We met numbers of people on their way to midnight mass, either at the various shrines in the mountains or at favourite churches in Genoa, and at about eleven p.m. the bells began to ring, and went on at intervals for four hours, when they ceased for a time, to recommence at five a.m., and summon the worshippers to early mass. I inaugurated Christmas in Italy by dressing with open windows, then joined the younger members of our party in carol-singing outside our hostess’s bedroom door; after which we all descended to the dining-room—not, as it would have been, in England, to spread out icy hands and feet to the welcome blaze of a roaring fire, but to open the long French windows and to stand awhile upon the balcony watching the lizards flitting swiftly in and out among the crevices of the marble, and the green frogs jumping about the boughs of the orange-trees. Breakfast in Italy was never a heavy meal; but to-day, in honour of the day, polenta cake and chestnut bread were added to the usual omelette and roll, to which due attention having been paid, we returned to the balcony and eagerly awaited the postman. He brought a goodly supply of letters for each of us, and with thankful hearts we set out for morning service. The church was full of roses—red, white, and yellow. Arbutus and fern wreathed the east window and the chancel arch; and designs of roses upon a mossy ground filled in the panels of lectern and reading desk and the wide window-sills. There was, of course, a good attendance, and all joined with spirit in the service; but our clergyman rather damped the conclusion of it by preaching a very long and exceedingly dolorous sermon, in which he harped upon “vacant chairs,” “absent friends,” “broken circles,” and “dear invalids,” until he had reduced two-thirds of the congregation to tears. Our dinner-party included a few English friends staying at the hotel, and one or two Italians, the latter being as much interested in our national customs as we were in theirs. It was certainly quaint enough to find that the Eastern Counties doggerel had its counterpart among the shepherds of Sardinia, with whom it is generally used as a cradle song. “Lu letto meo est de battor cantones, Et battor anghelos si bei ponem, Duos in pes, et duos in cabitta. Nostre Segnora a costazu m’istu. Ea mie narat: Dormi e reposa, No hapas paura de mala cosa.” In Upper Italy they sing— “Dormi, dormi, O bel Bambin, Rè divin. Dormi, dormi, O fantolin, Fa la nanna, O caro giglio, Rè de Ciel.” And a gentleman who joined us later on wound up our charming evening by singing to a strange old chant the following Burgundian carol, written, as my readers will perceive, in alternate lines of French and Latin:—