The last post to Genoa is beautiful; every step denotes the splendour and riches of that tottering republic. Magnificent villas, ornamental gardens, and thick population, the houses of the meaner class intermingled with the stupendous habitations of a haughty aristocracy, mark strongly the immense difference power and riches have placed between them, they being wretched to an unusual degree of penury, most of them being without the necessary accommodation of windows or glass. The daily reinforcements arriving to the Austrians, the fair, and the arrival of a Spanish flotilla, crowded the town so much that I found it difficult to get a lodging; indeed the hotels were full, and we were obliged to take up our quarters in a kind of _restaurateur’s_, where lodgers never had been. Such a hell! Only two small garrets. The Strada Balbi and the Strada Nuova are the finest streets in Europe, from the stately palaces on each side and their not being disfigured by any shabby dwellings. The style of architecture is not chaste, but too much crowded with heavy ornaments. The roofs are high and filled with garret windows, much in the taste of those buildings the style of which was introduced into England by William III. The palaces of Genoa are more like what one expects an Italian palace to be than any I have ever seen in other parts of Italy--open corridors, porticoes, arcades, terraces, fountains, orange groves, &c., &c. The Durazzo Palace unites all these beauties in perfection.... There was a dispute about the genuineness of the famous ‘M. Magdalen,’ by _Paolo Veronese_;[139] the family in consequence bought the other at Venice, and considering their own as the original, keep the other rolled up. In the same street is the Palazzo Balbi, a spacious and grand mansion, evidently declining from its past splendour. Many fine pictures, a catalogue of which would be tedious. [Sidenote: GENOA] Genoa is not to be compared with Naples, and is superior to Nice; the _fanal_ has a pretty effect jutting into the sea. I stayed only four days in Genoa, and set off with Mr. Hodges, &c., to go across the Corniche to Sarzana in _portantines_. I lent my carriage to Ld. Holland, who went round by Turin, and was to rejoin me at Lucca Baths. Mrs. Wyndham joined me in a few days, as did Ld. Holland. Amherst and Cornewall passed a few days at Lucca. Wyndham came over, and the rupture with me was final; he would not make me a visit, but sent to my _maître d’hôtel_ for some dinner, a cavalier mode of proceeding which I would not gratify him in, and he had no dinner, as there was no inn, and provisions were scarce, unless provided beforehand.