master and mistress of the PALAZZO-SERRA came home in sedan chairs, and quietly ascended to their garrets, while we were stalking through "the finest saloon in Europe," unconscious of its master's presence, who bowed to us as he passed! "This celebrated object is oval in plan, the elevation a rich Corinthian; the walls are covered with gold and looking-glass; the floor consists of a polished mastic stained with oriental breccia." The ceiling alone is painted; and borrows while it lends beauty to the splendour below. Half a day was dedicated to this, and to three or four other palaces, especially the Ducal, the Durazzo, the Balbi, the d'Oria, and the Spinola mansions. To a stranger, first visiting this part of the Continent, these costly and magnificent structures would afford no inconsiderable astonishment as well as pleasure; but, to those returning from the South, they are not so interesting. There is one thing, however, in their favour-they are not surrounded and contrasted with sordid hovels and the extremes of human wretchedness, as in Rome and other parts of Italy.

GENOA TO NICE.

Having summoned Galliardi to prepare for our journey to Nice, I was surprized and grieved to find that the tramontane blast or something else had disinclined him for the completion of his contract. He did not, indeed, refuse to go on with me; but he introduced to me a young friend of his, who was returning to Nice, with two good horses, and whom he wished me to engage for the remainder of the journey, on the same terms which I had contracted with himself. The proposal was reasonable, and I reluctantly released Galliardi from his engagement. He was the most faithful, obliging, and honest vetturino whom I ever met.

We started at day-light from GENOA; but before we passed the light-house, I discovered that, although two heads may sometimes be better than one, yet, on this occasion, one horse was far better than two. The vetturino tried them side by side, tandem way, and every way, but they could not be made to travel in any kind of unison; and they upset a dozen of asses with their panniers, fruit, and vegetables, before we got half a mile beyond the walls! Deeply did I now regret the loss of Galliardi and his "BUONA BESTIA "-for I saw that, on such a road as we had to traverse between Genoa and Nice, a pair of such refractory animals, would be almost certain to hurl us over some precipice into the Mediterranean !

I therefore peremptorily commanded the young Nizzard to return to Genoa forthwith, and leave one of the horses behind. This, he said, was quite unnecessary; and jumping down, he loosed the spare horse, gave him a tremendous blow on the nose with the but-end of his whip, and sent him snorting for a dozen of yards in our rear ;-then remounting, he went off at full

SAVONA THE VIRGIN'S CHEMISE.

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speed with the more quiet of the two animals. I was rather puzzled at this procedure; but, on looking behind, I saw the refractory horse, who had forgotten or forgiven the insult, trotting after us with as much docility as a dog.

The vicinity of Genoa, on this side, though not so romantic as on the other, was covered with villas, churches, and monasteries that conveyed the idea of great opulence and even luxury. The road was so good and so level, that we reached SAVONA, a distance of nine posts, without stopping, by one o'clock; and here we dined. A few miles on the Nicean side of Savona, (near Noli) we encountered a fine specimen of the new route. The road, for more than a mile, was cut in the face of a precipice over-hanging the sea, and two or three thousand feet in height. The surges roared a thousand feet beneath us the jutting rocks towered a thousand feet in perpendicularity over our heads! The road was about twelve or fourteen feet broad, and rarely with any parapet! The young Nizzard often brought my wheel of the carricello within a foot of the horrid precipice, by way of doing me honour, as the Turks salute strangers by levelling the loaded cannon almost directly at their heads!

After dinner, at Savona, I rambled down to the harbour; and while I shivered under the chilling tramontane, I was struck with the peculiar aspect of the sky towards the Alps, and the horizon over the sea. The latter was hazy; but the heavens presented a lurid appearance which betokened something unusual. At this moment, I cast my eye on a column bearing the statue of the Virgin, and on the pedestal read the following couplet.

In mare irato, in subita procella,

Invoco te, MARIA, nostra benigna stella!

While returning to the inn, and repeating these lines, my attention was attracted by a huge female CHEMISE hung out at the door of a shop, and which appeared to me of very peculiar construction. It was nearly an inch in thickness, and lined with cotton-wool which seemed to defy the coldest tramontane that ever descended from the Alps. By some strange association of ideas, I jumbled together in my mind, a “subita procella," and this comfortable chemise, as a "benigna stella," that might be as useful in a snowstorm on the Alps, as the Virgin herself in a tempest on the ocean. I instantly purchased the chemise-and I am very certain that to this article of female dress, I owe the preservation of my life. At the inn I amused myself for half an hour, in getting into this same chemise, though I had immense difficulty in compelling my clothes to button over it. When I summoned the waiter to pay my bill, the man stared at my sudden increase of size, and cast an enquiring glance at a bed that was in the room, evidently suspecting that I had made free with the blankets! I soon convinced him that I was possessed of nothing but my own property-and away we trotted for FINALE,

where we arrived rather late. I could only see that this town lay at the foot of a very steep mountain, over whose bluff promontory, over-hanging the waves, we were to pass in the morning before day-light. At the HOTEL DE CHINA I fell in with my old fellow-traveller, the Polytechnic student, (travelling en voiturier) and we supped together very comfortably by a blazing fire. I was awoke several times in the night by strange noises, as if all the doors and window-shutters in FINALE were in motion; and at four o'clock in the morning, when roused for a long journey to St. REMO, I perceived that sleet was falling, and that a high wind prevailed.*

The cold was severe, and the night, or rather morning was dark as pitch. I took care to wrap myself in all the warm clothing I possessed, not forgetting the "BENIGNA STELLA" of the SAVONA VIRGIN, with something like a presentiment of impending danger-a depression of spirits not unfrequently felt at the approach of a storm. As we slowly ascended the zig-zag path of the mountain, the wind increased in violence, and the sleet penetrated every crevice of our clothes. By the time we had got nearly to the summit, it blew a hurricane; and, the ground becoming covered with snow, all distinct trace of the road was soon lost! We heard the Mediterranean roaring beneath us, on our left, and saw the sheets of white foam sweeping along the shorewhile stupendous rocks towered over our heads on the right-and we could perceive that we were winding along the brink of a horrible precipice, on a path not more than eleven or twelve feet in breadth, and apparently without any parapet! The NIZZARD, who, all along carefully led the horse, now made a full stop, and crossing himself, muttered some exclamation, or perhaps a prayer, which I could not distinctly hear or understand. After a few

* The master of the HOTEL DE CHINA is an extortionate knave. He had the conscience to demand 20 francs for my supper, bed, fire, and coffee! I asked him if he thought I was a Mandarin, or a Hong merchant, loaded with pagodas, and a proper object for being fleeced, at his CHINESE HOTEL? He shrugged up his shoulders. I demanded the items. With all his ingenuity he could only make out a bill of 15 francs. I pulled out from my pocket a plan of POMPEII, and made some pencil marks on the walls of that city. The fellow stared. I told him I was travelling this road, on purpose to report to my countrymen on the inns of the new route, and that the HOTEL DE CHINA should be marked in black letter. The knave's face lengthened four inches, I threw him down a Napoleon and refused the change. He will pay dearly for his five francs of extortion. Hic niger est-hunc tu Romane caveto!

8

I may here remark that it is of no use to have bed and supper included in the vetturino contract. If we do so, we shall have something much worse than "a salt eel for our supper.” The first notice which I always gave, on arriving at an inn, was this :-" I pay for my own fare." This made a wonderful difference!

SNOW-STORM IN THE ALPS.

239

seconds of painful suspense, he acknowledged that he was afraid of proceeding, and, thought we had better try to get back to FINALE. But the road was so narrow, that two carriages of any kind, could not pass, except at particular places where niches were hollowed out of the rock for this purpose. I then dismounted, and found, to my surprise and dismay, that my limbs were so benumbed, that I could scarcely support myself! He attempted to turn the carricello; but experienced great difficulty, as well as some danger, in this operation. And when, at last, he effected it, he soon became convinced that it was utterly impossible to make head against the storm of wind, sleet, and snow, which poured along this defile, in a direction contrary to our retreat! In the whole course of my life, I never experienced such sensations of cold. The tramontane blast came down from the Alps, so voracious of caloric, that it sucked the vital heat from every pore of my body! Here we lingered for full an hour, unable to get back, and fearing to proceed forward. We repeatedly heard fragments of rock detached from the precipices above us by the hurricane, crashing from steep to steep, and rolling into the sea beneath and we expected, every instant, to be buried under a torrent of stones, or swept down into the roaring waves. Among the agonising thoughts that rushed across my mind, in this perilous situation, the inscription on the pedestal of the Virgin's statue at Savona, recurred to my memory; and, as the mental energies are often enfeebled by danger, doubt, and bodily fatigue, the very name of the place we had left-FINALE-Suggested the superstitious and unmanly presentiment that this mountain pass and this snow-storm were destined to be the last scene of my mortal career! I now regretted, when too late, that curiosity had led me along this road at so advanced a period of the season, and in so hurried a manner-and, while shivering on this Alpine promontary, exposed to the freezing blast, and other dangers still more imminent, the thought of "friends and distant home," recalled to mind the picture which Thompson drew of a man perishing in a snow-storm-a recollection which added the misery of reminiscence to the peril and poignancy of present sufferings! The hour which passed in this situation, before the day glimmered upon us, appeared to be an age-and here I became convinced than the article of clothing which I purchased at SAVONA, was mainly instrumental in preserving my life. This sudden reflection threw a gleam of hope over the dreary scene, long before the beams of the sun illumined our path; and a superstitious emotion contributed to revive my drooping spirits, as it had previously tended to depress them.

When I say that the additional article of dress proved a preservative of life on this trying occasion, I am aware that nothing would have been effectual, had I not been inured to atmospherical vicissitudes by three months' travelling in the open air previously. Yet as

3

Whatever link we strike,

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike ;

so I am deeply impressed with the conviction that, to the VIRGIN of SAVONA or to her holy CHEMISE, I owe my salvation on the mountain of FINALE. On my arrival at Nice, I found a courier laid up with dangerous, if not fatal inflammation of the lungs, from exposure to the same storm on the same mountain.

At length the dawn appeared, though the hurricane continued with unabated violence, and the Mediterranean was one immense sheet of foam. The poor nizzard, who was almost as lifeless as myself, assisted me into the carricello, and we cautiously pursued our journey.* The exhaustion and terror of this morning induced such an irresistible propensity to sleep, that it was with the greatest difficulty I could keep myself from falling into a fatal lethargy, till we got to a village beyond the mountain, where coffee and a blazing fire recruited our exhausted frames. But during the whole of that day, I felt that I was on the verge of a serious illness-and, it was not till after a good night's sleep at ST. REMO, that I shook off the effects of the most terrible exposure and imminent danger which I had ever before encountered.

As I ascended this mountain in darkness, lingered on its summit in terror, and descended from it in a state of stupor, I can form no clear idea of its locality. Probably it offers nothing remarkable or formidable, by day-light and in fine weather; but a hurricane of sleet in the darkness of night, makes a wonderful difference on an Alpine pass. I imagine this must be the place mentioned by Forsyth, in the following words :-"Here we left the felucca, and crossed on foot a mountain, which modern geographers class among the Apennines, though D. Brutus describes it as the last of the Alps. Jacet inter Apenninum et Alpes, impeditissimus ad iter faciendum. This pass, which appeared to DANTE one of the four worst in Italy, brought us round the promontary to a gap in the summit, when a hurricane meeting us with all the advantage of a blast tube, threatened to blow us back into the sea." Be this as it may, I would not again cross the mountain of FINALE, in such a night, for ten thousand pounds !†

* When the sun rose, we perceived the whole country, in every direction, covered with snow.

It is clearly this mountain pass that was traversed by the spirited authoress of "Sketches of Italy," on her third day's journey from Nice. "We gladly left an abode so forlorn (Lovano) to commence our third day's journey; in the course of which, after climbing a mountain by a zig-zag path, so steep that we could scarcely keep our own seats, or the baggage could be prevented falling over the mule's shoulders, the whole length of the coast of