twelve fluted and inlaid columns, richly gilded and painted. But a far more interesting church is the old Cathedral of San Lorenzo, in the Piazza of the same name, and close to the Via Carlo Felice. It is in the Gothic style, or rather represents three different periods, the Romanique, the French Gothic, and the Renaissance. It was mostly built about the year 1100, and restored in 1300. It has a triple portal, with deep-recessed, pointed arches. Above these are several rows of arcades, a small rose window, and a tower with a little dome at the top, two hundred feet high. At the south corner above the central door is a bas-relief of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, its patron saint, and many quaint carvings of monsters. The beautiful and curiously twisted columns, triple portals, arches, and arcades, as well as the whole façade and front exterior, are of black and white marbles; and there is some very fine bronze-work, painting, and statuary. In the sacristy they show the Sacred Catina (basin), a six-sided piece of glass brought from Cæsarea in 1101, and reported to be that which held the Paschal lamb at the Last Supper of our Lord. It was given out to be a pure emerald, till the mistake was detected by a scientific judge. It may be seen for five francs—a large fee, evidently charged in the hope of some day making up for its deceptive intrinsic worth. Like Westminster Abbey, the interior of this church has the impress of antiquity, especially in its worn columns. I was invited by the old verger to view the Sacred Chapel of St. John the Baptist, but my wife was mysteriously prohibited, as women had been concerned in the saint's martyrdom. I believe this stern order is waived once a year, probably by payment of a pretty large fee for conciliation. There are other chapels, paintings, and relics that are well worthy the trouble and time of study, making this ancient cathedral the most interesting duomo in Genoa.
St. Ambrogio, in the Via del Sellag, is rich in pictures: Ruben's "Circumcision," and his "St. Ignatius," healing a man possessed of an evil spirit, and also Guido's "Assumption." It is splendid in colouring and wonderful in the elaboration of detail. These to some may appear too extravagant. The Santa Maria di Carignano, or Church of the Assumption, in the same street, is one of the finest in Genoa. The walk from here, along the walls and ramparts of St. Chiara, gives a splendid view.
Many other churches, some sixty in number, are well worth a visit; but, like the palaces, they require considerable time to properly appreciate them.
One scarcely likes to see all these gorgeous buildings, with so lavish a display of the money laid out on their profuse decoration, when the mendicant poor, the halt, maimed, and blind are crowding the porches, piteously begging alms; it spoils your pleasure and study of these beautiful edifices. We ought, however, to recollect that at home we have our crossing-sweepers, match and flower sellers, and many wretched objects of suffering and poverty, who perhaps make a similar impression on foreigners visiting our great and prosperous London, but who will perhaps marvel also at our lukewarmness and niggardliness in beautifying our St. Paul's and other churches.
At the commencement of our stay here the weather was warm and bright, but on the day following our arrival a most sudden change occurred, and it was very wet, and on Sunday bitterly cold. We went to the English church, and afterwards walked to the top of the fine street leading from the Carlo Felice, right up the valley at the foot of the mountains, and there we had a most glorious view. The Campo Santo in the distance; the harbour on the right; and the great hills, with their strong forts perched on every projecting point and pinnacle, all covered with snow; quite a white world since the day before. We saw ice in the streets, and were glad to return to the Hotel Isotta. The poor fasting Priests seemed quite nipped up; and the Genoese ladies, who under more favourable circumstances would have been graceful and good-looking, appeared unaccustomed to this severity of weather, and hurried along with red noses and pinched faces.
Of all our visits to interesting places in this ancient city our excursion to the Campo Santo gave us the most pleasure. It is some three or four miles from the city: the weather continuing cold, we preferred walking. We went up the main street, through the valley at the foot of the snow-clad hills we had seen before, and in little more than an hour we arrived at the gates of the Cemetery. This Campo Santo is indeed most eloquently illustrative of loving reverence and remembrance of the dead, and is quite a museum of beautiful monumental statuary.
This burial-ground is a system of sheltered colonnades, where the dead are deposited in sarcophagi, resting on shelves on the inner walls, tier upon tier. Only the very poor people seem to be buried in the common earth, in the open spaces which lie before the colonnades, and these are crowded. It rather shocked us to see the gravedigger remove some bones from the ground and throw them into a kind of bin, which was there for the purpose, in order to make room for a new corpse. I thought, with Hamlet—
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