One tomb is said to have cost some £5000. The patriot Mazzini is buried here. At the highest point of the cemetery is a rotunda chapel, with very fine statuary of Moses and the prophets, Adam and Eve, and many other subjects.
There is an echo in this chapel that is wonderfully and unusually clear and distinct.
The shops at Genoa are small but handsomely furnished. The Genoese jewellery is very beautiful, particularly the gold and silver filagree work. We were surprised to learn that the gold so-called is only silver twice gilt.
The postal arrangements here are very convenient. By leaving your address at the poste-restante, you have all your letters sent to you at the hotel without delay. There is a nice sheltered colonnade, a kind of Burlington Arcade, running half-way up at the back of the Via Roma, where the Hotel Isotta is situated, and close to the post-office; but on a rainy day, the noise made by those talking and promenading there is somewhat of a nuisance to visitors in the hotel. A very favourite promenade—indeed, the best in Genoa—is that before mentioned, in front of the harbour, but only when shaded from the heat of the sun, as the glare of its rays on the white marble is scarcely to be borne. Here in the evenings, when fine, the ladies of Genoa are seen to advantage, with their charming dress at once so elegant, modest, and becoming. English women might well take a few hints from its simplicity. These ladies are mostly handsome, and their movements are exceedingly graceful.
Here and there among the houses you sometimes see between two windows a painting simulating a third window half open, with perhaps a lady looking out into the street below, and this is so natural, that for the moment you fancy it is real. The houses are mostly six stories high, and the shops and lower apartments are consequently extremely gloomy. The upper rooms are the most suitable to dwell in, but visitors frequently find it exceedingly fatiguing to toil up and down the stairs; and some of the stone-paved passages, miscalled streets, are almost perpendicular. Altogether, one needs extraordinary strength in this city of precipices. It is thus very unsuitable to invalids, apart from its variable climate. It is subject to very rapid changes of temperature, warm winds from the south alternating constantly with dry cold winds from the north, which render it very trying to delicate people.
The weather was so very cold during our visit, that, despite the great interest with which Genoa inspired us, we were glad to leave it for Pisa, which we understood would be milder. We had intended going hence to Milan, Florence, and Venice, but the cold warned us not to go further north; and we therefore altered our plans, and left Genoa on the 9th of January for Pisa, en route for Rome.