Sabine Baring-Gould

“ The hills are crowned with umbrella pines, whose majestic heads recall classic sites in the Roman campagna. In the background of the picture are dark and dense forests of pines, like a gloomy drapery above which rise the pure and gleaming heights of the Alps in their eternal snows. Thus, as in a single framework, one can see grouped together the great conifers of the north, the olives of Provence, the golden fruits of the Balearic Isles, the oleanders of Asia Minor, and the thorny vegetation of the Algerian Tell. ”

“ Green, in his History of the English People, "was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; but it was a love of refinement, of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of sensuous enjoyment—a plaything rather than a passion. Nature had to reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life. ”

“ Further up the ravine come other and finer leaps of water, the main stream of the Loup, in maddest gambol of youth; and over all flash out gleams of the eternal snows.
Le Bar has a painting in the church, representing a Dance Macabre; it is, like all other such dances, of the fifteenth century. It represents Death armed with his bow among a party of dancers. Some are dying, and their souls are leaving their bodies. The picture is accompanied by a long Provençal inscription.
High above the entrance to the Gorge of the Loup stands the village of Gourdon, on the limestone terrace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In every other part of Western Europe the line of demarcation was sharp between the chivalry and the bourgeoisie. Knighthood could only be conferred on one who was noble and who owned land. It was otherwise in the South; the nobility and the commercial class were on the best of terms, and one great factor in this fusion was the Troubadour, who might spring from behind a counter as well as from a knightly castle.
The chivalry of the South, and the Troubadour, evolved the strange and, to our ideas, repulsive theory of love, which was, for a time, universally accepted. ”

“ In England we are accustomed to the soft skin of thymy turf that covers the chalk on our downs. Of this there is none in Provence. The fierce sun forbids it. Consequently the rock is naked and cadaverously white, but scantily sprinkled over with stunted pines.
The Jura limestone is the great pièce de resistance in Provence: it is sweeter in colour than the chalk, ranging from cream white to buff and salmon; it has not the dead pallor of the chalk. Any one who has gone down the Cañon of the Tarn knows what exquisite gradations and harmonies of tone are to be found in Jura limestone. ”

“ Down the slope of the height, that is crowned by the castle, slides the old town, with narrow streets, mere lanes, to its old walls, in which are gateways, and through these arches we emerge at once into everything that is most up-to-date. At a stride we pass out of the Middle Ages into modern times. There is no intervening zone of transition.
At Hyères the Maurette rises as a natural screen, facing the sun, banking out the north wind, with the crau of the Gapeau on one side, and the bed of the Gapeau on the other ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether this religion of the black stone of Antibes goes back to Phœnician or to Ligurian religion one not say—probably both Phœnician colonist and Ligurian native shared the same devotion to rude blocks of stone.
In Scotland, in Ireland, in Cornwall, in Brittany, among the graves of the dead of the Bronze Age, almost invariably a piece of white quartz or a jade weapon is found. Indeed, the bit of quartz is so constant that a workman engaged in opening one of the barrows will cry out, "Now we are coming on the bones," when he sees it gleam. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as seen from the hill-side as the
Cascade, Gorge Of Loup
Fall In The Gorge Of The Loup
train swings down from the direction of Nice, or whether from the side approached from Grasse, whence up the Gorge is obtained a glimpse of snowy peaks. There are views one sees that never leave one, that fix themselves in the mind indelibly; and the view of the mouth of the Loup Gorge is certainly one such scene. ”

“ Marseilles opened her gates, and Cæsar treated the city with great magnanimity. But, ruined by the expenses of the long siege, without a fleet, its commerce gone, depopulated by war and disease, long years were required for the effacement of the traces of so many misfortunes.
Now I must go back through many centuries to speak of a most remarkable man, "the Humboldt of Antiquity," who was a native of Marseilles, and who was the first to reveal to the world the existence of the Isle of Britain. His name was Pythias, and he lived four centuries before the birth of Christ. ”

“ The entire bay and the town of Mentone, with its background of swelling, olive-clad hills closed in by the amphitheatre of mountains, are thus thoroughly protected from the north-west, north, and north-east winds. To thoroughly understand and appreciate the district and its singularly protected character, a boat should be taken, and the panorama viewed a mile or two from the shore. The extreme beauty of the coast will amply repay the trouble. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ever and anon a tardy pomegranate in full blossom spreads out its oriflamme of tulip-shaped dazzling red flowers, From the rising ground opposite frowns mediaeval Taggia, like a discontented guest at a splendid banquet. A little farther off westward, the eye takes in the campanile of the Dominican church, emerging from a group of cypresses, and farther still, on the extreme verge of the western cliff, the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Guardia shows its white silhouette against the dark blue sky."
The name of the river Taggia is synonymous with Tay, Taw, Tavy ”

“ He who has committed such a crime thinks nothing of its consequences, save how they may affect himself. He abandons his victim, or else puts him out of the way of deposing against him. He runs away. Watching for his prey either in the ravines of Ollioules or in the depths of the forests of the Estérel, he waylays the traveller. He begins as a robber, and speedily becomes an assassin by trade. This is how the brigands are recruited who infest the roads of Provence. ”

“ The little town of Saint Raphael is placed beyond the zone of infection from the marshes of Fréjus. It stretches gracefully along the shore at the foot of the savage chain "of the Estérel. On all sides pointed rocks of red porphyry pierce the sombre foliage of cork trees and pines. The coast is fringed by sandbanks,
S. Raphael, Le Lion De Terre
extending along under cliffs covered with ilexes. A little way out to sea, two tawny-coloured rocks, like fantastic beasts at rest, close the harbour, and receive over their long backs the foam of the breakers ”

“ The former is clean with open spaces, a broad main street, and is dotted about with palms and agaves in sub-tropical gardens. The old San Remo is a network, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes. This old portion goes by the name of la Pigna, the Pinecone, because of the manner in which the ancient houses are grouped, pressed together one on another, rising towards a culminating conical point.
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. ”

“ He dreaded an united and strong Italy, which would control him. His only chance of occupying the most prominent place and exerting the greatest power in the Peninsula lay in fomenting disorder, in setting every princeling and every town by the ears. Accordingly, whilst posturing as champion of the liberties of the republics, he was actuated solely by self-interest, which lay in keeping all powers in Italy weak by periodical blood-letting. The Papacy was the great and persistent enemy to national unity. The party of independence was that of the Guelfs. ”

“ A stone dropped into it is heard to dash from side to side, until the noise of its descent, thundering from cliff to cliff, dies away in distant and faint tinkling, less loud than that of a sheep's bell at a mile's distance. The traditions of the monastery annex wild and fearful recollections to a place in itself sufficiently terrible. Oracles, it is said, spoke from thence in pagan days by subterranean voices, arising from the abyss."
The pit is, in fact, one of these avens so commonly found on the limestone causses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In England it rarely happens that a town adds to the beauty of a landscape; in France it often does so. In England there are many towns that are quite absolutely and hideously destructive of landscape beauty; in France there are very few. The consequence is that in France a lover of landscape does not feel that dislike to human interference which he so easily acquires in England, and which in some of our best writers, who feel most intensely and acutely, has become positive hatred and exasperation. ”

“ This extraordinary story does not so much prove how gullible men are, as how good and trustworthy most men are, so that when we do come across a rogue who takes advantage of us, it is like an earthquake that shakes us out of our moral equilibrium.
Some very interesting excursions may be made from Nice to places accessible by electric tram or by train. Cagnes was a castle of the Grimaldi. The little town occupies a hog'sback, the summit of the hill is crowned by the chateau, and the one street leading to it runs up the spine of hill, with houses on each side clinging to the steep sides. ”

“ Their zeal was stimulated by the sublime self-devotion of Belzunce, bishop of Marseilles. The fear of death never chilled his charity. He hurried through the street, seated himself by the dying, bowed over them to hear their confessions, and the plague spared him as he executed these acts of humanity. ”