jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the counterpane. So was Dr. Antomarchi; represented by a Puppet with long, lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times a decided brute and villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say," the Emperor is dead!" he pulled out his watch and wound up the piece, (not the watch,) by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, Ha! ha! Eleven minutes to six! The general dead! and the spy hanged!" which brought the curtain down, triumphantly.

VII.

IN GENOA, AND OUT OF it.

palace in an Eastern story, than a grave and sober lodging.

How you may wander on from room to room, and never tire of the wild fancies on the walls and ceiling, as bright in their fresh coloring as if they had been painted yesterday; or how one floor, or even the great hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious promenade; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers above, which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely know the way through; or how there is a view of a perfectly different character on each of the four sides of the building; matters little. But that prospect from the hall is like a vision to me. I go back to it in fancy, as I have done in calm reality, a hundred times in a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of happiness.

There lies all Genoa in beautiful confusion, with its many churches pointing up into the sunny sky; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron cross at the end, where sometimes, early in the morning, I have seen a little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping now and then to peep down upon the waking world in which they have no part. Old Monte Fac

THERE is not in Italy, they say, and I cio, brightest of hills in good weather, but believe them, a lovelier residence than the sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here, Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fish-upon the left. The Fort, within the walls ponds, whereof the greater part is mine as (the good King built it to command the long as I please to hold it, and whither we town, and beat the houses of the Genoese removed as soon as our three months' ten-about their ears, in case they should be ancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had ceased discontented) commands that height upon and determined. the right. The broad sea lies beyond; in

It stands on a height within the walls at front; and that line of coast beginning, by Genoa, but aloof from the town; surround-the light-house, and tapering away, a mere ed by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned speck in the rosy distance, is the beautiful with statues, vases, fountains, marble ba-coast-road that leads to Nice. The garden sins, terraces, walks of orange trees and near at hand, among the roofs and houses, lemon trees, groves of roses and camelias. all red with roses, and fresh with little All its apartments are beautiful in their proportions and decorations; but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three large windows at the end, overlooking the whole town of Genoa, the harbor and the neighboring sea, afford one of the most fascinating and delightful prospects in the world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than the great rooms are, within, it would be difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more delicious than the scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined. It is more like an enchanted

Within

fountains, is the Acqua Sola- a public
promenade, where the military band plays
gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, and
the Genoese nobility ride round, and round,
and round, in state-clothes and coaches at
least, if not in absolute wisdom.
a stone's throw, as it seems, the audience
of the Day-Theatre sit: their faces turned
this way. But as the stage is hidden, it is
very odd without a knowledge of the cause,
to see their faces change so suddenly from
earnestness to laughter; and odder still to
hear the rounds upon rounds of applause,

rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls. But, being Saturday night, they act their best and most attractive play. And now, the sun is going down in such magnificent array of red and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could depict; and to the ringing of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at once without a twilight. Then lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road; and the revolving lantern out at sea there, flashing for an instant on this palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were a bright moon bursting from behind a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity. And this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid it after dark, and think it haunted. My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but nothing worse, I will engage.

coupe of a machine something like a travelling caravan, in company with the Brave, and a lady with a tolerably big dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night. It was very wet, and very cold; very dark, and very dismal; and we travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped nowhere for refreshment. At ten o'clock next morning we changed coaches at Alessandria, where we were packed up in another coach, (the body whereof would have been small for a fly,) in company with a very old priest; a young Jesuit, his companion-who carried their breviaries and other books, and who, in the exertion of getting into the coach, had made a dash of pink leg, between his black stockings and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of Hamlet in Ophelia's closet, only it was visible on both legs-a provincial Avocato; A nun took the black veil, the other and a gentleman with a red nose that had morning, at one of the convents close by. an uncommon and singular sheen upon it, I could not make up my mind to attend the which I never observed in the human subceremony, but my ladies went, and were re-ject before. In this way we travelled on, ceived by the relations, male and female, until four o'clock in the afternoon; the with great politeness. There was a pleas- roads being still very heavy, and the coach ant little party of them at the convent, as very slow. To mend the matter, the old there usually is on these occasions. For priest was troubled with cramps in his legs, the young lady being provided for, from so that he had to give a terrible yell every that time, her brothers especially (if she ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out by have any) are very cheerful. On this occa- the united efforts of the company; the sion, they handed the cakes and ices (which coach always stopping for him with great are an essential part of the entertainment) in the best of spirits; and felt themselves by a reflected light, lions. In the course of the ceremonies, the poor girl came to the grate, and was addressed by a monk, who described to her the husband she had chosen, and said, "Your spouse, my daughhas eyes like the dove. He has golden hair, like the beams of the morning. His nose is aquiline, his teeth are white, his voice is like the song of birds," and so forth. When the ceremonies were over, the cakes and ices were attacked with great vigor, and the company separated; the Brave Courier having been, from the first (to the great consternation of my relatives) beheld at the grate, taking a lively interest in the proceedings, and making audible remarks on the comparative beauty of the different nuns; and having afterwards done the honors of the ices with much gentility-pressing the relations to take a little more, and setting them the best example.

ter,

I strolled away from Genoa on the 6th of November, bound for a good many places, (England among them,) but first for Piacenza; for which town I started in the

gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject of conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that the coupe had discharged two people, and had only one passenger inside a monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustacheof which no man could see the ends, when he had his hat on-I took advantage of its better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who was very conversational and good-humored) travelled on, until nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver reported that he couldn't think of going any farther; and we accordingly made a halt at a place called Stradella.

The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard; where our coach and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls and firewood, were all heaped up together, hig gledy-piggledy; so that you didn't know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which was a cart. We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, into a great, cold room, where there were two immensely broad beds, on what looked like two immensely broad deal dining-tables, another deal table of similar dimensions in