GENOA.

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business is transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided flavour aboutit. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods brought in from foreign countries payno duty until they arc sold and taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is downhere also ; and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to search you ifthey choose, and to keep out monks and ladies. For, sanctity as well as beauty has beenknown to yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way : that is to say, byconcealing the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So sanctity andbeauty may, by no means, enter.

“ The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importation of a few priests ofprepossessing appearance. Every fourth or fifth man in the streets is a priest or amonk ; and there is pretty sure to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outsideevery hackney carriage on the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere,of more repulsive countenances than are to be found among these gentry. If Nature ’shandwriting be at all legible, greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor,could hardly be observed among any class of men in the world.

“ Mr. Pepys once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in illustration of his respectfor the priestly office, that if he could meet a priest and angel together, he would salutethe priest first. I am rather of the opinion of Petrarch , who, when his pupil Boccacciowrote to him in great tribulation, that he had been visited and admonished for hiswritings by a Carthusian friar who claimed to be a messenger immediately commissionedby Heaven for that purpose, replied, that for his own part, he would take the liberty oftesting the reality of the commission by personal observation of the messenger’s face,eyes, forehead, behaviour, and discourse, I cannot but believe myself, from similarobservation, that many unaccredited celestial messengers may bo seen skulking throughthe streets of Genoa , of droning away their lives in other Italian towns.

“ Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, arc, as an order, the best friendsof the people. They seem to mingle with them more immediately, as their counsellorsand comforters; and to go among them more, when they are sick; and to pry less thansome other orders into the secrets of families, for the purpose of establishing a balefulascendancy over their weaker members; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire tomake converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin, soul and body. They may beseen, in their coarse dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in themarkets early in the morning. The Jesuits , too, muster strong in the streets, and goslinking noiselessly about, in pairs, like black cats.”

Genoa has long been remarkable for its silk, velvet, and gold-lace manufactures. Itsexports are fruits, chiefly oranges and lemons, oil, perfumes, jewellery, and artificialflowers. Raw silk and cotton are imported from Sicily ; iron and naval stores from theBaltic; linen and sail-cloth from Germany; wool from Spain ; and cottons, tin, lead, andhardware from Great Britain .

A singular exhibition is presented by the street of the goldsmiths. Its glittering andrich shops arc not designed for those who most frequent them in our own land. Theprofusion of gold and silver filigree work, clasps, rings, ear-rings, chains, combs, pearls,corals, and even of still more costly gems, are all there for the peasantry. Gold andsilver ornaments glitter profusely on the persons of the women during the ordinary daysof toil; but to these is added an abundance of coral and pearl on days of festivity.

Although much of the raw silk is imported, the silk-worm is reared in the neighbour-hood of Genoa . About five miles up the beautiful valley of the Polcevera, is the villageof San Quirico, where a large silk-mill has long been established. Many of thevillages which enliven the road, are embowered in the foliage of the mulbeny-tree, andsometimes it forms avenues through which the traveller may pass. The silk-worm isreared by the peasants, who dispose of their produce to the mill. The worm that yields