A turn of the road brought Porto Venere in sight, and on its grey walls flashed a gleam of watery sunlight.  The village consists of one long narrow street, the houses on the left side hanging sheer above the sea.  Their doors at the back open on to cliffs which drop about fifty feet upon the water.  A line of ancient walls, with mediaeval battlements and shells of chambers suspended midway between earth and sky, runs up the rock behind the town; and this wall is pierced with a deep gateway above which the inn is piled.  We had our lunch in a room opening upon the town-gate, adorned with a deep-cut Pisan arch enclosing images and frescoes—­a curious episode in a place devoted to the jollity of smugglers and seafaring folk.  The whole house was such as Tintoretto loved to paint—­huge wooden rafters; open chimneys with pent-house canopies of stone, where the cauldrons hung above logs of chestnut; rude low tables spread with coarse linen embroidered at the edges, and laden with plates of fishes, fruit, quaint glass, big-bellied jugs of earthenware, and flasks of yellow wine.  The people of the place were lounging round in lazy attitudes.  There were odd nooks and corners everywhere; unexpected staircases with windows slanting through the thickness of the town-wall; pictures of saints; high-zoned serving women, on whose broad shoulders lay big coral beads; smoke-blackened roofs, and balconies that opened on the sea.  The house was inexhaustible in motives for pictures.

We walked up the street, attended by a rabble rout of boys—­diavoli scatenati—­clean, grinning, white-teethed, who kept incessantly shouting, ‘Soldo, soldo!’ I do not know why these sea-urchins are so far more irrepressible than their land brethren.  But it is always thus in Italy.  They take an imperturbable delight in noise and mere annoyance.  I shall never forget the sea-roar of Porto Venere, with that shrill obligate, ‘Soldo, soldo, soldo!’ rattling like a dropping fire from lungs of brass.

At the end of Porto Venere is a withered and abandoned city, climbing the cliffs of S. Pietro; and on the headland stands the ruined church, built by Pisans with alternate rows of white and black marble, upon the site of an old temple of Venus.  This is a modest and pure piece of Gothic architecture, fair in desolation, refined and dignified, and not unworthy in its grace of the dead Cyprian goddess.  Through its broken lancets the sea-wind whistles and the vast reaches of the Tyrrhene gulf are seen.  Samphire sprouts between the blocks of marble, and in sheltered nooks the caper hangs her beautiful purpureal snowy bloom.

The headland is a bold block of white limestone stained with red.  It has the pitch of Exmoor stooping to the sea near Lynton.  To north, as one looks along the coast, the line is broken by Porto Fino’s amethystine promontory; and in the vaporous distance we could trace the Riviera mountains, shadowy and blue.  The sea came roaring, rolling in with tawny breakers; but, far out, it sparkled in pure azure, and the cloud-shadows over it were violet.  Where Corsica should have been seen, soared banks of fleecy, broad-domed alabaster clouds.