t fifty
tunnels between Genoa and Spezzia. When we'd escaped from the suburbs of
Genoa, and the last tall houses which made you afraid it might be their
day to fall, we came upon visions as lovely as any we had seen in the
French Riviera. Those gleaming towns set on curving bays of sapphire
will always seem like dream-towns to me, unless I go back and prove
their reality; especially Rapallo, which was the most beautiful of all.
Jennie Harborough and her mother spent all one winter there, I remember
their telling me, and were sorry to go at the end. They went because it
was rather cheap, but stayed because it was more lovely than the
expensive places. From Rapallo, through Zoagli to Chiavari, we were high
above the sea, winding through ravine after ravine, but at Chiavari the
best of the coast was behind us; and at Sestri, much to our disgust, we
had to turn our backs on the sea. Still, it was delicious mounting up
among the foothills of the Apennines by the Col di Baracca, and running
down to Spezzia, lying like a pretty, lazy woman, looking out upon the
green gulf named after it. We had lunch in a cool, agreeable hotel to
which I felt grateful because of its pretty name--the Croce di Malta. I
did want to go and see Shelley's house at Lerici, but--well, I saw its
photograph instead; for there was our Napier "sleeping with one valve
open," luring us on, on under the shadow of the Apennines. One _does_
feel a wretch always "going on" instead of lingering, but that microbe I
told you about gives one a fever. Think of running through Lucca! But,
if we did what we planned in the day we must sacrifice something, so we
sacrificed Lucca to Pisa. The very name, before our arrival, made me a
child again, looking through the big stereoscope in your study at the
Leaning Tower, or at the steel engraving in Finden's _Landscape Annual_.
But from the moment I saw it, like a carving in ivory, reclining
gracefully on the bosom of a golden cloud, I forgot the stereoscope and
the _Annual_. In future I shall always see it against that cloud of rosy
sunset-gold.

I never knew how beautiful marble could be until I came to Pisa and
_Rome_. Somehow I had associated Pisa with the Leaning Tower, and not
with the Baptistry. I knew it existed, and, vaguely, that it was worth
seeing; but Pisa meant the Leaning Tower to me. Now I couldn't tell you
which has left the deeper impression. I'm not at all the same girl that
I was before I put Pisa and Rome