Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/12

22 but it flutters from the crown down over the shoulders and back.

One sees in the streets a lively movement everywhere, trade, opulence,—no beggars. People talk, buy and sell, laugh, eat macaroni, and farinella, a very nice cake, made of pea-meal and oil. The working men look strong and well-conditioned—a handsome people.

White marble palaces, with laurel and orange trees in their courts, shine out on all hands. The palaces lying along the harbor are now nearly all converted into hotels, and some of them look outwardly very much like nests of thieves (and that perhaps with reason), but they have within beautiful marble stairs and large splendid rooms. Thus, our Palazzo Grimaldi, where one flies, rather than climbs up and down the stairs, which are exquisite from bottom to top. Within the city, the palaces are still in full splendor, and belong to wealthy and powerful old families, who are now beginning to repair and adorn them, somewhat in competition with the democratic tide which threatens to overflow the formerly very aristocratic republic. But Genoa la Superla deserves its name at the present day, because she sits on the shore of the Mediterranean, like a princess amongst cities, with her proud palaces and laurel groves, with a back-ground of hills, and before her the sea, which, from her glorious half-circular harbor, she seems to rule with a grand and steady glance. Thus did her greatest son, Columbus, whilst gazing across with his spirit glance, direct his eyes to the New World; thus Andrea Doria, called “the father of his country,”