Genoa.

Tomorrow we leave Genoa, and we do it with pleasure; for we have, all of us, a great desire to see Venice. Genoa is a fine city; but it is seen with admiration, and quitted without regret; because there are no charms in its society to attach one to it. Luxury here affords no agreeable enjoyments: it consists in mere outside shew; and displays itself only to dazzle, to astonish the stranger, and to attract his eyes as he passes. – Genoa is adorned with sumptuous palaces, superb marble colonades, and immense galleries of pictures; but the rooms of these vast houses are very inconveniently disposed. You must ascend a very steep stair-case, and always seventy or eighty steps at least, before you reach the best apartments. On the days of assembly, these palaces are lighted up with an extreme magnificence. For instance, one lustre commonly holds one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty wax-lights. – The Genoese see company perhaps four or five times in a year, and then receive two hundred persons. They give magnificent entertainments, but never little †social repasts. – Curiosity led me yesterday to a masked ball: Never did I see any thing more dull and more silent. The dancers are obliged to dance in turn minuets for half an hour; and then English country-dances for half an hour; and lastly, Genoese dances for half an hour; these last are exceedingly slow and lifeless. After the Genoese, the minuets recomence; and so on for ever in the same order. I am persuaded that the French alone know how to amuse themselves. Upon the whole, Adelaide and Theodore are very well pleased with their stay at Genoa; they carry away with them a superb collection of designs, and each of them a very pretty journal. Adelaide would have torn some pages of hers, at which I had laughed a little; but I would not permit her; and, according to my promise, you shall see it without correction or retrenchment.