Such, then, was Genoa,--Queen of the Mediterranean, as Venice was Queen of the Adriatic,--when Christopher Columbus first saw the light. His parents were, as we have seen, people in a humble but eminently respectable position. Their manner of life differed little from that of their neighbours. Thus was passed, only fifty years ago, the life of an honest Genoese family of the lower middle class. At five in the morning the family, apprentices, and servants rose. After saying the "Angelus," they proceeded to the nearest church to Mass. A slice of bread, with fruit in summer, or dried figs in winter, and a glass of wine, formed the first meal or breakfast. Then came work until noon, when the frugal dinner was served--meat once a week, and sweets only on great festivals. As a rule, it consisted of a _minestrone_, a succulent and wholesome sort of soup, made with all kinds of vegetables, rice, and bits of pork cut up into square pieces, macaroni, ravioli, and other like dishes. After this meal there was an hour for recreation. Then to work again until sunset, when the whole household repeated the "Angelus," and said the Rosary. In summer they would go processionally from street image to image, singing their Aves and Paters with uncommon unction before the holy figure, round which burned scores of little oil lamps, amid cart-wheel-shaped bouquets. Sometimes one-half the people on the street said the Rosary, while the other gave the responses. It is not surprising if, after a regime of this sort, Christopher Columbus grew up to be a very pious man. However, there were plenty of scandals going the round of the town, even in 1451, and I am afraid religiosity rather than piety was the true characteristic of this singular population. Still, the evidence in favour of Columbus and his family is so greatly to their advantage that we may feel sure they were really people of exceptional integrity and sincere piety. Little Genoese boys and girls were brought up rather sternly, and the _ferrula_ was much in use. Often, no doubt, did the small Columbus, both at home and at school, hold out his chubby hand to receive the strokes. The mother and sister appeared in public very rarely, and were invariably veiled. The church was the principal object of these excellent people's existence. It is so to this day with a majority of the lower and middle-class Genoese, who spend half their time in church, and are quite as well pleased to go and hear a sermon as their neighbours at Turin are to attend a new play. I am quite sure that more than once a year the infant Columbus and his brothers, dressed up as saints, and very artistically too, walked in the processions of the three or four confraternities attached to the church and convent of St Stefano. I daresay Christopher often impersonated the infant St John, or even the Child Jesus, and was carried on the shoulders of some gigantic brother disguised as St Christopher: