* * * The last six days we have spent, as well as the heat would allow us, in enjoying the different views which this most superb city presents. My companions, who have both seen Constantinople, seem to reckon it only inferior to that. To begin with the beginning: we presented on Wednesday our letter to the Père Jourdain, a Jesuit; and no sooner was it delivered, than, without reading it, or any sort of preface, except W's reply in the affirmative to the question whether he was a Catholic, he began a most furious attack on us as rebels outside of the Church, Protestants, and what not. It so happened, however, that the points he took were just those which I had most at command; so he did not get much by his assault, was obliged to beat a retreat several times, and finally left us all three convinced that reasoning was not his forte, and that at least in his case the Jesuits were not employing gentle insinuation as a means of converting, He has, however, never renewed the battle since, but been very obliging, and given us every assistance in his power. Among the sights he directed us to was St. Anne's, a house of barefooted Carmelites, on the back of the hills some few hundred feet aloft, commanding the most delicious views of the city, the bay, the sea, and the mountains round. A straggling and precipitous garden was covered with vines festooned on trellis work, through which one caught the blue sky, and water, and towers and domes brought out against them with full effect. Then, after seeing the long, cool corridors inside, each of which had a window opening on this gorgeous scene, and the little chamber of each brother, furnished with a poor bed, some little pictures, a crucifix, and the most necessary furniture; and on hearing the quiet tenor of every day's life, the only fear was, whether there was enough of the cross in it. But doubtless the being under obedience, the having every day's work portioned out for one, supplies all that is wanted; and however calm it seemed, every chamber, as it had the figure of the Crucified, so it was conscious of the secret cross borne by its occupant. They are occupied in instruction, and have a school of novices. Genoa is particularly rich in charitable foundations; her merchant princes cannot be accused of neglecting the poor and suffering, nor of so assisting them as to show that they thought poverty a crime and an offence. We have seen three great buildings which have moved our admiration in this way. The Ospitaletto contains 444 sick men and women: it is served by six Capucins and fifteen sisters of charity. Mass is said every day at half-past-five and six o'clock, at altars so placed in the different wards that every person can see. They are confessed by the Capucins, and communicate every fortnight. All Genoese are received freely here, others pay a small sum. Again, the hospital called Pammatone, endowed by various noble Genoese, can receive 1000 sick; it had more this last winter. It is served by eighteen Capucins and thirty-four sisters. We saw here, in a shrine over the altar, the body of St. Catherine of Genoa, who died in 1510, after serving thirty-two years as a sister here. It is apparently solid and quite uncorrupt. The other great building, which we saw yesterday, is the Albergo dei Poveri--a poor house in fact, but as unlike an English poor house, as poverty in the person of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord is unlike poverty as treated by a board of guardians, and kept alive on the smallest pittance they can devise. It is a most magnificent building, with four huge courts, the chapel in the centre, of which the altar is commanded on one side by a great chamber for the men, and on the other side by one for the women; while in front it is open to the public, and behind to an infirmary for the sick.