The most pleasurable recollection of this period was a day spent at Nervi, ten miles from Genoa on the Riviera Levante.

The lovely bay of Nervi, on a sunny day, is enriched with every colour: the steep shores of black, veined with white, a magnesian limestone, worn by the waves into waves; the blue waters breaking over projecting rocks, curdling into white, while pools of foamy green fill the basins. It was here that I collected my colours and ideas for “The Painter” in “New Symbols,” which I wrote on returning to Genoa, a place not so attractive as some Italian cities, though the Palazzo Rosso, with its art collection, is never to be forgotten.

There is no sea coast worth visiting at Genoa, scarcely a bathing place; all occupied and spoilt by fortifications. Nevertheless we wandered among the vineyards and villas, our eyes doing honour to the one that had belonged to Paganini.

On a descending road we walked along a festooned vineyard, regarding the ripe fruit with longing eyes, for it was sultry weather, and our great contribution to it was thirst. At the bottom of the hill was a fruiterer’s shop, where a barrowful of grapes had just arrived, and we gained permission to eat. Our thirst was slaked and we asked what we owed in payment; it was a few coppers, and we took from our pockets at random, a good half-dozen times the amount demanded. For such small pay, we witnessed a rapture such as no stage exhibits.

On reaching the streets of the city we encountered a crowd, in the midst of which two men, a large and a small one, were wrestling in an agony of rage. The big man suddenly wrested a knife from the hand of the little one, and flung it far from him, pointing at it in triumphant scorn.

The little man, all over in a fury that actor never attained to, rushed to his house close by, imploring his wife, who was at the door, to give him another knife; but she refused, so the fight was over.

We have not forgotten the Via Nuova, that narrow street of palaces of which our Pall Mall is a resemblance; and we have not forgotten the statue of Columbus,—it was nearly opposite our hotel.

More of Genoa I do not care to note, except that the villas of various colours, red, blue, green, and yellow, surrounding it, look suited to the climate; that of Novello more picturesque than the shop in London where he gathered together all his money.

Henry toiled up the hill to inspect the cemetery.

It is a saying, rife at Genoa, that it takes three Jews to cheat one Genoese. The inhabitants are, certainly, a very business-like people.

The remembrance comes up in my mind that the cactus grows wild here on the old crumbling walls; as the houseleek does on our tiles.

We crossed the mountain that separates Genoa and Spezia—a picturesque journey, with frequent sea-views. The only conveyance was by Diligence, and there is danger; the driving becoming furious as soon as the descent into Spezia begins; nevertheless, we entered the town in safety.

Spezia has its charm; the old streets at the back, the new ones in front near the sea, the temple of Venus on the hill to the right of the shore, Lerici on the left, where Shelley died. But those marble hills that surround the place! As the sun sets, they and the sea become of one pink colour; as the sun sinks deeper, the brilliance quits the water, except where the little waves rise and just dip their crests into it once more.

We took the train to Florence, Henry getting out at Pisa to join me again.

I had returned to Florence after over forty years. Not a soul that I formerly knew was there; all had vanished, lost in the crowd of the absent or dead.

I felt like the last man! But I met with new friends there; the truest of all, Madame Mazzini, was almost the first of these. During my forty years’ absence she had been born, had married, and become a mother, and then a widow, afterwards to become the wife of an illustrious Italian, Signor Villari, senator, and now, in ’91, a member of the Government, as Minister of Education.

She, like her husband, a distinguished author, has been my sincere friend for twenty years.

There was nothing to take me to Florence, nothing but a longing that time could not extinguish, a longing to see again its palaces, its churches, its Palazzo Vecchio in its over-powering might of grandeur embossing architecture on the sky; the Palazzo Strozzi, so defiant of all that is plebeian; the Casa Ricarsoli, so graceful as almost to say a house may be of the fairer sex! The Duomo, the Campanile, not yet under a glass case, as Michael Angelo said playfully, it was worthy to be; and the Sacristy at its side. These and more I longed to see again, with a passion that impels the wanderer to return to his native land. And those delicious walks to Fiesole and Bellosguardo, whence, from summits, one gazes on Florence as on an enchanted city!

Then the Tuscans, with their bright intellects and fine faces, from prince to peasant; their gentleness towards the stranger; their melodious, grammatical enunciation of the one sweet language perfected in the course of ages out of the beautiful words handed down from Greece and Rome.

I had thus reached Florence by Mont Cenis, Turin, Alexandria, and Pisa. At Genoa I inquired of a peasant my way; he took me to the place I wanted, a steep ascent. I offered him a gratuity, which he refused, saying, “The signor is a stranger!” Forty years before, one dark night, I asked a Prince Corsini, not knowing whom he was, to direct me to the Via Maggio where I lived. He turned out of his path and escorted me home.