MARCHESE PALLAVICINI AND WALTER LANDOR. AT Albaro near Genoa I rented the palace of Marchese Pallavicini. While he was presenting the compliments on my arrival, the wife of his bailiff brought me fish and fowl from the city, and poured upon the table a basketful of fine fruit. LANDOR. The walk has tired you, my good woman. The hill indeed is rather steep, but it is short, and you appear, like the generality of Genoese countrywomen, strongly built. PALLAVICINI. She has been frightened. When the Neapolitans and English landed here in the bay, she was in childbed. LANDOR. Poor woman! the alarm must have been great indeed, before you knew that the general was an Englishman. "Ah, sir!" was all she replied. Signor marchese, do inform me what she means. PALLAVICINI. Sir, it is better for all parties to forget the calamities of war, which always are the greatest in the most beautiful countries. LANDOR. Indulge me however in my request. Curiosity is pardonable in a stranger, and, led by humanity, is admissible to confidence. PALLAVICINI. You had begun, sir, to say something which interested me, in reply to my inquiry how you liked our scenery. I shall derive much more satisfaction from your remarks on our architecture and gardens, than you can derive from my recital of any inhumanity. It is fair and reasonable, and in the course of things, that we should first arrive at that which may afford us pleasure, and not flag towards it wearied and saddened, and incapable of its enjoyment. LANDOR. I am pleased, as I observed, by the palace before us, not having seen in Italy, until now, a house of any kind with a span of turf before it. Like yours and your neighbour's, they generally encroach on some lane, following its windings and angles, lest a single inch of ground should be lost; and the roofs fight for the center of the road. If an Italian spends a livre, he must be seen to spend it: his stables, his laundry, his domestics, his peasants, must strike the eye together: his pigstie must have witnesses like his will. Every tree is accursed, as that of which the holy cross was fabricated, and must be swept away. You are surely the most hospitable people in the world: even that edifice which derives its existence and its name from privacy, stands exposed and wide-open to the stranger. When I resided on the Lake of Como, I visited the palace of Marchese Odescalchi. Before it swelled in majesty that sovran of inland waters; behind it was a pond surrounded with brickwork, in which about twenty young goldfish jostled and gaped for room. The Larius had sapped the foundations of his palace, and the marchese had exerted all his genius to avenge himself: he composed this bitter parody. I inquired of his cousin Don Pepino, who conducted me, when the roof would be put on. He looked at me, doubting if he understood me, and answered in a gentle tone, |