CAMELS AT PISA.

51

sounding the second and the treble, one after the other. The whole people are bitten with a new song, and hardly sing anything else till the next. There were two epidemic airs of this kind when I was there, which had been imported from Florence, and which the inhabitants sang from morning till night, though they were nothing remarkable. Yet Pisa is said to be the least fond of music, of any city in Tuscany.

I must not omit a great curiosity which is in the neighbourhood of Pisa, towards the sea;—namely, the existence of a race of camels, which was brought from the east during the crusades. I have not seen them out of the city, though the novelty of the sight in Europe, the sand of the sea-shore, and the vessels that sometimes combine with the landscape in the distance, are said to give it a look singularly Asiatic. They are used for agricultural purposes, and may be sometimes met within the walls. The forest between Pisa and another part of the sea-shore, is extensive and woody.

Pisa is a tranquil, an imposing, and even now a beautiful and stately city. It looks like what it is, the residence of an university: many parts of it seem made up of colleges; and we feel as if we ought to "walk gowned." It possesses the Campo Santo; its river is the river of Tuscan poetry, and furnished Michael Angelo with the subject of his cartoon; and

it disputes with Florence the birth of Galileo. Here, at all events, the great astronomer studied and taught here his mind was born, and another great impulse given to the progress of philosophy and liberal opinion.

SHELLEY'S HOUSE AT LERICI.

53

CHAPTER XX.

GENOA.

Removal to Genoa.-Shelley's house at Lerici.-Earthquake at Lerici.-Reputation of Englishmen in Italy for mad courage.Courage of Italians. - Porto Venere. Fishy population. Maritime Apennines.-Domiciles at Albaro.-Account of the "Liberal."-Awkward mistake respecting two of its writers.— Lord Byron and Dr. Johnson.

TOWARDS the end of September, Lord Byron and myself, in different parties, left Pisa for Genoa. Tuscany had been rendered uncomfortable to him by the misadventures both there and at Leghorn; and at Genoa he would hover on the borders of his inclination for Greece. Perhaps he had already made arrangements for going thither.

On our way to Genoa we met at Lerici. He had an illness at that place; and all my melancholy was put to its height by seeing the spot which my departed friend had lived in, and his solitary mansion

on the sea-shore. Lerici is wild and retired, with a bay and rocky eminences; the people suited to it, something between inhabitants of sea and land. In the summer time they will be up all night dabbling in the water, and making wild noises. Here Trelawney joined us. He took me to the Villa Magni (the house just alluded to); and we paced over its empty rooms, and neglected garden. The sea fawned upon the shore, as though it could do no harm,

At Lerici we had an earthquake. The shock was the smartest we experienced in Italy. At Pisa there had been a dull intimation of one, such as happens in that city about once in three years. In the neighbourhood of Florence we had another less dull, but lasting only for an instant. It was exactly as if somebody with a strong hand had jerked a pole up against the ceiling of the lower room, right under one's feet. This was at Maiano, among the Fiesolan hills. People came out of their rooms, and inquired of one another what was the matter. At Lerici I awoke at dawn with an extraordinary sensation, and directly afterwards the earthquake took place. It was strong enough to shake the pictures on the wall; and it lasted a sufficient time to resemble the rolling of a waggon under an archway, which it did both in noise and movement. I got up and went to the window. The people were already collecting in the open place

AN EARTHQUAKE.

55

beneath it; and I heard, in the clear morning air, the word Terremoto (earthquake) repeated from one to another. The sensation for the next ten minutes or so was very distressing. You expected the shock to come again, and to be worse. However, we had no more of it. We congratulated ourselves the more, because there was a tower on a rock just over our heads, which would have stood upon no ceremony with our inn. They told us, if I remember, that they had an earthquake on this part of the coast of Italy, about once every five years. Italy is a land of volcanoes, more or less subdued. It is a great grapery, built over a flue. If the earthquake did not come, it was thought the crops were not so good.

From Lerici, we proceeded part of our way by water, as far as Sestri. Lord Byron went in a private boat; Trelawney in another; myself and family in a felucca. It was pretty to see the boats with their white sails, gliding by the rocks over that blue sea. A little breeze coming on, our seamen were afraid, and put into Porto Venere, a deserted town a short distance from Lerici. I asked them if they really meant to put in, upon which they looked very determined on that point, and said that "Englishmen had no sense of danger." I smiled to think of the British Channel. I thought also of the thunder and lightning in this very sea, where they