North Italian Folk: Sketches of Town and Country Life

								

Who is there that has seen her from off the waves of her own
Mediterranean, and looked upon her as she climbs the slopes on every
side, gorgeous in her towers, her domes and cupolas, her terraces and
gardens, quietly lying within the great amphitheatre of her hills—who
could fail to acknowledge that she is the city of palaces still? Above
and around her stand her fortifications, gaunt and grey upon the soft
sky, like sentinels upon the tops of the green and barren mountains,
while half way down, the hills begin to be dotted with villas and
terraces, and, as they creep towards the sea, grow white with palaces
and campanili, that multiply upon their sides until they become the
great town itself, where whiteness is all around in stone and marble.
In the streets there is marble, for it is fashioned into churches
and colonnades; and upon the water’s brink there is marble still that
has taken the shape of terraces and loggias. There is no end to the
whiteness, for the air is white too on these early spring days, yet
there is no lack of colour as well; it lurks in the sunshine, it lives
on the earth and the sky, is dashed along the public ways in dresses of
the people, and over the harbour in curious hues of sails and flags,
red and green and yellow, that the weather has mellowed into harmony.
The sky is heavy with colour, in the March air that is keen and
sun-steeped. Genoa, with her crooked and narrow streets and her curious
nooks, with her picturesque piazzas and her sumptuous churches, of her
would I write as I dream of flowers and Eastertide.
The light is everywhere, and everywhere there is something to remember.
In crooked, winding ways that climb hills and go down again in steps,
and thread dark passages and cross bright piazzas, in ways where winds
can be icy cold and suns scarce reach, there are still things whereon
memory rests fondly, amongst quaint shops and stalls of fruit-sellers,
and fish and flower and green-markets, in hurrying or loitering
people, beneath dingy doorways, up dusty stairs, on solemn or gaudy
house-fronts. Down upon the wharfs and along the moles where the green
waters of the port are not always fragrant as they lap on to time-worn
marble steps, there are more things fair to think of in crowding boats
and quaint, noisy boatmen, in flapping amber sails of strange fishing
smacks, in fine-framed men and women whose shrill voices quarrel and
joke, and whose faces and figures bring more colour to the sketch—even
something perchance of gala days when stately vessels sailed into
the harbour, vessels that were thickly manned and royally freighted,
so that flags must needs wave from ships and skiffs and steamers on
the water, and, on land, from turret and terrace, while bouquets were
flung and floated, and royal salutes were fired. And from the broader
of old streets, where palaces flank the way and are sumptuous with
façade and arch and stair, from straight and new streets down which