Seaward, the prospect from the apex of the triangle was truly glorious. The day was mild, and twenty sail was loitering along, quaint in their rig, as usual, and wallowing to the heavy ground swell. Here I got almost a bird’s-eye view of the town, port, and offing, with the noble range of coast southward, and a pile of purple mountains whose feet were lined with villages. I scarcely remember a day in Switzerland that was more fruitful of delight than this. As I descended to the highway, one of the royal equipages, a coach and six, with scarlet liveries, went by at a stately pace, followed by another with four, and several outriders. It added to the brilliancy of the foreground of the picture. The large space between the town and the walls was nearly waste; though there stands a citadel, overlooking the former in a way to suggest the idea of offence, rather than of defence.--The streets in general are Moorish in width, many of them positively not being more than eight or ten feet in breadth. I had one or two encounters with donkeys loaded with panniers, a passage being frequently quite a Scylla-and-Charybdis matter. As the houses are six or seven stories high, it is like walking in the fissures of a mountain to walk in these streets. Of course carriages never attempt them. Still Genoa has many fine avenues besides the Strada Balbi. I saw more street devotion in Genoa than I had previously witnessed in Italy, men on their knees in the streets being rather an unusual sight in Florence. The gambols of the carnival were much as usual; though Italian humour is both richer and stronger than that of France. This is in favour of the people, and shows that they have had a place in the world; for I take it the French are wanting in this peculiar quality of the mind from the all-absorbing moral as well as political superiority of the court. The humour of France is nearly all military, as might be expected; and in this they are unequalled. LETTER VIII. The Maritime Alps.--A precocious region.--The Prince of Monaco’s Country-house.--Picturesque Coast--Magnificent Panoramas.--Villa Franca.--Nice.--Antibes.--Amphitheatre at Fréjus.--Draguinan.--Aix.--Marseilles.--Passage taken in an English Brig.--Abuse of America--Leisurely Seamanship.--Corsica.--Opulence of English Nobility.--An unfavourable Breeze.--Moorings in the port of Leghorn. I believe I fancied business called me to Paris, as much as to make the passage of the Maritime Alps, as from any real necessity; for here I am back again at Florence, after an absence of less than three weeks, the journey unaccomplished. I took the _malle-poste_, again, on the afternoon of the third day, and left Genoa for Nice, with no other companion than the _conducteur_. As we whirled round the cliff that forms the western point of the port, I looked back with longing eyes at _Genova la Superba_, and thought that it well deserved the title.