And Emit A
Peculiar Fragrance, Like The Smell Of Very Bad Cheese, Kept In Very
Hot Blankets.
Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there
would seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new houses
are thrust in everywhere.
Wherever it has been possible to cram a
tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If
there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in
any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some
kind of habitation: looking as if it had grown there, like a
fungus. Against the Government House, against the old Senate
House, round about any large building, little shops stick so close,
like parasite vermin to the great carcase. And for all this, look
where you may: up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there
are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down,
leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their
friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the
rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further.
One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by
the landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being associated
with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has
stamped it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the houses are very
high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have
(as most of the houses have) something hanging out of a great many
windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance on the breeze.
Sometimes, it is a curtain; sometimes, it is a carpet; sometimes,
it is a bed; sometimes, a whole line-full of clothes; but there is
almost always something. Before the basement of these houses, is
an arcade over the pavement: very massive, dark, and low, like an
old crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has turned
quite black; and against every one of these black piles, all sorts
of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously. Beneath
some of the arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish
their stalls, which are by no means inviting. The offal of a fish-
market, near at hand--that is to say, of a back lane, where people
sit upon the ground and on various old bulk-heads and sheds, and
sell fish when they have any to dispose of--and of a vegetable
market, constructed on the same principle--are contributed to the
decoration of this quarter; and as all the mercantile business is
transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided
flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods
brought in from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold
and taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here
also; and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the
gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and
Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to yield to
the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way: that is to say,
by concealing the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its
dress. So Sanctity and Beauty may, by no means, enter.
The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importation of
a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. Every fourth or fifth
man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk; and there is pretty sure
to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every
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's handwriting 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 respect for the Priestly office, that if he
could meet a Priest and angel together, he would salute the Priest
first. I am rather of the opinion of PETRARCH, who, when his pupil
BOCCACCIO wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had been
visited and admonished for his writings by a Carthusian Friar who
claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned by Heaven for
that purpose, replied, that for his own part, he would take the
liberty of testing the reality of the commission by personal
observation of the Messenger's face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and
discourse. I cannot but believe myself, from similar observation,
that many unaccredited celestial messengers may be seen skulking
through the streets of Genoa, or droning away their lives in other
Italian towns.
Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, are, as an
order, the best friends of the people. They seem to mingle with
them more immediately, as their counsellors and comforters; and to
go among them more, when they are sick; and to pry less than some
other orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of
establishing a baleful ascendency over their weaker members; and to
be influenced by a less fierce desire to make converts, and once
made, to let them go to ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in
their coarse dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and
begging in the markets early in the morning. The Jesuits too,
muster strong in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly about, in
pairs, like black cats.
In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate. There
is a street of jewellers, and there is a row of booksellers; but
even down in places where nobody ever can, or ever could, penetrate
in a carriage, there are mighty old palaces shut in among the
gloomiest and closest walls, and almost shut out from the sun.
Very few of the tradesmen have any idea of setting forth their
goods, or disposing them for show.
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