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THE IDLER

IN

ITALY.

BY THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

PHILADELPHIA:

CAREY & HART.

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JOURNAL OF A TOUR.

WE passed through the three principal streets of Genoa to-day-indeed the only ones that merit attention-named Rue de Balbi, Nuova, and Nuovissima. The Strada Nuova is lined by magnificent palaces, but its extent does not accord with the splendor of the buildings that occupy it; and which, if placed in another situation, would appear to much greater advantage. Madame de Staël observed that this street looked as if built for a congress of kings; but to me, it gives more the idea of a collection of edifices heaped together for sale, in the same incongruous manner in which, in a fashionable auction-room in London, I have seen the most sumptuous pieces of furniture piled one against the other, and preventing, by their proximity, the possibility of any one of them being viewed with the attention they merited. I wished for the hand of a magician to transport these fine palaces to suitable sites, where, not elbowed by each other, they might challenge admiration.

All that in England are reserved for the interior decoration of our finest residences, are here lavished on the exterior, with a profusion that bespeaks the unbounded wealth of their founders. Marble columns, rich friezes, balustrades, statues, fountains, arcades, and galleries, all formed of the same costly materials, strike the eye; mingled with terraced gardens, in which bloom the orange, myrtle, and oleander, with a luxuriance unknown VOL. II.-2

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