m on this visit.

The four, only too glad to find themselves able to get out of doors, set
forth on foot through the steep and narrow streets of Genoa, which make
driving in a carriage a fatigue, and walking a feat of great excitement,
especially when mud prevails. Trucks, ponderously laden with bales
of goods, and pushed along at a reckless rate of speed by
mahogany-complexioned men; dashing coaches, impelled by drivers
hallooing when close upon you with distracting loudness and abruptness;
mules coming onward with the blundering obtuseness peculiar to their
tribe, or with their heads fastened to doorways, and their flanks
extending across the street, affording just space enough for the
passenger to slide behind their heels; a busy, jostling crowd of people
hurrying to and fro, with no definite current, but streaming over any
portion of the undistinguishable carriage-way and foot-way,--all combine
to make Genoese pedestrianism a work only less onerous than driving.

Choosing the minor trouble, our party trusted to their own legs; and,
after picking their way through sludge and mire, along murky alleys that
branched off into wharves and quays, and up slippery by-ways that looked
like paved staircases without regular steps, the four emerged upon an
open space in front of a noble church. Leaving this on their left hand,
they turned short into a place that wore something the appearance of a
stable-yard,--with this difference, that there were neither steeds nor
stabling to be seen; but instead there were blank walls, enclosing a
kind of court adjoining a huge old mansion, and beyond there was a steep
descent leading down to the sea-side.

On ringing a bell that hung beside a gate in the wall enclosure, the
door opened apparently of itself, and a dismal scream ensued. The scream
proceeded from a sea-gull, peering out of a kind of pen formed by a
wooden paling in one corner of a grass-grown patch, half cabbage-garden,
half excavated earth and rock; and the mysterious opening of the door
was explained by a connecting cord pulled by some unseen hand within a
smaller house that stood near to the huge old mansion. From the house
appeared, advancing towards us, the two bachelor brothers, who welcomed
our friend and his three companions with grave Italian courtesy.
Understanding the curiosity the four felt to see their premises, they
did the honors of their place, with a minuteness as politely considerate
towards the strangers as