My note-book says that Genoa is the most magnificent city I ever saw, and I hold by my note-book, though I hardly know how to prove it.  Venice is, and remains, the most beautiful city in the world; but her ancient rival impresses you with greater splendor.  I suppose that the exclusively Renaissance architecture, which Ruskin declares the architecture of pride, lends itself powerfully to this effect in Genoa.  It is here in its best mood, and there is little grotesque Renaissance to be seen, though the palaces are, as usual, loaded with ornament.  The Via Nuova is the chief thoroughfare of the city, and the crowd pours through this avenue between long lines of palaces.  Height on height rise the stately, sculptured facades, colonnaded, statued, pierced by mighty doorways and lofty windows; and the palaces seem to gain a kind of aristocratic hauteur from the fact that there are for the most part no sidewalks, and that the carriages, rolling insolently through the crowd, threaten constantly to grind the pedestrian up against their carven marbles, and immolate him to their stony pride.  There is something gracious and gentle in the grandeur of Venice, and much that the heart loves to cling to; but in Genoa no sense of kindliness is touched by the magnificence of the city.

It was an unspeakable relief, after such a street, to come, on a sudden, upon the Duomo, one of the few Gothic buildings in Genoa, and rest our jaded eyes on that architecture which Heaven seems truly to have put into the thoughts of man together with the Christian faith.  O beloved beauty of aspiring arches, of slender and clustered columns, of flowering capitals and window-traceries, of many-carven breadths and heights, wherein all Nature breathes and blossoms again!  There is neither Greek perfection, nor winning Byzantine languor, nor insolent Renaissance opulence, which may compare with this loveliness of yours!  Alas that the interior of this Gothic temple of Genoa should abound in the abomination of rococo restoration!  They say that the dust of St. John the Baptist lies there within a costly shrine; and I wonder that it can sleep in peace amid all that heathenish show of bad taste.  But the poor saints have to suffer a great deal in Italy.

Outside, in the piazza before the church, there was an idle, cruel crowd, amusing itself with the efforts of a blind old man to find the entrance.  He had a number of books which he desperately laid down while he ran his helpless hands over the clustered columns, and which he then desperately caught up again, in fear of losing them.  At other times he paused, and wildly clasped his hands upon his eyes, or wildly threw up his arms; and then began to run to and fro again uneasily, while the crowd laughed and jeered.  Doubtless a taint of madness afflicted him; but not the less he seemed the type of a blind soul that gropes darkly about through life, to find the doorway of some divine truth or beauty,—­touched by the heavenly harmonies from within, and miserably failing, amid the scornful cries and bitter glee of those who have no will but to mock aspiration.