fore he had seen both, would Dickens himself have been
able to tell on which side his sympathies would lie. Thoroughly
popular in his convictions, thoroughly satisfied that to-day was in
all respects better than yesterday, it is clear that he expected to
find more pleasure in the brand new Republic than his actual
experience warranted. The roughness of the strong, uncultured young
life grated upon him. It jarred upon his sensibilities. But of Italy
he wrote with very different feeling. What though the places were
dirty, the people shiftless, idle, unpunctual, unbusinesslike, and
the fleas as the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude? It
mattered not while life was so picturesque and varied, and manners
were so full of amenity. Your inn might be, and probably was,
ill-appointed, untidy, the floors of brick, the doors agape, the
windows banging--a contrast in every way to the palatial hotel in New
York or Washington. But then how cheerful and amusing were mine host
and hostess, and how smilingly determined all concerned to make things
pleasant. So the artist in Dickens turned from the new to the old, and
Italy, as she is wont, cast upon him her spell.

First impressions, however, were not altogether satisfactory. Dickens
owns to a pang when he was "set down" at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa,
"in a rank, dull, weedy courtyard, attached to a kind of pink jail,
and told he lived there." But he immediately adds: "I little thought
that day that I should ever come to have an attachment for the very
stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look back upon the city with
affection, as connected with many hours of happiness and quiet." In
sooth, he enjoyed the place thoroughly. "Martin Chuzzlewit" had left
his hands. He was fairly entitled for a few weeks to the luxury of
idleness, and he threw himself into doing nothing, as he was
accustomed to throw himself into his work, with all energy. And there
was much to do, much especially to see. So Dickens bathed and walked;
and strolled about the city hither and thither, and about the suburbs
and about the surrounding country; and visited public buildings and
private palaces; and noted the ways of the inhabitants; and saw
Genoese life in its varied forms; and wrote light glancing letters
about it all to friends at home; and learnt Italian; and, in the end
of September, left his "pink jail," which had been taken for him at a
disproportionate rent, and moved into the Palazzo Peschiere,