tiful brocatello, remains; but the marble statues which once adorned it, have departed, and their niches have been supplied with such representations as plaster and stiff drapery can produce. These men of clay and buckram, standing so astutely in this hall of legislative wisdom, remind me of those members of our congress unconditionally instructed by their constituents. But there are memorials here, to which an American heart can never be wholly dead; a marble bust of Columbus, and two letters in his own hand, addressed to the citizens of Genoa. These remains reconciled us to the desolate sensations of the spot; they brought back with vivifying power the virtues and trials, the triumphs and sufferings, of one to whom the world owes its greatest debt of gratitude, and who sunk to his last rest in distrust, desertion, and chains! But it is not for me to dress his bier; nor will I presumptively cast a flower into that fragrant, imperishable garland, which Irving has woven on his grave. Virtue may be misrepresented, persecuted, and hurried to the tomb; but the righteous wake not more assuredly to the reality of their hopes, than this to an immortal remembrance.
The reader must not suppose that every thing in Genoa wore to my eyes so much of the couleur de rose, as this description may at first seem to intimate. I might have darkly shaded some features in this picture, without being unjust to the original; but my first glance of the city, from the sea, disarmed me. I was like a painter sketching the face of the one he loves. I might with truth have brought into mournful prominency the ignorance of the great masses; their delusive confidence in the pageantries of their religion; their easily disruptured connection with a virtuous life; the jealousies and guilt which trouble their social relations; the absence of incentives to enterprise and industry, in their civil condition; the spirit of discontent which breaks and embitters their seeming repose; and above all, the massive despotism which grinds them to the earth. The lingering forms of freedom have at length departed from Genoa; her doges are in the grave, and her commerce has fled the ocean. Egypt and Palestine, Asia Minor and Thrace, the Mediterranean and Levant, with the thousand bright isles which gemmed these waters, and where she was once respected and obeyed, now know her no more. Even Venice, her ancient rival, has ceased to dream of her power; to all the East she is only what are now the hosts that went from her bosom to battle in the Holy Land; a phantom of perished greatness.
But a better day may yet perhaps dawn on Genoa. She is not yet the ruined votary of vice, nor the crouching slave of tyranny. Another Doria, like her first, may yet arise to rally her scattered strength; to break the iron that eats into her soul; to send the malignant despot who rivets her chain, back to his petty isle; and, sustained by the shouting vigor of fraternal cities, to grapple with the force of Austrian interference, and with indignant energy hurl back the broken links of her fetters into the very teeth of that Moloch of despotism. May this day come; may these eyes see it; and Genoa, were not the proffer beneath thy pride, here are hearts and hands for thee! Strike for freedom and for self-respect; for the greatness lost, and the gifts that remain! Thousands mourn thy slumber, and the spirits of thy fathers speak to thee from the grave!
