ly,
and these are as narrow, as dark, as full of jutting chimney-places,
balconies, and opened window-shutters, and as picturesque as the
little alleys in Venice. They wander at will around the bases of the
gloomy old stone palaces, and seem to have a vagabond fondness for
creeping down to the port, and losing themselves there in a certain
cavernous arcade which curves round the water with the flection of the
shore, and makes itself a twilight at noonday. Under it are clangorous
shops of iron-smiths, and sizzling shops of marine cooks, and, looking
down its dim perspective, one beholds chiefly sea-legs coming and
going, more or less affected by strong waters; and as the faces to
which these sea-legs belong draw near, one discerns sailors from all
parts of the world,--tawny men from Sicily and Norway, as diverse in
their tawniness as olive and train-oil; sharp faces from Nantucket
and from the Piraeus, likewise mightily different in their sharpness;
blonde Germans and blonde Englishmen; and now and then a colored
brother also in the seafaring line, with sea-legs, also, more or less
affected by strong waters like the rest.

What curious people are these seafarers! They coast the whole world,
and know nothing of it, being more ignorant and helpless than children
on shore. I spoke with the Yankee mate of a ship one day at Venice,
and asked him how he liked the city.

Well, he had not been ashore yet.

He was told he had better go ashore; that the Piazza San Marco was
worth seeing.

Well, he knew it; he had seen pictures of it; but he guessed he
wouldn't go ashore.

Why not, now he was here?

Well, he laid out to go ashore the next time he came to Venice.

And so, bless his honest soul, he lay three weeks at Venice with his
ship, after a voyage of two months, and he sailed away without ever
setting his foot on that enchanted ground.

I should have liked to stop some of those seafarers and ask them what
they thought of Genoa.

It must have been in the little streets--impassable for horses--that
the people sat and talked, as Heine fabled, in their doorways, and
touched knees with the people sitting and talking on the thresholds
of the opposite side. But we saw no gossipers there on our Sunday in
Genoa; and I think the domestic race of Heine's day no longer lives in
Genoa, for every body we saw on the streets was gayly dressed in the
idea of the last fashions, and was to be met chiefly in the public
promenades. The