is a continual descent.  The inn was very comfortable and good at Sestri Levante.  The beginning of the road between Sestri and Rapallo is on the beach till near Rapallo, when it strikes again into the mountains and is of considerable ascent.  Rapallo is a very neat pretty place, situate on an eminence commanding a fine view of the sea.  The greater part of the road between Rapallo and Genoa is on the sea-coast, but cut along the mountains which here form a bluff with the sea.  Villas, gardens and vineyards line the whole of this route and nothing can be more beautiful.  The neatness of the villas and the abundance of the population form a striking contrast to the wild solitudes between Sarzana and Sesto, where (except at Borghetto) there is not a house to be seen and scarce a human creature to be met, and where the eagle seems to reign alone the uncontrolled lord of the creation.

GENOA, 23rd April.

The view of Genoa from the sea is indisputably the best; for on entering by land from the eastern side, the ramparts are so lofty as to intercept the fine view the city would otherwise afford.  From the sea side it rises in the shape of an amphitheatre; a view therefore taken from the sea gives the best idea of its grandeur and of the magnificence of its buildings, for everybody on beholding this grand spectacle must allow that this city well deserves its epithet of Superba.

I observe in my daily walks on the Esplanade a number of beautiful women.  The Genoese women are remarkable for their beauty and fine complexions.  They dress generally in white, and their style of dress is Spanish; they wear the mezzara or veil, in the management of which they display much grace and not a little coquetry.  Instead of the fan exercise recommended to women by the Spectator, the art of handling the mezzara might be reduced to a manual and taught to the ladies by word of command.

I put up at the house of a Spanish lady on the Piazza St Siro, and here for four livres a day I am sumptuously boarded and lodged.  There are three principal streets in Genoa, viz., Strada Nuova, Balbi, and Nuovissima.  Yet these three streets may be properly said to form but one, inasmuch as they lie very nearly in a right line.  These streets are broad and aligned with the finest buildings in Genoa.  This street or streets are the only ones that can be properly called so, according to the idea we usually attach to the word.  The others deserve rather the names of lanes and alleys, tho’ exceedingly well paved and aligned with excellent houses and shops.  In fact the streets Nuova, Nuovissima and Balbi are the only ones thro’ which carriages can pass.  The others are far too narrow to admit of the passage of carriages.  The houses on each side of them are of immense height, being of six or seven stories, which form such a shade as effectually to protect those who walk thro’ these alleys