SCOTT.
New-York, October, 1838.
W. Vaughan.
GENOA AND THE GENOESE.
by Rev. Walter Colton, United States' Navy, Author of 'Ship and Shore,' etc.
The streets of Genoa, with a few splendid exceptions, are extremely narrow; and their confined, alley-like character is rendered seemingly still more restricted, by the altitude of the buildings. You look up from the pavement as from the bottom of some deep chasm, and discover, with a feeling bordering on insecurity, the elevation of the aperture communicating with the blue sky; but you quite despair of reaching that place of freer respiration, except by some ladder little less in length than the one which rose on the patriarch's dream. You occasionally discover an arch thrown across from the balcony of one dwelling to another, though a youth of elastic limb would hardly need that giddy bridge to aid his transit, especially if winged by the impatient hope of meeting there the Madonna of his heart. The arch may perhaps sometimes be the mutual refuge or resting place of affection. I once saw on one of these, at the dead of night, between me and the moon, two clasping forms, so light, distinct, and soft in outline, you would have said the grave had given up the most beautiful of its tenants, or that two embodied spirits had stepped from their wandering cloud, to linger there in admiration of the splendor and silence which reign over the sleeping life of the city.
But these slight arches, trod by love, are far less lofty than one connecting two more substantial elevations, within the precincts of the town. This springs bold and free over the tops of buildings, high enough up themselves to dwindle the jostling crowd in the street into dwarfs. From this the ruined in fortune and the broken in hope frequently cast themselves down, ending at once life and its
