S. Baring-Gould

“ It is only by the Corniche Road, when we have reached La Turbie, that we discern how specially privileged are Mentone and the Italian Riviera. We see before us an amphitheatre, with mountain stages, and the blue sea for arena. The mountains run up to 3,000 and 4,000 feet, and wall about the fertile bottom, the seats about the sea, sheltering them from every blast. The higher mountains of grey limestone are bare, but below all is rich with luxuriant vegetation. ”

“ When the sun begins to gather warmth, the heat becomes oppressive, the lungs gasp for air, and one feels desirous to be invested with sufficient faith to be able to move the mountains some miles back. There are two Mentones, the very dashing, frivolous, up-to-date modern town, with expensive tastes; bound for life to the elderly Mentone, grave, a little dilapidated, and intent only on business. But young and gay Mentone is stealing an arm round the old partner and laying hold of the even more sheltered and balmy bay beyond, now dotted with villas, and punctuated with hotels. ”

“ The whole of the Riviera from Nice to Genoa—indeed, the whole of Provence—is studded with ruined castles and palaces: of these, only the most mean, that house of cards, Monaco, remains intact. They tell us of a time when the great families lived in lordly state, under the absolutism of the French crown or the despotism of the Genoese Republic. In Genoa itself the families inscribed on the Golden Book, and alone having the right to sit in council and direct the affairs of state, and mismanage and oppress the Ligurian coast and Corsica, did not exceed one hundred and seventy. ”

“ Sitting on the honeycombed limestone rock, looking on that wreckage, and hearing the bells of all the church towers for miles around break out in musical call to the Angelus, this thought rises and fills the mind: Selfishness has but its day; self-sacrifice establishes an everlasting reign.
Monte Carlo occupies, as already said, a limestone headland, forming the horn of the bay opposite Monaco, but not projecting to anything like its extent into the sea. Between the two is the ravine through which a little stream decants into the harbour. ”

“ The only foreign residents there for the winter season are such as have bought villas which they cannot dispose of. But Grasse possesses advantages not shared by Cannes. It is far better protected against cold winds, as it lies under the great limestone wall that supports the bare terrace before the Alps. But, built as it is on a steep slope, it is not a place where any one with a weak heart can live, unless content to live at his window. There is scarce a bit of level street in the place. The shops are naught and entertainments indifferent. ”

“ A STREET IN BORDIGHERA
[277]
The old town is built upon a hill that descends gently to the sea, and whose summit is crowned by a sanctuary. The streets twist about, are steep, with steps, and paved with bricks or rolled stones. The old houses elbow one another away to get a little breath, or sustain themselves from falling by stretching out a flying buttress, each against its vis-à-vis, like tipsy men with linked arms hoping to keep their feet by mutual support. For all this coast is liable to be shaken by earthquakes. ”

“ Against the friable limestone cliffs, the waves lapped and leaped. But at some unknown time a cataclysm occurred. The Alps were shaken, as we shake a tree to bring down its fruit, and the Rhone and the Durance, swollen to an enormous volume, rolled down masses of débris into this gulf and choked it. The Durance formed its own little crau along the north of the chain of the Alpines, and the Rhone the far larger crau of Arles, the pebbles of which all come from the Alps, in which the river takes it rise. ”

“ To the north a long, long vista of deep, dark, frowning gorges, closed in the distance by a gigantic screen of snow-clad Alps—the glorious expanse of the Mediterranean to the south-east and west, range upon range of gently undulating hills, softly inclining towards the sea—in the plain below the fresh, cozy valley of Taggia, with its sparkling track of waters, and rich belt of gardens, looking like a perfect mosaic of every gradation of green, chequered with winding silver arabesques. ”

“ They bought out the fisher families, and set to work to build hotels and lay out esplanades and gardens.
Now any person with a grain of sense in his head has but to look at the map to see that S. Raphael is the very last place on the coast suitable as a winter resort. It lies between two great humps of mountains, the Chaine des Maures and the Estérel. It has before it the ever-shallowing Gulf of Fréjus, that stretches back into alluvial deposit and pestiferous morasses—open to the north; and down this bare, unwholesome plain roars and rages the Mistral. ”

“ In October, 1793, a disorderly mob of soldiers and revolutionary cut-throats, under the command of the painter Carteaux, after having dyed their hands in the blood of six thousand of their countrymen, whom they had massacred at Lyons, invested Toulon, which had shut its gates against the revolutionary army, and had thrown open its port to the English. The town was crowded with refugees from Marseilles, and its bastions were occupied by a mixed multitude of defenders, Sardinians, Spaniards, French, and English, united in nothing save in common hatred of the monsters who were embrued in blood. ”

“ But it is in a few nooks only of the Riviera that the date palm ripens its fruit, and that but occasionally, for the winter comes on before it has reached maturity, and it fails to acquire the flavour and sweetness which is attained in Africa. It cannot be said that the huge bunches of dates in their husks hanging on the trees, of a sickly yellow, are beautiful. ”

“ Gerard spoke and said, ‘What will you say to me now, O wife of an Emperor, as to the exchange I have made of you for a very inferior article?’ ‘Do not say that,’ answered the Queen; ‘say a worthy object, of high value, Sir. But it is true that through you I am become Queen, and that out of love for me you have taken my sister to wife. Be you my witnesses, Counts Gervais and Bertelais, and you also, my sister, and confidante of all my thoughts, and you, above all, Jesus, my Redeemer; know all that I have given my love to duke Gerard along with this ring and this flower. ”

“ The visitor from the north of Europe is perplexed how to determine approximately the dates of the domestic buildings in every one of these Ligurian towns and villages. The architecture has a modern look, and yet the houses are decrepit, ruinous, and shabby. The windows and doors are square-headed, with scarce a moulding to differentiate them, and the pointed arch is only seen in the bridges that tie the houses together. Rarely, only in some palace or town hall, does the swallow-tail crenelation, or a feeble imitation of Gothic cornice, speak of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Ventimiglia is not only in itself a marvel of picturesqueness, occupying a ridge above the Roya, but its situation, with the sea before and the snow-clad Alps behind, is exquisitely beautiful.
The streets are narrow, as space was precious, but [272] the Strada Grande is lined with quaint old houses of the city nobility and well-to-do citizens, and have marble balconies, their sculptured entrances, and heraldic decorations. The cathedral occupies a terrace, with the palace of the Lascaris having an open loggia and staircase on one side of the piazza. ”

“ There is not a single commanding feature in the bunch of buildings huddled together on the summit of the rock, and old Mentone, with its commonplace church tower, presents a nobler aspect than does Monaco. No finer site in the world could be found, and none has been so wasted through incapacity to utilise it.
Monaco is an independent principality, under an autocratic government. It, its prince, its gambling hell, are under the protection of France. The principality comprises 5,436 acres, which would be the estate of a petty English squire. ”

“ Adington Symonds says of Italian towns generally in the Middle Ages applies equally to those on the Riviera:—
“It would seem as though the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the indigenous populations, tamed by antique culture, were reverting to their primeval instincts. Nor is this the end of the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with each other, but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their ramparts. ”

“ The nobility of Provence shared in his infatuation and eagerly joined in the undertaking. At the accession of Charles under the wise government of Raymond Berenger, and the judicious husbanding of its resources by Romeo de Villeneuve, Provence was at its acme of prosperity. Charles brought it to ruin. After the execution of Conradin, he rode roughshod over the people of Naples and Sicily. To his exactions there was no end. The great fiefs were seized and granted to Provençal or Angevin favourites; the foreign soldiers lived at free quarters, and treated the people with the utmost barbarity. ”

“ Compared with Nice, Cannes enjoys certain advantages. It is less towny and commercial. It does not [183] savour of Monte Carlo. It possesses on the east the wooded height of La Californie, studded with hotels and villas, commanding one of the most beautiful evening views in Europe. When the sun goes down beyond the Estérel range, standing up in royal purple against an amber sky, it may well be thought that this is a scene of unsurpassable beauty. ”

“ The Cap Roux, which stands forth as an advanced sentinel, with feet in the sea, and starts up 1,360 feet, with its red needles shooting aloft from the water, and pierced below with caverns, is consecrated to the memory of S. Honoratus, whose cave, La Sainte Baume, is in the lurid cliff. Numerous pilgrims were wont to visit it at one time, but now it is hardly frequented at all, save by tourists. There is a fashion in saints; and poor old Honoratus is now shouldered into the background, and thrust into the shade. But he is not a man who should be forgotten. ”

“ The palaces of the Lascaris, the Grimaldis, the Durazzos, the Della Roveres, the Dorias, are in ruins, but in their places rise hotels de Paris, de l’Univers, the Metropole; and the bands of bravos entertained by the nobles are replaced by Italian and Swiss waiters.
“The more we read the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human race.” ”

“ By the shore we have orange and lemon groves, the delicious mandarin orange, and the pomegranate, tropic palms, agaves, and cactus mingled with cedars. Higher up are olive gardens, chestnuts. “Tenens media omnia silvæ,” the pine woods stretch to the top of the hills that engirdle San Remo.
M. Reclus observes:—
“Strange to say, trees do not ascend to the same height on these slopes of the Apennines as on the Alps, though the mean temperature is far higher; and at an altitude at which the beech still attains noble proportions in Switzerland we find it here stunted in growth. ”

“ And when this second generation dies, the vitality of the root remains unimpaired; it throws up new shoots, and thus the life of the tree, like that of an ancient family, is indefinitely prolonged. The healthy olive tree, well fed on old rags and filth of every description, to which it is exceedingly partial, is very beautiful; but the beauty of the olive tree comes out in winter and early spring; when the deciduous trees are in leaf and brilliant green, it looks dull and dowdy. The olive flowers from April to June, and the fruit requires about six months to reach maturity. ”

“ But for the orange to be in perfection, luscious and sweet, it should be left on the tree till the end of April, or even into May. It is a beautiful sight, during the winter, to see the orange groves laden with their glorious fruit. The most delicious oranges are those with thin skins, the Mandarin or Tangerine, which ripen earlier than do the Portuguese thick-skinned species. ”

“ Roman times before the Empire, Gaul ended, and Italy began.
La Turbie is a corruption of Tropaïa—the Trophy, for here stood the monument erected by Augustus about the year B.C. 13, commemorative of his victories over the Ligurian natives of the coast. For some seventeen years the empire had existed. All exterior marks of flattery and submission had been accorded to him. To him had already been given an official worship, as if he were a god. Even that “white soul” Virgil thus speaks of the living emperor:—“A god has vouchsafed us this tranquillity; for to me he (Augustus) shall always be a god. ”

“ At the Revolution the merchant aristocracy did not relish the movement, fearing an attack on property; but the lower classes were maddened with enthusiasm for the “rights of man,” which meant the right to chop off the head of every one of whom they were envious, and of appropriating to themselves the savings of the industrious. Marseilles furnished, from the dregs of its population, the bands of assassins which marched to Paris, screaming forth Rouget de l’Isle’s hymn, which thenceforth took the name of the Marseillaise; and these bands were foremost in the September massacres in Paris. ”

“ It is not often that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of great beauty. ”