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Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864

"Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete"

The variety of hue in the
houses, white, green, pink, and orange, was very remarkable. It would
have been well to go ashore here for an hour or two and see the streets,
--having already seen the palaces, churches, and public buildings at our
former visit,--and buy a few specimens of Genoa goldsmiths' work; but I
preferred the steamer's deck, so the evening passed pleasantly away; the
two lighthouses at the entrance of the port kindled up their fires, and
at nine o'clock the evening gun thundered from the fortress, and was
reverberated from the heights. We sailed away at eleven, and I was
roused from my first sleep by the snortings and hissings of the vessel as
she got under way.
At Genoa we took on board some more passengers, an English nobleman with
his lady being of the number. These were Lord and Lady J------, and
before the end of our voyage his lordship talked to me of a translation
of Tasso in which he is engaged, and a stanza or two of which he repeated
to me. I really liked the lines, and liked too the simplicity and
frankness with which he spoke of it to me a stranger, and the way be
seemed to separate his egotism from the idea which he evidently had that
he is going to make an excellent translation.


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