The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mediterranean, by T. G. (Thomas Gray) Bonney, E. A. R. Ball, H. D. Traill, Grant Allen, and Arthur Griffiths

THE MEDITERRANEAN

The
MEDITERRANEAN

Its Storied Cities and Venerable
Ruins

By
T. G. Bonney, E. A. R. Ball,
H. D. Traill, Grant Allen,
Arthur Griffiths and Robert Brown

Illustrated with Photogravures

NEW YORK
James Pott & Company
1907

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Mediterranean

I

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES

Portals of the ancient world—Bay of Tangier at sunrise—Tarifa—The Rock of Gibraltar—Wonders of its fortifications—Afternoon promenade in the Alameda Gardens—Ascending the Rock—View from the highest point—The Great Siege—Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast—The rock of many names.

The “Pillars of Hercules!” The portals of the Ancient World! To how many a traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the Atlantic, or but slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of Portugal and Southern Spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in the Bay of Biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history brought a message of new life! That distant point ahead, at which the narrowing waters of the Strait that bears him disappear entirely within the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the beginning of romance. He gazes upon it from the westward with some dim reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from the East. The progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of human interest and the human point of view. Now, as in the Homeric era, the Pillars of Hercules form the gateway of a world of wonder; but for us of to-day it is within and not without those portals that that world of wonder lies. To the eye of modern poetry the Atlantic and Mediterranean have changed places. In the waste of waters stretching westward from the rock of Calpe and its sister headland, the Greek of the age of Homer found his region of immemorial poetic legend and venerable religious myth, and peopled it with the gods and heroes of his traditional creed. Here, on the bosom of the wide-winding river Oceanus, lay the Islands of the Blest—that abode of eternal beauty and calm, where “the life of mortals is most easy,” where “there is neither snow nor winter nor much rain, but ocean is ever sending up the shrilly breezes of Zephyrus to refresh man.” But for us moderns who have explored this mighty “river Oceanus,” this unknown and mysterious Atlantic to its farthest recesses, the glamor of its mystery has passed away for ever; and it is eastward and not westward, through the “Pillars of Hercules,” that we now set our sails in search of the region of romance. It is to the basin of the Mediterranean—fringed with storied cities and venerable ruins, with the crumbling sanctuaries of a creed which has passed away, and the monuments of an art which is imperishable—that man turns to-day. The genius of civilization has journeyed far to the westward, and has passed through strange experiences; it returns with new reverence and a deeper awe to that enclave of mid-Europe which contains its birthplace, and which is hallowed with the memories of its glorious youth. The grand cliff-portal which we are approaching is the entrance, the thoughtful traveller will always feel, to a region eternally sacred in the history of man; to lands which gave birth to immortal models of literature and unerring canons of philosophic truth; to shrines and temples which guard the ashes of those “dead but sceptered sovereigns” who “rule our spirits from their urns.”

As our vessel steams onward through the rapidly narrowing Straits, the eye falls upon a picturesque irregular cluster of buildings on the Spanish shore, wherefrom juts forth a rocky tongue of land surmounted by a tower. It is the Pharos of Tarifa, and in another half hour we are close enough to distinguish the exact outlines of the ancient and famous city named of Tarif Ibn Malek, the first Berber sheikh who landed in Spain, and itself, it is said—though some etymologists look askance at the derivation—the name-mother of a word which is little less terrible to the modern trader than was this pirate’s nest itself to his predecessor of old times. The arms of Tarifa are a castle on waves, with a key at the window, and the device is not unaptly symbolical of her mediæval history, when her possessors played janitors of the Strait, and merrily levied blackmail—the irregular tariff of those days—upon any vessel which desired to pass. The little town itself is picturesquely situated in the deepest embrace of the curving Strait, and the view looking westward—with the lighthouse rising sharp and sheer against the sky, from the jutting cluster of rock and building about its base, while dimly to the left in the farther distance lie the mountains of the African coast, descending there so cunningly behind the curve that the two continents seem to touch and connect the channel into a lake—is well worth attentive study. An interesting spot, too, is Tarifa, as well as a picturesque—interesting at least to all who are interested either in the earlier or the later fortunes of post-Roman Europe. It played its part, as did most other places, on this common battle-ground of Aryan and Semite, in the secular struggle between European Christendom and the Mohammedan East. And again, centuries later, it was heard of in the briefer but more catastrophic struggle of the Napoleonic wars. From the day when Alonzo Perez de Guzman threw his dagger down from its battlements in disdainful defiance of the threat to murder his son, dragged bound before him beneath its walls by traitors, it is a “far cry” to the day when Colonel Gough of the 87th (the “Eagle-Catchers”) beat off Marshal Victor’s besieging army of 1,800 strong, and relieved General Campbell and his gallant little garrison; but Tarifa has seen them both, and it is worth a visit not only for the sake of the ride from it over the mountains to Algeciras and Gibraltar, but for its historical associations also, and for its old-world charm.

We have taken it, as we propose also to take Tangier, a little out of its turn; for the voyaging visitor to Gibraltar is not very likely to take either of these two places on his way. It is more probable that he will visit them, the one by land and the other by sea, from the Rock itself. But Tangier in particular it is impossible to pass without a strong desire to make its acquaintance straightway; so many are the attractions which draw the traveller to this some-time appanage of the British Crown, this African pied à terre, which but for the insensate feuds and factions of the Restoration period might be England’s to-day. There are few more enchanting sights than that of the Bay of Tangier as it appears at sunrise to the traveller whose steamer has dropped down the Straits in the afternoon and evening hours of the previous day and cast anchor after nightfall at the nearest point off shore to which a vessel of any draught can approach. Nowhere in the world does a nook of such sweet tranquillity receive, and for a season, quiet, the hurrying waters of so restless a sea. Half a mile or so out towards the center of the Strait, a steamer from Gibraltar has to plough its way through the surface currents which speed continually from the Atlantic towards the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean beyond. Here, under the reddening daybreak, all is calm. The blue waters of the bay, now softly flushing at the approach of sunrise, break lazily in mimic waves and “tender curving lines of creamy spray” upon the shining beach. To the right lies the city, spectral in the dawn, save where the delicate pale ivory of some of its higher houses is warming into faintest rose; while over all, over sea and shore and city, is the immersing crystal atmosphere of Africa, in which every rock, every ripple, every housetop, stands out as sharp and clear as the filigree work of winter on a frosted pane.

Nothing in Tangier, it must be honestly admitted, will compare with the approach to it by its incomparable bay. In another sense, too, there is nothing here or elsewhere which exactly resembles this “approach,” since its last stage of all has to be performed alike for man and woman—unless man is prepared to wade knee-deep in the clear blue water—on the back of a sturdy Moor. Once landed, he will find that the picturesqueness of Tangier, like that of most Eastern cities, diminishes rather than increases on a nearer view. A walk through its main street yields nothing particularly worthy of note, unless it be the minaret of the Djama-el-Kebir, the principal mosque of the city. The point to which every visitor to Tangier directs his steps, or has them directed for him, is the Bab-el-Sok, the gate of the market place, where the scene to be witnessed at early morning presents an unequaled picture of Oriental life. Crouching camels with their loads of dates, chaffering traders, chattering women, sly and servile looking Jews from the city, fierce-eyed, heavily armed children of the desert, rough-coated horses, and the lank-sided mules, withered crones squatting in groups by the wayside, tripping damsels ogling over the yashmak as they pass, and the whole enveloped in a blinding, bewildering, choking cloud of such dust as only Africa, “arida nutrix,” can produce—such dust as would make the pulverulent particles of the dryest of turnpikes in the hottest of summers, and under the most parching of east winds, appear by comparison moist and cool, and no more than pleasingly titillatory of the mouth and nostrils—let the reader picture to himself such a scene with such accessories, and he will know what spectacle awaits him at early morning at the Bab-el-Sok of Tangier.

But we must resume our journey eastward towards the famous “Rock.” There at last it is! There “dawns Gibraltar grand and gray,” though Mr. Browning strains poetic license very hard in making it visible even “in the dimmest north-east distance,” to a poet who was at that moment observing how “sunset ran one glorious blood-red recking into Cadiz Bay.” We, at any rate, are far enough away from Cadiz before it dawns upon us in all its Titanic majesty of outline; grand, of course, with the grandeur of Nature, and yet with a certain strange air of human menace as of some piece of Atlantean ordnance planted and pointed by the hand of man. This “armamental” appearance of the Rock—a look visible, or at any rate imaginable in it, long before we have approached it closely enough to discern its actual fortifications, still less its artillery—is much enhanced by the dead flatness of the land from which its western wall arises sheer, and with which by consequence it seems to have no closer physical connection than has a gun-carriage with the parade ground on which it stands. As we draw nearer this effect increases in intensity. The surrounding country seems to sink and recede around it, and the Rock appears to tower ever higher and higher, and to survey the Strait and the two continents, divided by it with a more and more formidable frown. As we approach the port, however, this impression gives place to another, and the Rock, losing somewhat of its “natural-fortress” air, begins to assume that resemblance to a couchant lion which has been so often noticed in it. Yet alas! for the so-called famous “leonine aspect” of the famous height, or alas! at least for the capricious workings of the human imagination! For while to the compiler of one well-reputed guidebook, the outlines of Gibraltar seem “like those of a lion asleep, and whose head, somewhat truncated, is turned towards Africa as if with a dreamy and steadfast deep attention;” to another and later observer the lion appears to have “his kingly head turned towards Spain, as if in defiance of his former master, every feature having the character of leonine majesty and power!” The truth is, of course, that the Rock assumes entirely different aspects, according as it is looked at from different points of view. There is certainly a point from which Gibraltar may be made, by the exercise of a little of Polonius’s imagination, to resemble some couchant animal with its head turned towards Africa—though “a head somewhat truncated,” is as odd a phrase as a “body somewhat decapitated”—and contemplating that continent with what we may fancy, if we choose, to be “dreamy and steadfast attention.” But the resemblance is, at best, but a slender one, and a far-fetched. The really and strikingly leonine aspect of Gibraltar is undoubtedly that which it presents to the observer as he is steaming towards the Rock from the west, but has not yet come into full view of the slope on which the town is situated. No one can possibly mistake the lion then. His head is distinctly turned towards Spain, and what is more, he has a foot stretched out towards the mainland, as though in token of his mighty grasp upon the soil. Viewed, however, from the neutral ground, this Protean cliff takes on a new shape altogether, and no one would suppose that the lines of that sheer precipice, towering up into a jagged pinnacle, could appear from any quarter to melt into the blunt and massive curves which mark the head and shoulders of the King of Beasts.

At last, however, we are in the harbor, and are about to land. To land! How little does that phrase convey to the inexperienced in sea travel, or to those whose voyages have begun and ended in stepping from a landing-stage on to a gangway, and from a gangway on to a deck, and vice-versâ! And how much does it mean for him to whom it comes fraught with recollections of steep descents, of heaving seas, of tossing cock-boats, perhaps of dripping garments, certainly of swindling boatmen! There are disembarkations in which you come in for them all; but not at Gibraltar, at least under normal circumstances. The waters of the port are placid, and from most of the many fine vessels that touch there you descend by a ladder, of as agreeable an inclination as an ordinary flight of stairs. All you have to fear is the insidious bilingual boatman, who, unless you strictly covenant with him before entering his boat, will have you at his mercy. It is true that he has a tariff, and that you might imagine that the offense of exceeding it would be punished in a place like Gibraltar by immediate court-martial and execution; but the traveller should not rely upon this. There is a deplorable relaxation of the bonds of discipline all over the world. Moreover, it is wise to agree with the boatmen for a certain fixed sum, as a salutary check upon undue liberality. Most steamers anchor at a considerable distance from the shore, and on a hot day one might be tempted by false sentiment to give the boatman an excessive fee.

Your hosts at Gibraltar—“spoiling” as they always are for the sight of new civilian faces—show themselves determined from the first to make you at home. Private Thomas Atkins on sentry duty grins broad welcome to you from the Mole. The official to whom you have to give account of yourself and your belongings greets you with a pleasant smile, and, while your French or Spanish fellow-traveller is strictly interrogated as to his identity, profession, purpose of visit, &c., your English party is passed easily and promptly in, as men “at home” upon the soil which they are treading. Fortunate is it, if a little bewildering, for the visitor to arrive at midday, for before he has made his way from the landing-place to his hotel he will have seen a sight which has few if any parallels in the world. Gibraltar has its narrow, quiet, sleepy alleys as have all Southern towns; and any one who confined himself to strolling through and along these, and avoiding the main thoroughfare, might never discover the strangely cosmopolitan character of the place. He must walk up Waterport Street at midday in order to see what Gibraltar really is—a conflux of nations, a mart of races, an Exchange for all the multitudinous varieties of the human product. Europe, Asia, and Africa meet and jostle in this singular highway. Tall, stately, slow-pacing Moors from the north-west coast; white-turbaned Turks from the eastern gate of the Mediterranean; thick-lipped, and woolly-headed negroids from the African interior; quick-eyed, gesticulating Levantine Greeks; gabardined Jews, and black-wimpled Jewesses; Spanish smugglers, and Spanish sailors; “rock-scorpions,” and red-coated English soldiers—all these compose, without completing, the motley moving crowd that throngs the main street of Gibraltar in the forenoon, and gathers densest of all in the market near Commercial Square.

It is hardly then as a fortress, but rather as a great entrepôt of traffic, that Gibraltar first presents itself to the newly-landed visitor. He is now too close beneath its frowning batteries and dominating walls of rock to feel their strength and menace so impressive as at a distance; and the flowing tide of many-colored life around him overpowers the senses and the imagination alike. He has to seek the outskirts of the town on either side in order to get the great Rock again, either physically or morally, into proper focus. And even before he sets out to try its height and steepness by the ancient, if unscientific, process of climbing it—nay, before he even proceeds to explore under proper guidance its mighty elements of military strength—he will discover perhaps that sternness is not its only feature. Let him stroll round in the direction of the race-course to the north of the Rock, and across the parade-ground, which lies between the town and the larger area on which the reviews and field-day evolutions take place, and he will not complain of Gibraltar as wanting in the picturesque. The bold cliff, beneath which stands a Spanish café, descends in broken and irregular, but striking, lines to the plain, and it is fringed luxuriantly from stair to stair with the vegetation of the South. Marching and counter-marching under the shadow of this lofty wall, the soldiers show from a little distance like the tin toys of the nursery, and one knows not whether to think most of the physical insignificance of man beside the brute bulk of Nature, or of the moral—or immoral—power which has enabled him to press into his service even the vast Rock which stands there beetling and lowering over him, and to turn the blind giant into a sort of Titanic man-at-arms.

Such reflections as these, however, would probably whet a visitor’s desire to explore the fortifications without delay; and the time for that is not yet. The town and its buildings have first to be inspected; the life of the place, both in its military and—such as there is of it—its civil aspect, must be studied; though this, truth to tell, will not engage even the minutest observer very long. Gibraltar is not famous for its shops, or remarkable, indeed, as a place to buy anything, except tobacco, which, as the Spanish Exchequer knows to its cost (and the Spanish Customs’ officials on the frontier too, it is to be feared, their advantage), is both cheap and good. Business, however, of all descriptions is fairly active, as might be expected, when we recollect that the town is pretty populous for its size, and numbers some 20,000 inhabitants, in addition to its garrison of from 5,000 to 6,000 men. With all its civil activity, however, the visitor is scarcely likely to forget—for any length of time—that he is in a “place of arms.” Not to speak of the shocks communicated to his unaccustomed nerves by morning and evening gun-fire; not to speak of the thrilling fanfare of the bugles, executed as only the bugler of a crack English regiment can execute it, and echoed and re-echoed to and fro, from face to face of the Rock, there is an indefinable air of stern order, of rigid discipline, of authority whose word is law, pervading everything. As the day wears on toward the evening this aspect of things becomes more and more unmistakable; and in the neighborhood of the gates, towards the hour of gun-fire, you may see residents hastening in, and non-residents quickening the steps of their departure, lest the boom of the fatal cannon-clock should confine or exclude them for the night. After the closing of the gates it is still permitted for a few hours to perambulate the streets; but at midnight this privilege also ceases, and no one is allowed out of doors without a night-pass. On the 31st of December a little extra indulgence is allowed. One of the military bands will perhaps parade the main thoroughfare discoursing the sweet strains of “Auld Lang Syne,” and the civil population are allowed to “see the old year out and the new year in.” But a timid and respectful cheer is their sole contribution to the ceremony, and at about 12.15 they are marched off again to bed: such and so vigilant are the precautions against treachery within the walls, or surprise from without. In Gibraltar, undoubtedly, you experience something of the sensations of men who are living in a state of siege, or of those Knights of Branksome who ate and drank in armor, and lay down to rest with corslet laced, and with the buckler for a pillow.

The lions of the town itself, as distinguished from the wonders of its fortifications, are few in number. The Cathedral, the Garrison Library, Government House, the Alameda Gardens, the drive to Europa Point exhaust the list; and there is but one of these which is likely to invite—unless for some special purpose or other—a repetition of the visit. In the Alameda, however, a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and—if the peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical vegetation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in the distance allure him—he assuredly will. Gibraltar is immensely proud of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. From the point of view of Nature and of Art the Alameda is an equal success. General Don, who planned and laid it out some three-quarters of a century ago, unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed upon a famous military predecessor, Marshal Wade. Anyone who had “seen” the Alameda “before it was made,” might well have “lifted up his hands and blessed” the gallant officer who had converted “the Red Sands,” as the arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of geranium-trees which has taken its place. Its monuments to Elliot and Wellington are not ideal: the mysterious curse pronounced upon English statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas; but the execution of the effigies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the interest attaching to their subjects. The residents at any rate, whether civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor’s art, and have long since ceased to repine. And the afternoon promenade in these gardens—with the English officers and their wives and daughters, English nursemaids and their charges, tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of Oriental listeners to the military band—is a sight well worth seeing and not readily to be forgotten.

But we must pursue our tour round the peninsula of the Rock; and leaving the new Mole on our right, and farther on the little land-locked basin of Rosia Bay, we pass the height of Buena Vista, crowned with its barracks, and so on to the apex of the promontory, Europa Point. Here are more barracks and, here on Europa Flats, another open and level space for recreation and military exercises beneath the cliff wall. Doubling the point, and returning for a short distance along the eastern side of the promontory, we come to the Governor’s Cottage, a cool summer retreat nestling close to the Rock, and virtually marking the limits of our exploration. For a little way beyond this the cliff rises inaccessible, the road ends, and we must retrace our steps. So far as walking or driving along the flat is concerned, the visitor who has reached the point may allege, with a certain kind of superficial accuracy, that he has “done Gibraltar.” No wonder that the seasoned globe-trotter from across the Atlantic thinks nothing of taking Calpe in his stride.

To those, however, who visit Gibraltar in a historic spirit, it is not to be “done” by any means so speedily as this. Indeed, it would be more correct to say that the work of a visitor of this order is hardly yet begun. For he will have come to Gibraltar not mainly to stroll on a sunny promenade, or to enjoy a shady drive round the seaward slopes of a Spanish headland, or even to feast his eyes on the glow of Southern color and the picturesque varieties of Southern life; but to inspect a great world-fortress, reared almost impregnable by the hand of Nature, and raised into absolute impregnability by the art of man; a spot made memorable from the very dawn of the modern period by the rivalries of nations, and famous for all time by one of the most heroic exploits recorded in the annals of the human race. To such an one, we say, the name of Gibraltar stands before and beyond everything for the Rock of the Great Siege; and he can no more think of it in the light of a Mediterranean watering-place, with, a romantic, if somewhat limited, sea-front, than he can think of the farmhouse of La Haye as an “interesting Flemish homestead,” or the Chateau of Hougoumont as a Belgian gentleman’s “eligible country house.”

For him the tour of the renowned fortifications will be the great event of his visit. Having furnished himself with the necessary authorization from the proper military authorities (for he will be reminded at every turn of the strict martial discipline under which he lives), he will proceed to ascend the Rock, making his first halt at a building which in all probability he will often before this have gazed upon and wondered at from below. This is the Moorish Castle, the first object to catch the eye of the newcomer as he steps ashore at the Mole, and looks up at the houses that clamber up the western slope of the Rock. Their ascending tiers are dominated by this battlemented pile, and it is from the level on which it stands that one enters the famous galleries of Gibraltar. The castle is one of the oldest Moorish buildings in Spain, the Arabic legend over the south gate recording it to have been built in 725 by Abu-Abul-Hajez. Its principal tower, the Torre del Homenaje, is riddled with shot marks, the scars left behind it by the ever-memorable siege. The galleries, which are tunneled in tiers along the north front of the Rock, are from two to three miles in extent. At one extremity they widen out into the spacious crypt known as the Hall of St. George, in which Nelson was feasted. No arches support these galleries; they are simply hewn from the solid rock, and pierced every dozen yards or so by port-holes, through each of which the black muzzle of a gun looks forth upon the Spanish mainland. They front the north, these grim watchdogs, and seeing that the plain lies hundreds of feet beneath them, and with that altitude of sheer rock face between them and it, they may perhaps be admitted to represent what a witty Frenchman has called le luxe et la coquetterie d’ imprenable, or as we might put it, a “refinement on the impregnable.” Artillery in position implies the possibility of regular siege operations, followed perhaps by an assault from the quarter which the guns command; but though the Spanish threw up elaborate works on the neutral ground in the second year of the great siege, neither then nor at any other time has an assault on the Rock from its northern side been contemplated. Yet it has once been “surprised” from its eastern side, which looks almost equally inaccessible; and farther on in his tour of exploration, the visitor will come upon traces of that unprecedented and unimitated exploit. After having duly inspected the galleries, he will ascend to the Signal Tower, known in Spanish days as El Hacho, or the Torch, the spot at which beacon fires were wont on occasion to be kindled. It is not quite the highest point of the Rock, but the view from it is one of the most imposing in the world. To the north lie the mountains of Ronda, and to the far east the Sierra of the Snows that looks down on Granada, gleams pale and spectral on the horizon. Far beneath you lie town and bay, the batteries with their tiny ordnance, and the harbor with its plaything ships; while farther onward, in the same line of vision, the African “Pillar of Hercules,” Ceuta, looks down upon the sunlit waters of the Strait.

A little farther on is the true highest point of the Rock, 1,430 feet; and yet a little farther, after a descent of a few feet, we come upon the tower known as O’Hara’s Folly, from which also the view is magnificent, and which marks the southernmost point of the ridge. It was built by an officer of that name as a watch tower, from which to observe the movements of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, which, even across the cape as the crow flies, is distant some fifty or sixty miles. The extent, however, of the outlook which it actually commanded has probably never been tested, certainly not with modern optical appliances, as it was struck by lightning soon after its completion. Retracing his steps to the northern end of the height, the visitor historically interested in Gibraltar will do well to survey the scene from here once more before descending to inspect the fortifications of the coast line. Far beneath him, looking landward, lies the flat sandy part of the isthmus, cut just where its neck begins to widen by the British lines. Beyond these, again, extends the zone some half mile in breadth of the neutral ground; while yet farther inland, the eye lights upon a broken and irregular line of earthworks, marking the limit, politically speaking, of Spanish soil. These are the most notable, perhaps the only surviving, relic of the great siege. In the third year of that desperate leaguer—it was in 1781—the Spaniards having tried in vain, since June, 1779, to starve out the garrison, resorted to the idea of bombarding the town into surrender, and threw up across the neutral ground the great earthworks, of which only these ruins remain. They had reason, indeed, to resort to extraordinary efforts. Twice within these twenty-four months had they reduced the town to the most dreadful straits of hunger, and twice had it been relieved by English fleets. In January, 1780, when Rodney appeared in the Straits with his priceless freight of food, the inhabitants were feeding on thistles and wild onions; the hind quarter of an Algerian sheep was selling for seven pounds ten, and an English milch cow for fifty guineas. In the spring of 1781, when Admiral Darby relieved them for the second time, the price of “bad ship’s biscuits full of vermin”—says Captain John Drinkwater of the 72nd, an actor in the scenes which he has recorded—was a shilling a pound; “old dried peas, a shilling and fourpence; salt, half dirt, the sweepings of ships’ bottoms, and storehouses, eightpence; and English farthing candles, sixpence apiece.” These terrible privations having failed to break the indomitable spirit of the besieged, bombardment had, before the construction of these lines, been resorted to. Enormous batteries, mounting 170 guns and 80 mortars, had been planted along the shore, and had played upon the town, without interruption, for six weeks. Houses were shattered and set on fire, homeless and half-starved families were driven for shelter to the southern end of the promontory, where again they were harried by Spanish ships sailing round Europa Point and firing indiscriminately on shore. The troops, shelled out of their quarters, were living in tents on the hillside, save when these also were swept away by the furious rainstorms of that region. And it was to put, as was hoped, the finishing stroke to this process of torture, that the great fortifications which have been spoken of were in course of construction all through the spring and summer of 1781 on the neutral ground. General Elliot—that tough old Spartan warrior, whose food was vegetables and water, and four hours his maximum of continuous sleep, and the contagion of whose noble example could alone perhaps have given heart enough even to this sturdy garrison—watched the progress of the works with anxiety, and had made up his mind before the winter came that they must be assaulted. Accordingly, at three A. M. on the morning of November 27, 1781, he sallied forth with a picked band of two thousand men—a pair of regiments who had fought by his side at Minden two-and-twenty years before—and having traversed the three-quarters of a mile of intervening country in swift silence, fell upon the Spanish works. The alarm had been given, but only just before the assailants reached the object of their attack; and the affair was practically a surprise. The gunners, demoralized and panic-stricken, were bayoneted at their posts, the guns were spiked, and the batteries themselves set on fire with blazing faggots prepared for the purpose. In an hour the flames had gained such strength as to be inextinguishable, and General Elliot drew off his forces and retreated to the town, the last sound to greet their ears as they re-entered the gates being the roar of the explosion of the enemy’s magazines. For four days the camp continued to burn, and when the fire had exhausted itself for want of materials, the work of laborious months lay in ruins, and the results of a vast military outlay were scattered to the winds. It was the last serious attempt made against the garrison by the Spaniards from the landward side. The fiercest and most furious struggle of the long siege was to take place on the shore and waters to the west.

And so after all it is to the “line-wall”—to that formidable bulwark of masonry and gun-metal which fringes the town of Gibraltar from the Old Mole to Rosia Bay—that one returns as to the chief attraction from the historical point of view, of the mighty fortress. For two full miles it runs, zigzagging along the indented coast, and broken here and there by water-gate or bastion, famous in military story. Here, as we move southward from the Old Mole, is the King’s Bastion, the most renowned of all. Next comes Ragged Staff Stairs, so named from the heraldic insignia of Charles V.; and farther on is Jumper’s Battery, situated at what is held to be the weakest part of the Rock, and which has certainly proved itself to be so on one ever memorable occasion. For it was at the point where Jumper’s Battery now stands that the first English landing-party set foot on shore; it was at this point, it may be said, that Gibraltar was carried. The fortunes of nomenclature are very capricious, and the name of Jumper—unless, indeed, it were specially selected for its appropriateness—has hardly a better right to perpetuation in this fashion than the name of Hicks. For these were the names of the two gallant officers who were foremost in their pinnaces in the race for the South Mole, which at that time occupied the spot where the landing was effected; and we are not aware that history records which was the actual winner. It was on the 23rd of July, 1704, as all the world knows, that these two gallant seamen and their boats’ crews made their historic leap on shore; and after all, the accident which had preserved the name of one of them is not more of what is familiarly called a “fluke” than the project of the capture itself, and the retention of the great fortress when captured. It is almost comic to think that when Sir George Rooke sailed from England, on the voyage from which he returned, figuratively speaking, with the key of the Mediterranean in his pocket, he had no more notion of attacking Gibraltar than of discovering the North-West Passage. He simply went to land England’s candidate for the Spanish throne, “King Charles III.,” at Lisbon; which service performed, he received orders from the English Government to sail to the relief of Nice and Villa Franca, which were supposed to be in danger from the French, while at the same time he was pressed by Charles to “look round” at Barcelona, where the people, their aspirant-sovereign thought, were ready to rise in his favor. Rooke executed both commissions. That is to say, he ascertained that there was nothing for him to do in either place—that Barcelona would not rise, and that Nice was in no danger of falling; and the admiral accordingly dropped down the Mediterranean towards the Straits—where he was joined by Sir Cloudesley Shovel with another squadron—with the view of intercepting the Brest Fleet of France, which he had heard was about to attempt a junction with that of Toulon. The Brest Fleet, however, he found had already given him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of July these two energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east of Tetuan with nothing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the attack on Gibraltar was decreed as the distraction of an intolerable ennui. The stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hundred and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry the place by a coup-de-main. On the 21st the whole fleet came to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. Two thousand men under the Prince of Hesse were landed on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the mainland of Spain. On the 23rd Rear-Admirals Vanderdussen and Byng (the father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and after five or six hours’ bombardment silenced them, and Captain Whittaker was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and marines, and possess himself of the South Mole Head. Captains Jumper and Hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first to land. A mine exploded under their feet, killing two officers and a hundred men, but Jumper and Hicks pressed on with their stout followers, and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the Mole and the town. Whereupon the Spanish Governor capitulated, the gates on the side of the isthmus were thrown open to the Prince of Hesse and his troops, and Gibraltar was theirs. Or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of the “man in possession.” It was the property of his Highness the Archduke Charles, styled his Majesty King Charles III. of Spain, and had he succeeded in making good that title in arms, England should, of course, have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the end of the war. But she profited by the failure of her protégé. The war of the Spanish Succession ended in the recognition of Philip V.; and almost against the will of the nation—for George I. was ready enough to give it up, and the popular English view of the matter was that it was “a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge”—Gibraltar remained on her hands.

Undoubtedly, the King’s Bastion is the center of historic military interest in Gibraltar, but the line-wall should be followed along its impregnable front to complete one’s conception of the sea defenses of the great fortress. A little farther on is Government House, the quondam convent, which now forms the official residence of the Governor; and farther still the landing-place, known as Ragged Staff Stairs. Then Jumper’s Bastion, already mentioned; and then the line of fortification, running outwards with the coast line towards the New Mole and landing-place, returns upon itself, and rounding Rosia Bay trends again southward towards Buena Vista Point. A ring of steel indeed—a coat of mail on the giant’s frame, impenetrable to the projectiles of the most terrible of the modern Titans of the seas. The casemates for the artillery are absolutely bomb-proof, the walls of such thickness as to resist the impact of shots weighing hundreds of pounds, while the mighty arches overhead are constructed to defy the explosion of the heaviest shells. As to its offensive armament, the line-wall bristles with guns of the largest caliber, some mounted on the parapet above, others on the casemates nearer the sea-level, whence their shot could be discharged with the deadliest effect at an attacking ship.

He who visits Gibraltar is pretty sure, at least if time permits, to visit Algeciras and San Roque, while from farther afield still he will be tempted by Estepona. The first of these places he will be in a hurry, indeed, if he misses; not that the place itself is very remarkable, as that it stands so prominently in evidence on the other side of the bay as almost to challenge a visit. Add to this the natural curiosity of a visitor to pass over into Spanish territory and to survey Gibraltar from the landward side, and it will not be surprising that the four-mile trip across the bay is pretty generally made. On the whole it repays; for though Algeciras is modern and uninteresting enough, its environs are picturesque, and the artist will be able to sketch the great rock-fortress from an entirely new point, and in not the least striking of its aspects.

And now, before passing once for all through the storied portal of the Mediterranean, it remains to bestow at least a passing glance upon the other column which guards the entrance. Over against us, as we stand on Europa Point and look seaward, looms, some ten or a dozen miles away, the Punta de Africa, the African Pillar of Hercules, the headland behind which lies Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast. Of a truth, one’s first thought is that the great doorway of the inland sea has monstrously unequal jambs. Except that the Punta de Africa is exactly opposite the Rock of Gibraltar, and that it is the last eminence on the southern side of the Straits—the point at which the African coast turns suddenly due southward, and all is open sea—it would have been little likely to have caught the eye of an explorer, or to have forced itself upon the notice of the geographer. Such as it is, however, it must stand for the African Pillar of Hercules, unless that demi-god is to content himself with only one. It is not imposing to approach as we make our way directly across the Straits from Gibraltar, or down and along them from Algeciras towards it: a smooth, rounded hill, surmounted by a fort with the Spanish flag floating above it, and walled on the sea side, so little can its defenders trust to the very slight natural difficulties offered even by its most difficult approach. Such is Ceuta in the distance, and it is little, if at all, more impressive on a closer inspection. Its name is said to come from Sebta, a corruption of Septem, and to have been given it because of the seven hills on which it is built. Probably the seven hills would be difficult to find and count, or with a more liberal interpretation of the word, it might very likely be as easy to find fourteen.

Ceuta, like almost every other town or citadel on this battle-ground of Europe and Africa, has played its part in the secular struggle between Christendom and Islam. It is more than four centuries and a half since it was first wrested from the Moors by King John of Portugal, and in the hands of that State it remained for another two hundred years, when in 1640, it was annexed to the Crown of Castille. King John’s acquisition of the place, however, was unfortunate for his family. He returned home, leaving the princes of Portugal in command of his new possession; which, after the repulse of an attempt on the part of the Moors to recapture it, he proceeded to strengthen with new fortifications and an increased garrison. Dying in 1428, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward, who undertook an expedition against Tangier, which turned out so unluckily that the Portuguese had to buy their retreat from Africa by a promise to restore Ceuta, the king’s son, Don Ferdinand, being left in the hands of the Moors as a hostage for its delivery. In spite of this, however, the King and Council refused on their return home to carry out their undertaking; and though preparations were made for recovering the unfortunate hostage, the death of Edward prevented the project from being carried out, and Prince Ferdinand remained a prisoner for several years. Ceuta was never surrendered, and passing, as has been said, in the seventeenth century from the possession of Portugal into that of Spain, it now forms one of the four or five vantage-points held by Spain on the coast of Africa and in its vicinity. Surveyed from the neighboring heights, the citadel, with the town stretching away along the neck of land at its foot, looks like anything but a powerful stronghold, and against any less effete and decaying race than the Moors who surround it, it might not possibly prove very easy to defend. Its garrison, however, is strong, whatever its forts may be, and as a basis of military operations, it proved to be of some value to Spain in her expedition against Morocco thirty years ago. In times of peace it is used by the Spaniards as a convict station.

The internal attractions of Ceuta to a visitor are not considerable. There are Roman remains in the neighborhood of the citadel, and the walls of the town, with the massive archways of its gates, are well worthy of remark. Its main feature of interest, however, is, and always will be, that rock of many names which it thrusts forth into the Straits, to form, with its brother column across the water, the gateway between the Eastern and the Western World. We have already looked upon it in the distance from El Hacho, the signal tower on the summit of the Rock of Gibraltar. Abyla, “the mountain of God,” it was styled by the Phœnicians; Gibel Mo-osa, the hill of Musa, was its name among the Moors; it is the Cabo de Bullones of the Spaniard, and the Apes’ Hill of the Englishman. It may be well seen, though dwarfed a little by proximity, from its neighboring waters; a curious sight, if only for its strange contrast with the European Pillar that we have left behind. It is shaped like a miniature Peak of Teneriffe, with a pointed apex sloping away on either side down high-shouldered ridges towards its companion hills, and presenting a lined and furrowed face to the sea. It is its situation, as has been noted already, and not its conformation, which procured it its ancient name. But however earned, its mythical title, with all the halo of poetry and romance that the immortal myths of Hellas have shed around every spot which they have reached, remains to it for ever. And here we take our farewell look of the Pillars of Hercules to right and left, and borne onwards amidstream by the rushing current of the Straits, we pass from the modern into the ancient world.

II

ALGIERS

“A Pearl set in Emeralds”—Two distinct towns, one ancient, one modern—The Great Mosque—A Mohammedan religious festival—Oriental life in perfection—The road to Mustapha Supérieur—A true Moorish villa described—Women praying to a sacred tree—Excessive rainfall.

“Algiers,” says the Arab poet, with genuine Oriental love of precious stones in literature, “is a pearl set in emeralds.” And even in these degenerate days of Frank supremacy in Islam, the old Moorish town still gleams white in the sun against a deep background of green hillside, a true pearl among emeralds. For it is a great mistake to imagine North Africa, as untravelled folk suppose, a dry and desert country of arid rocky mountains. The whole strip of laughing coast which has the Atlas for its backbone may rank, on the contrary, as about the dampest, greenest, and most luxuriant region of the Mediterranean system. The home of the Barbary corsairs is a land of high mountains, deep glens, great gorges; a land of vast pine forests and thick, verdant undergrowth. A thousand rills tumble headlong down its rich ravines; a thousand rivers flow fast through its fertile valleys. For wild flowers Algeria is probably unequaled in the whole world; its general aspect in many ways recalls on a smaller scale the less snow-clad parts of eastern Switzerland.

When you approach the old pirate-nest from the sea, the first glimpse of the African coast that greets your expectant eye is a long, serrated chain of great sun-smitten mountains away inland and southward. As the steamer nears the land, you begin, after a while, to distinguish the snowy ridge of the glorious Djurjura, which is the Bernese Oberland of Algeria, a huge block of rearing peaks, their summits thick-covered by the virgin snow that feeds in spring a score of leaping torrents. By-and-by, with still nearer approach, a wide bay discloses itself, and a little range of green hills in the foreground detaches itself by degrees from the darker mass of the Atlas looming large in the distance behind. This little range is the Sahel, an outlier just separated from the main chain in the rear by the once marshy plain of the Metidja, now converted by drainage and scientific agriculture into the most fertile lowland region of all North Africa.

Presently, on the seaward slopes of the Sahel, a white town bursts upon the eye, a white town so very white, so close, so thick-set, that at first sight you would think it carved entire, in tier after tier, from a solid block of marble. No street or lane or house or public building of any sort stands visible from the rest at a little distance; just a group of white steps, you would say, cut out by giant hands from the solid hillside. The city of the Deys looks almost like a chalk-pit on the slope of an English down; only a chalk-pit in relief, built out, not hewn inwards.

As you enter the harbor the strange picture resolves itself bit by bit with charming effect into its component elements. White houses rise up steep, one above the other, in endless tiers and rows, upon a very abrupt acclivity. Most of them are Moorish in style, square, flat-roofed boxes; all are whitewashed without, and smiling like pretty girls that show their pearly teeth in the full southern sunshine. From without they have the aspect of a single solid block of stone; you would fancy it was impossible to insert a pin’s head between them. From within, to him that enters, sundry narrow and tortuous alleys discover themselves here and there on close inspection; but they are too involved to produce much effect as of streets or rows on the general coup d’œil from the water.

Land at the quay, and you find at once Algiers consists of two distinct towns: one ancient, one modern; one Oriental, one Western. Now and again these intersect, but for the most part they keep themselves severely separate.

The lower town has been completely transformed within half a century by its French masters. What it has gained in civilization it has lost in picturesqueness. A spacious port has been constructed, with massive mole and huge arcaded breakwater. Inside, vast archways support a magnificent line of very modern quays, bordered by warehouses on a scale that would do honor to Marseilles or to Liverpool. Broad streets run through the length and breadth of this transformed Algiers, streets of stately shops where ladies can buy all the fripperies and fineries of Parisian dressmakers. Yet even here the traveller finds himself already in many ways en plein Orient. The general look of the new town itself is far more Eastern than that of modernized Alexandria since the days of the bombardment. Arabs, Moors and Kabyles crowd the streets and market-places; muffled women in loose white robes, covered up to the eyes, flit noiselessly with slippered feet over the new-flagged pavement; turbaned Jews, who might have stepped straight out of the “Arabian Nights,” chaffer for centimes at the shop-doors with hooded mountain Berbers. All is strange and incongruous; all is Paris and Bagdad shaking hands as if on the Devonshire hillsides.

Nor are even Oriental buildings of great architectural pretensions wanting to this newer French city. The conquerors, in reconstructing Algiers on the Parisian model, have at least forborne to Haussmannise in every instance the old mosques and palaces. The principal square, a broad place lined with palm-trees, is enlivened and made picturesque by the white round dome and striking minarets of the Mosquée de la Pêcherie. Hard by stands the Cathedral, a religious building of Mussulman origin, half Christianized externally by a tower at each end, but enclosing within doors its old Mohammedan mimbar and many curious remains of quaint Moorish decoration. The Archbishopric at its side is a Moorish palace of severe beauty and grandeur; the museum of Græco-Roman antiques is oddly installed in the exquisite home raised for himself by Mustapha Pasha. The Great Mosque, in the Rue Bab-el-Oued, remains to us unspoiled as the finest architectural monument of the early Mohammedan world. That glorious pile was built by the very first Arab conquerors of North Africa, the companions of the Prophet, and its exquisite horse-shoe arches of pure white marble are unsurpassed in the Moslem world for their quaintness, their oddity, and their originality.

The interior of this mosque is, to my mind, far more impressive than anything to be seen even in Cairo itself, so vast it is, so imposing, so grand, so gloomy. The entire body of the building is occupied throughout by successive arcades, supported in long rows by plain, square pillars. Decoration there is none; the mosque depends for effect entirely on its architectural features and its noble proportions. But the long perspective of these endless aisles, opening out to right and left perpetually as you proceed, strikes the imagination of the beholder with a solemn sense of vastness and mystery. As you pick your way, shoeless, among the loose mats on the floor, through those empty long corridors, between those buttress-like pillars, the soul shrinks within you, awe-struck. The very absence of images or shrines, the simplicity and severity, gives one the true Semitic religious thrill. No gauds or gewgaws here. You feel at once you are in the unseen presence of the Infinite and the Incomprehensible.

The very first time I went into the Great Mosque happened, by good luck, to be the day of a Mohammedan religious festival. Rows and rows of Arabs in white robes filled up the interspaces of the columns, and rose and fell with one accord at certain points of the service. From the dim depths by the niche that looks towards Mecca a voice of some unseen ministrant droned slowly forth loud Arabic prayers or long verses from the Koran. At some invisible signal, now and again, the vast throng of worshippers, all ranged in straight lines at even distances between the endless pillars, prostrated themselves automatically on their faces before Allah, and wailed aloud as if in conscious confession of their own utter unworthiness. The effect was extraordinary, electrical, contagious. No religious service I have ever seen elsewhere seemed to me to possess such a profundity of earnest humiliation, as of man before the actual presence of his Maker. It appeared to one like a chapter of Nehemiah come true again in our epoch. We few intrusive Westerns, standing awe-struck by the door, slunk away, all abashed, from this scene of deep abasement. We had no right to thrust ourselves upon the devotions of these intense Orientals. We felt ourselves out of place. We had put off our shoes, for the place we stood upon was holy ground. But we slunk back to the porch, and put them on again in silence. Outside, we emerged upon the nineteenth century and the world. Yet even so, we had walked some way down the Place de la Régence, among the chattering negro pedlers, before one of us dared to exchange a single word with the other.

If the new town of Algiers is interesting, however, the old town is unique, indescribable, incomprehensible. No map could reproduce it; no clue could unravel it. It climbs and clambers by tortuous lanes and steep staircases up the sheer side of a high hill to the old fortress of the Deys that crowns the summit. Not one gleam of sunshine ever penetrates down those narrow slits between the houses, where two people can just pass abreast, brushing their elbows against the walls, and treading with their feet in the poached filth of the gutter. The dirt that chokes the sides is to the dirt of Italy as the dirt of Italy is to the dirt of Whitechapel. And yet so quaint, so picturesque, so interesting is it all, that even delicate ladies, with the fear of typhoid fever for ever before their eyes, cannot refuse themselves the tremulous joy of visiting it and exploring it over and over again; nay, more, of standing to bargain for old brass-work or Algerian embroidery with keen Arab shopkeepers in its sunless labyrinths. Except the Mooskee at Cairo, indeed, I know no place yet left where you can see Oriental life in perfection as well as the old town of Algiers. For are there not tramways nowadays even in the streets of Damascus? Has not a railway station penetrated the charmed heart of Stamboul? The Frank has done his worst for the lower town of his own building, but the upper town still remains as picturesque, as mysterious, and as insanitary as ever. No Pasteur could clean out those Augean stables.

In those malodorous little alleys, where every prospect pleases and every scent is vile, nobody really walks; veiled figures glide softly as if to inaudible music; ladies, muffled up to their eyes, use those solitary features with great effect upon the casual passer-by; old Moors, in stately robes, emerge with stealthy tread from half-unseen doorways; boys clad in a single shirt sit and play pitch-and-toss for pence on dark steps. Everything reeks impartially of dirt and of mystery. All is gloom and shade. You could believe anything on earth of that darkling old town. There all Oriental fancies might easily come true, all fables might revive, all dead history might repeat itself.

These two incongruous worlds, the ancient and the modern town, form the two great divisions of Algiers as the latter-day tourist from our cold North knows it. The one is antique, lazy, sleepy, unprogressive; the other is bustling, new-world, busy, noisy, commercial. But there is yet a third Algiers that lies well without the wall, the Algiers of the stranger and of the winter resident. Hither Mr. Cook conducts his eager neophytes; hither the Swiss innkeeper summons his cosmopolitan guests. It reaches its culminating point about three miles from the town, on the heights of Mustapha Supérieur, where charming villas spread thick over the sunlit hills, and where the Western visitor can enjoy the North African air without any unpleasant addition of fine old crusted Moorish perfumes.

The road to Mustapha Supérieur lies through the Bab-Azzoun gate, and passes first along a wide street thronged with Arabs and Kabyles from the country and the mountains. This is the great market road of Algiers, the main artery of supplies, a broad thoroughfare lined with fondouks or caravanserais, where the weary camel from the desert deposits his bales of dates, and where black faces of Saharan negroes smile out upon the curious stranger from dense draping folds of some dirty burnouse. The cafés are filled with every variety of Moslem, Jew, Turk, and infidel. Nowhere else will you see to better advantage the wonderful variety of races and costumes that distinguishes Algiers above most other cosmopolitan Mediterranean cities. The dark M’zabite from the oases, arrayed like Joseph in a coat of many colors, stands chatting at his own door with the pale-faced melancholy Berber of the Aurès mountains. The fat and dusky Moor, over-fed on kous-kous, jostles cheek by jowl with the fair Jewess in her Paisley shawl and quaint native head-gear. Mahonnais Spaniards from the Balearic Isles, girt round their waists with red scarves, talk gaily to French missionary priests in violet bands and black cassocks. Old Arabs on white donkeys amble with grave dignity down the center of the broad street, where chasseurs in uniform and spahis in crimson cloaks keep them company on fiery steeds from the Government stud at Blidah. All is noise and bustle, hurry, scurry, and worry, the ant-hill life of an English bazaar grotesquely superimposed on the movement and stir of a great European city.

You pass through the gates of the old Moorish town and find yourself at once in a modern but still busy suburb. Then on a sudden the road begins to mount the steep Mustapha slope by sharp zigzags and bold gradients. In native Algerian days, before Allah in his wisdom mysteriously permitted the abhorred infidel to bear sway in the Emerald City over the Faithful of Islam, a single narrow mule-path ascended from the town wall to the breezy heights of Mustapha. It still exists, though deserted, that old breakneck Mussulman road a deep cutting through soft stone, not unlike a Devonshire lane, all moss-grown and leafy, a favorite haunt of the naturalist and the trap-door spider. But the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, knew a more excellent way. Shortly after the conquest they carved a zigzag carriage-drive of splendid dimensions up that steep hill-front, and paved it well with macadam of most orthodox solidity. At the top, in proof of their triumph over nature and the Moslem, they raised a tiny commemorative monument, the Colonne Voirol, after their commander’s name, now the Clapham Junction of all short excursions among the green dells of the Sahel.

The Mustapha road, on its journey uphill, passes many exquisite villas of the old Moorish corsairs. The most conspicuous is that which now forms the Governor-General’s Summer Palace, a gleaming white marble pile of rather meretricious and over-ornate exterior, but all glorious within, to those who know the secret of decorative art, with its magnificent heirloom of antique tiled dados. Many of the other ancient villas, however, and notably the one occupied by Lady Mary Smith-Barry, are much more really beautiful, even if less externally pretentious, than the Summer Palace. One in particular, near the last great bend of the road, draped from the ground to the flat roof with a perfect cataract of bloom by a crimson bougainvillea, may rank among the most picturesque and charming homes in the French dominions.

It is at Mustapha, or along the El Biar road, that the English colony of residents or winter visitors almost entirely congregates. Nothing can be more charming than this delicious quarter, a wilderness of villas, with its gleaming white Moorish houses half lost in rich gardens of orange, palm, and cypress trees. How infinitely lovelier these Eastern homes than the fantastic extravagances of the Californie at Cannes, or the sham antiques on the Mont Boron! The native North African style of architecture answers exactly to the country in whose midst it was developed. In our cold northern climes those open airy arcades would look chilly and out of place, just as our castles and cottages would look dingy and incongruous among the sunny nooks of the Atlas. But here, on the basking red African soil, the milk-white Moorish palace with its sweeping Saracenic arches, its tiny round domes, its flat, terraced roofs, and its deep perspective of shady windows, seems to fit in with land and climate as if each were made for the other. Life becomes absolutely fairy-like in these charming old homes. Each seems for the moment while you are in it just a dream in pure marble.

I am aware that to describe a true Moorish villa is like describing the flavor of a strawberry; the one must be tasted, the other seen. But still, as the difficulty of a task gives zest to the attempt at surmounting it, I will try my hand at a dangerous word-picture. Most of the Mustapha houses have an outer entrance-court, to which you obtain admission from the road by a plain, and often rather heavy, archway. But, once you have reached the first atrium, or uncovered central court, you have no reason to complain of heaviness or want of decoration. The court-yard is generally paved with parti-colored marble, and contains in its center a Pompeian-looking fountain, whose cool water bubbles over into a shallow tank beneath it. Here reeds and tall arums lift their stately green foliage, and bright pond-blossoms rear on high their crimson heads of bloom. Round the quadrangle runs a covered arcade (one might almost say a cloister) of horse-shoe arches, supported by marble columns, sometimes Græco-Roman antiques, sometimes a little later in date, but admirably imitated from the originals. This outer court is often the most charming feature of the whole house. Here, on sultry days, the ladies of the family sit with their books or their fancy-work; here the lord of the estate smokes his afternoon cigar; here the children play in the shade during the hottest African noon-day. It is the place for the siesta, for the afternoon tea, for the lounge in the cool of the evening, for the joyous sense of the delight of mere living.

From the court-yard a second corridor leads into the house itself, whose center is always occupied by a large square court, like the first in ground-plan, but two-storied and glass-covered. This is the hall, or first reception room, often the principal apartment of the whole house, from which the other rooms open out in every direction. Usually the ground-floor of the hall has an open arcade, supporting a sort of balcony or gallery above, which runs right round the first floor on top of it. This balcony is itself arcaded; but instead of the arches being left open the whole way up, they are filled in for the first few feet from the floor with a charming balustrade of carved Cairene woodwork. Imagine such a court, ringed round with string-courses of old Oriental tiles, and decorated with a profusion of fine pottery and native brasswork, and you may form to yourself some faint mental picture of the common remodeled Algerian villa. It makes one envious again to remember how many happy days one has spent in some such charming retreats, homes where all the culture and artistic taste of the West have been added to all the exquisite decorative instinct and insight of the Oriental architect.

Nor are fair outlooks wanting. From many points of view on the Mustapha Hill the prospect is among the most charming in the western Mediterranean. Sir Lambert Playfair, indeed, the learned and genial British Consul-General whose admirable works on Algeria have been the delight of every tourist who visits that beautiful country, is fond of saying that the two finest views on the Inland Sea are, first, that from the Greek Theater at Taormina, and, second, that from his own dining-room windows on the hill-top at El Biar. This is very strong praise, and it comes from the author of a handbook to the Mediterranean who has seen that sea in all aspects, from Gibralta to Syria; yet I fancy it is too high, especially when one considers that among the excluded scenes must be put Naples, Sorrento, Amalfi, Palermo, and the long stretch of Venice as seen from the Lido. I would myself even rank the outlook on Monaco from the slopes of Cap Martin, and the glorious panorama of Nice and the Maritime Alps from the Lighthouse Hill at Antibes, above any picture to be seen from the northern spurs of the Sahel. Let us be just to Piræus before we are generous to El Biar. But all this is, after all, a mere matter of taste, and no lover of the picturesque would at any rate deny that the Bay of Algiers, as viewed from the Mustapha Hill, ranks deservedly high among the most beautiful sights of the Mediterranean. And when the sunset lights up in rosy tints the white mole and the marble town, the resulting scene is sometimes one of almost fairy-like splendor.

Indeed, the country round Mustapha is a district of singular charm and manifold beauty. The walks and drives are delicious. Great masses of pale white clematis hang in sheets from the trees, cactus and aloe run riot among the glens, sweet scents of oleander float around the deep ravines, delicious perfumes of violets are wafted on every breeze from unseen and unsuspected gardens. Nowhere do I know a landscape so dotted with houses, and nowhere are the houses themselves so individually interesting. The outlook over the bay, the green dells of the foreground, the town on its steep acclivity, the points and headlands, and away above all, in the opposite direction, the snow-clad peaks of the Djurjura, make up a picture that, after all, has few equals or superiors on our latter-day planet.

One of the sights of Mustapha is the Arab cemetery, where once a week the women go to pray and wail, with true Eastern hyperbole, over the graves of their dead relations. By the custom of Islam they are excluded from the mosques and from all overt participation in the public exercises of religion; but these open-air temples not made with hands, even the Prophet himself has never dared to close to them. Ancestor-worship and the veneration of the kindred dead have always borne a large part in the domestic creed of the less civilized Semites, and, like many other traces of heathenism, this antique cult still peeps sturdily through the thin veil of Mohammedan monotheism. Every hillock in the Atlas outliers is crowned by the tiny domed tomb, or koubba, of some local saint; every sacred grove overshadows the relics of some reverend Marabout. Nay, the very oldest forms of Semitic idolatry, the cult of standing stones, of holy trees, and of special high places on the mountain-tops, survive to this day even in the midst of Islam. It is the women in particular who keep alive these last relics of pre-Moslem faith; it is the women that one may see weeping over the narrow graves of their loved ones, praying for the great desire of the Semitic heart, a man-child from Allah, before the sacred tree of their pagan ancestors, or hanging rags and dolls as offerings about the holy grove which encloses the divine spring of pure and hallowed water.

Algiers is thus in many ways a most picturesque winter resort. But it has one great drawback: the climate is moist and the rainfall excessive. Those who go there must not expect the dry desert breeze that renders Luxor and Assiout so wholesome and so unpleasant. Beautiful vegetation means rain and heat. You will get both in Algiers, and a fine Mediterranean tossing on your journey to impress it on your memory.

III

MALAGA

A nearly perfect climate—Continuous existence of thirty centuries—Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra—Systems of irrigation—Vineyards the chief source of wealth—Esparto grass—The famous Cape de Gatt—The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada—Last view of Granada.

Malaga has been very differently described and appreciated. The Arab chroniclers who knew it in the palmy days of the Moorish domination considered it “a most beautiful city, densely peopled, large and most excellent.” Some rose to poetical rhapsody in describing it; they praised it as “the central jewel of a necklace, a land of paradise, the pole star, the diadem of the moon, the forehead of a bewitching beauty unveiled.” A Spanish poet was not less eloquent, and sang of Malaga as “the enchantress, the home of eternal spring, bathed by the soft sea, nestling amidst flowers.” Ford, on the other hand, that prince of guide-book makers, who knew the Spain of his day intimately from end to end, rather despised Malaga. He thought it a fine but purely commercial city, having “few attractions beyond climate, almonds and raisins, and sweet wine.” Malaga has made great strides nevertheless in the fifty-odd years since Ford so wrote of it. While preserving many of the charming characteristics which evoked such high-flown encomiums in the past, it has developed considerably in trade, population, and importance. It grows daily; building is constantly in progress, new streets are added year after year to the town. Its commerce flourishes; its port is filled with shipping which carry off its many manufactures: chocolate, liquorice, porous jars, and clay figures, the iron ores that are smelted on the spot; the multifarious products of its fertile soil, which grows in rich profusion the choicest fruits of the earth: grapes, melons, plantains, guava, quince, Japanese medlars, oranges, lemons, and prickly pears. All the appliances and luxurious aids to comfort known to our latter-day civilization are to be found in Malaga: several theaters, one of them an opera house, clubs, grand hotels, bankers, English doctors, cabs. It rejoices too in an indefeasible and priceless gift, a nearly perfect climate, the driest and balmiest in Southern Europe. Rain falls in Malaga but half a dozen days in the year, and its winter sun would shame that of an English summer. It has a southern aspect, and is sheltered from the north by an imposing range of mountains; its only trouble is the terral or north-west wind, the same disagreeable visitor as that known on the Italian Riviera as the Tramontana, and in the south of France as the Mistral. These climatic advantages have long recommended Malaga as a winter health resort for delicate and consumptive invalids, and an increasingly successful rival to Madeira, Malta, and Algiers. The general view of this city of sunshine, looking westward, to which point it lies open, is pleasing and varied; luxuriant southern vegetation, aloes, palmetto, and palms, fill up the foreground; in the middle distance are the dazzling white façades and towers of the town, the great amphitheater of the bull ring, the tall spire of the Cathedral a very conspicuous object, the whole set off by the dark blue Mediterranean, and the reddish-purple background of the Sierra Bermeja or Vermilion Hills.

There is active enjoyment to be got in and near Malaga as well as the mere negative pleasure of a calm, lazy life amid beautiful scenes. It is an excellent point of departure for interesting excursions. Malaga lies on the fringe of a country full of great memories, and preserving many curious antiquarian remains. It is within easy reach by rail of Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra, whence the ascent of the great southern snowy range, the Sierra Nevada, may be made with pleasurable excitement and a minimum of discomfort. Other towns closely associated with great events may also be visited: Alhama, the mountain key of Granada, whose capture preluded that of the Moorish capital and is enshrined in Byron’s beautiful verse; Ronda, the wildly picturesque town lying in the heart of its own savage hills; Almeria, Antequera, Archidona, all old Moorish towns. By the coast road westward, a two days’ ride, through Estepona and Marbella, little seaside towns bathed by the tideless Mediterranean, Gibraltar may be reached. Inland, a day’s journey, are the baths of Caratraca, delightfully situated in a narrow mountain valley, a cleft of the rugged hill, and famous throughout Spain. The waters are akin to those of Harrogate, and are largely patronized by crowds of the bluest-blooded hidalgos, the most fashionable people, Spaniards from La Corte (Madrid), and all parts of the Peninsula. Yet another series of riding excursions may be made into the wild Alpujarras, a desolate and uncultivated district gemmed with bright oases of verdure, which are best reached by the coast road leading from Malaga through Velez Malaga, Motril to Adra, and which is perhaps the pleasantest route to Granada itself. On one side is the dark-blue sea; on the other, vine-clad hills: this is a land, to use Ford’s words, “overflowing with oil and wine; here is the palm without the desert, the sugar-cane without the slave;” old Moorish castles perched like eagles’ eyries crown the hills; below cluster the spires and towers of churches and convents, hemmed in by the richest vegetation. The whole of this long strip of coast is rich with the alluvial deposits brought down by the mountain torrents from the snowy Sierras above; in spring time, before the summer heats have parched the land, everything flourishes here, the sweet potato, indigo, sugar-cane and vine; masses of wild flowers in innumerable gay colors, the blue iris, the crimson oleander, geraniums, and luxuriant festoons of maidenhair ferns bedeck the landscape around. It is impossible to exaggerate the delights of these riding trips; the traveller relying upon his horse, which carries a modest kit, enjoys a strange sense of independence: he can go on or stop, as he chooses, lengthen or shorten his day’s journey, which takes him perpetually and at the leisurely pace which permits ample observation of the varied views. The scene changes constantly: now he threads a half-dried watercourse, thick with palmetto and gum cistus; now he makes the slow circuit of a series of little rocky bays washed by the tideless calm of the blue sea; now he breasts the steep slope, the seemingly perilous ascent of bold cliffs, along which winds the track made centuries since when the most direct was deemed the shortest way to anywhere in spite of the difficulties that intervened.

Malaga as a seaport and place of settlement can claim almost fabulous antiquity. It was first founded by the Phœnicians three thousand years ago, and a continuous existence of thirty centuries fully proves the wisdom of their choice. Its name is said to be Phœnician, and is differently derived from a word meaning salt, and another which would distinguish it as “the king’s town.” From the earliest ages Malaga did a thriving business in salt fish; its chief product and export were the same anchovies and the small boquerones, not unlike an English whitebait, which are still the most highly prized delicacies of the Malaga fish market. Southern Spain was among the richest and most valued of Phœnician possessions. It was a mine of wealth to them, the Tarshish of Biblical history from which they drew such vast supplies of the precious metals that their ships carried silver anchors. Hiram, King of Tyre, was a sort of goldsmith to Solomon, furnishing the wise man’s house with such stores of gold and silver utensils that silver was “accounted nothing therein,” as we read in the First Book of Kings. When the star of Tyre and Sidon waned, and Carthage became the great commercial center of the Mediterranean, it controlled the mineral wealth of Spain and traded largely with Malaga. Later, when Spain passed entirely into Roman hands, this southern province of Bœtica grew more and more valuable, and the wealth of the country passed through its ports eastward to the great marts of the world. Malaga however, was never the equal either in wealth or commercial importance of its more eastern and more happily placed neighbor Almeria. The latter was the once famous “Portus Magnus,” or Great Port, which monopolized most of the maritime traffic with Italy and the more distant East. But Malaga rose in prosperity as Roman settlers crowded into Bœtica, and Roman remains excavated in and around the town attest the size and importance of the place under the Romans. It was a municipium, had a fine ampitheater, the foundations of which were laid bare long afterwards in building a convent, while many bronzes, fragments of statuary, and Roman coins found from time to time prove the intimate relations between Malaga and the then Mistress of the World. The Goths, who came next, overran Bœtica, and although their stay was short, they rechristened the province, which is still known by their name, the modern Andal-, or Vandalucia. Malaga was a place of no importance in the time of the Visigoths, and it declined, only to rise with revived splendor under the Moors, when it reached the zenith of its greatness, and stood high in rank among the Hispano-Mauresque cities.

It was the same one-eyed Berber General, Tarik, who took Gibraltar who was the first Moorish master of Malaga. Legendary story still associates a gate in the old Moorish castle, the Gibralfaro, with the Moorish invasion. This Puerta de la Cava was called, it has been said, after the ill-used daughter of Count Julyan whose wrongs led to the appeal to Moorish intervention. But it is not known historically that Count Julyan had a daughter named La Cava, or any daughter at all; nor is it likely that the Moors would remember the Christian maiden’s name as sponsor for the gate. After the Moorish conquest Malaga fell to the tribes that came from the river Jordan, a pastoral race who extended their rule to the open lands as far as Archidona. The richness of their new possession attracted great hordes of Arabs from their distant homes; there was a general exodus, and each as it came to the land of promise settled where they found anything that recalled their distant homes. Thus the tribes from the deserts of Palmyra found a congenial resting-place on the arid coast near Almeria and the more rugged kingdom of Murcia; the Syrian mountaineers established themselves amidst the rocky fastness of the Ronda Serranía; while those from Damascus and Bagdad reveled in the luxuriant beauty of the fertile plains watered by the Xenil and Darro, the great Vega, with its orange-groves and jeweled gardens that still make Granada a smiling paradise.

These Moslem conquerors were admirable in their administration and development of the land they seized, quick to perceive its latent resources and make the most of them. Malaga itself became the court and seat of government of a powerful dynasty whose realms extended inland as far as Cordova, and the region around grew under their energetic and enlightened management into one great garden teeming with the most varied vegetation. What chiefly commended Malaga to the Moors was the beauty of its climate and the amazing fertility of the soil. The first was a God-sent gift, the latter made unstinting return for the labor freely but intelligently applied. Water was and still is the great need of those thirsty and nearly rainless southern lands, and the Moorish methods of irrigation, ample specimens of which still survive, were most elaborate and effective contrivances for distributing the fertilizing fluid. Many of these ancient systems of irrigation are still at work at Murcia, Valencia, Granada, and elsewhere. The Moors were masters of hydraulic science, which was never more widely or intelligently practiced than in the East. So the methods adopted and still seen in Spain have their Oriental prototypes and counterparts. They varied, of course, with the character of the district to be irrigated and the sources of supply. Where rivers and running water gave the material, it was conveyed in canals; one main trunk-line or artery supplied the fluid to innumerable smaller watercourses or veins, the acequias, which formed a reticulated network of minute ramifications. The great difficulty in the plains, and this was especially the case about Malaga, was to provide a proper fall, which was effected either by carrying the water to a higher level by an aqueduct, or sinking it below the surface in subterranean channels. Where the water had to be raised from underground, the simple pole, on which worked an arm or lever with a bucket, was used, the identical “shadoof” of the Nile; or the more elaborate water-wheel, the Arab Anaoura, a name still preserved in the Spanish Noria, one of which is figured in the Almeria washing-place, where it serves the gossiping lavanderas at their work. In these norias the motive power is usually that of a patient ox, which works a revolving wheel, and so turns a second at right angles armed with jars or buckets. These descend in turn, coming up charged with water, which falls over into a reservoir or pipe, whence it flows to do its business below.

Under this admirable system the land gives forth perpetual increases. It knows no repose. Nothing lies fallow. “Man is never weary of sowing, nor the sun of calling into life.” Crop succeeds crop with astonishing rapidity; three or four harvests of corn are reaped in the year, twelve or fifteen of clover and lucerne. All kinds of fruit abound; the margins of the watercourses blossom with flowers that would be prized in a hothouse, and the most marvelous fecundity prevails. By these means the Moors of Malaga, the most scientific and successful of gardeners, developed to the utmost the marvelously prolific soil. Moorish writers described the pomegranates of Malaga as red as rubies, and unequaled in the whole world. The brevas, or small green figs, were of exquisitely delicious flavor, and still merit that encomium. Grapes were a drug in the markets, cheap as dirt; while the raisins into which they were converted, by a process that dates back to the Phœnicians, found their way into the far East and were famous in Palestine, Arabia, and beyond. The vineyards of the Malaga district, a wide tract embracing all the southern slopes towards the Mediterranean, were, and still are, the chief source of its wealth. The wine of Malaga could tempt even Mohammedan Moors to forget their prophet’s prohibition; it was so delicious that a dying Moor when commending his soul to God asked for only two blessings in Paradise, enough to drink of the wines of Malaga and Seville. As the “Mountains,” this same wine was much drunk and appreciated by our forefathers. To this day “Malaga” is largely consumed, both dry and sweet, especially that known as the Lagrimas, or Tears, a cognate term to the famous Lachrymæ Christi of Naples, and which are the very essence of the rich ripe grapes, which are hung up in the sun till the juice flows from them in luscious drops. Orange groves and lemon groves abound in the Vega, and the fruit is largely exported. The collection and packing are done at points along the line of railway to which Malaga is the maritime terminus, as at La Pizarra, a small but important station which is the starting point for the Baths of Caratraca, and the mountain ride to Ronda through the magnificent pass of El Burgo. Of late years Malaga has become a species of market garden, in which large quantities of early vegetables are raised, the primeurs of French gourmets, the young peas, potatoes, asparagus, and lettuce, which are sent north to Paris during the winter months by express trains. This is probably a more profitable business than the raising of the sugar-cane, an industry introduced (or more exactly, revived, for it was known to and cultivated by the Moors) in and around Malaga by the well-known General Concha, Marques del Duero. He spent the bulk of a large fortune in developing the cane cultivation, and almost ruined himself in this patriotic endeavor. Others benefited largely by his well-meant enterprise, and the sugar fields of southern Spain prospered until the German beet sugar drove the homegrown hard. The climate of Malaga, with its great dryness and absolute immunity from frost, is exceedingly favorable to the growth of the sugar-cane, and the sugar fields at the time of the cutting are picturesque centers of activity. The best idea, however, of the amazing fertility of this gifted country will be obtained from a visit to one of the private residential estates, or fincas, such as that of La Concepcion, where palms, bamboos, arums, cicads and other tropical plants thrive bravely in the open air. It is only a short drive, and is well worth a visit. The small Grecian temple is full of Roman remains, chiefly from Cartama, the site of a great Roman city which Livy has described. Some of these remains are of beautiful marble figures, which were found, like ordinary stones, built into a prison wall and rescued with some difficulty. The Malaga authorities annexed them, thinking they contained gold, then threw them away as old rubbish. Other remains at La Concepcion are fragments of the Roman municipal law, on bronze tablets, found at Osuna, between Antequera and Seville.

Malaga possesses many mementoes of the Moors besides their methods of irrigation. The great citadel which this truly militant race erected upon the chief point of vantage and key to the possession of Malaga still remains. This, the Castle of Gibralfaro, the rock of the lighthouse, was built by a prince of Granada, Mohammed, upon the site of a Phœnician fortress, and it was so strongly fortified and held that it long resisted the strenuous efforts of Ferdinand and Isabella in the memorable siege which prefaced the fall of Granada. How disgracefully the Catholic kings ill-treated the conquered Moors of Malaga, condemning them to slavery or the auto da fé, may be read in the pages of Prescott. The towers of the Gibralfaro still standing have each a story of its own: one was the atalaya, or watch-tower; on another, that of La Vela, a great silver cross was erected when the city surrendered. Below the Gibralfaro, but connected with it and forming part of the four deep city walls, is the Alcazaba, another fortification utilized by the Moors, but the fortress they raised stands upon Phœnician foundations. The quarter that lies below these Moorish strongholds is the most ancient part of Malaga, a wilderness of dark, winding alleys of Oriental aspect, and no doubt of Moorish origin. This is the home of the lower classes, of the turbulent masses who have in all ages been a trial and trouble to the authorities of the time. The Malagueños, the inhabitants of Malaga, whether Moors or Spaniards, have ever been rebellious subjects of their liege lords, and uncomfortable neighbors to one another. In all their commotions they have generally espoused the cause which has ultimately failed.

Thus, in 1831, Riego and Torrijos having been in open revolt against the Government, were lured into embarking for Malaga from Gibraltar, where they had assembled, by its military commandant Moreno, and shot down to a man on the beach below the Carmen Convent. Among the victims was an Englishman, Mr. Boyd, whose unhappy fate led to sharp protests from England. Since this massacre a tardy tribute has been raised to the memory of the slain; it stands in the shape of a monument in the Plaza de Riego, the Alameda. Again, Malaga sided with Espartero in 1843, when he “pronounced” but had to fly into exile. Once more, in 1868, the Malagueños took up arms upon the losing side, fighting for the dethroned Isabella Segunda against the successful soldiers who had driven her from Madrid. Malaga was long and obstinately defended, but eventually succumbed after a sanguinary struggle. Last of all, after the abdication of Amadeus in 1873, the Republicans of Malaga rose, and carried their excesses so far as to establish a Communistic régime, which terrorized the town. The troops disbanded themselves, their weapons were seized by the worst elements of the population, who held the reins of power, the local authorities having taken to flight. The mob laid hands on the customhouse and all public moneys, levied contributions upon the more peaceable citizens, then quarreled among themselves and fought out their battles in the streets, sweeping them with artillery fire, and threatening a general bombardment. Order was not easily restored or without the display of armed force, but the condign punishment of the more blameworthy has kept Malaga quiet ever since.

While the male sex among the masses of Malaga enjoy an indifferent reputation, her daughters of all classes are famed for their attractiveness, even in Spain, the home, par excellence, of a well-favored race. “Muchachas Malagueñas, muy halagueñas” (the girls of Malaga are most bewitching) is a proverbial expression, the truth of which has been attested by many appreciative observers. Théophile Gautier’s description of them is perhaps the most complimentary. The Malagueña, he tells us, is remarkable for the even tone of her complexion (the cheek having no more color than the forehead), the rich crimson of her lips, the delicacy of her nostril, and above all the brilliancy of her Arab eyes, which might be tinged with henna, they are so languorous and so almond-shaped. “I cannot tell whether or not it was the red draperies of their headgear, but their faces exhibited gravity combined with passion that was quite Oriental in character.” Gautier drew this picture of the Malagueñas as he saw them at a bull-fight, and he expresses a not unnatural surprise that sweet, Madonna-like faces, which might well inspire the painter of sacred subjects, should look on unmoved at the ghastly episodes of the blood-stained ring. It shocked him to see the deep interest with which these pale beauties followed the fight, to hear the feats of the arena discussed by sweet lips that might speak more suitably of softer things. Yet he found them simple, tender-hearted, good, and concluded that it was not cruelty of disposition but the custom of the country that drew them to this savage show. Since then the bull-fight, shorn, however, of its worst horrors, has become acclimatized and most popular amidst M. Gautier’s own country-women in Paris. That the beauty of the higher ranks rivals that of the lowest may be inferred from the fact that a lady whose charms were once celebrated throughout Europe is of Malagueñan descent. The mother of the Empress Eugénie, who shared with Napoleon III. the highest honors in France, was a Malaga girl, a Miss Fitzpatrick, the daughter of the British consul, but she had also Spanish blood in her veins.

A near neighbor and old rival, as richly endowed, may again pass Malaga in the great race for commercial expansion. This is Almeria, which lies farther eastward and which owns many natural advantages; its exposed port has been improved by the construction of piers and breakwaters, and it now offers a secure haven to the shipping that should ere long be attracted in increasing tonnage to carry away the rich products of the neighboring districts. Almeria is the capital of a province teeming with mineral wealth, and whose climate and soil favor the growth of the most varied and valuable crops. The silver mines of the mountains of Murcia and the fertile valleys of the Alpujarras would find their best outlet at Almeria, while Granada would once more serve as its farm. So ran the old proverb, “When Almería was really Almería, Granada was only its alquería,” or source of supply. What this time-honored but almost forgotten city most needs is to be brought into touch with the railway systems of Spain. Meanwhile, Almeria, awaiting better fortune, thrives on the exports of its own products, chief among which are grapes and esparto. The first has a familiar sound to British ears, from the green grapes known as “Almerias,” which are largely consumed in British households. These are not equal to the delicately flavored Muscatels, but they are stronger and will bear the packing and rough usages of exportation under which the others perish. Esparto is a natural product of these favored lands, which, after long supplying local wants, has now become an esteemed item in their list of exports. It is known to botanists as the Spanish rush, or bass feather grass, the Genet d’Espagne, and is compared by Ford to the “spear grass which grows on the sandy sea-shores of Lancashire.” It is still manufactured, as in the days of Pliny, into matting, baskets, ropes, and the soles for the celebrated Alpargatas, or rope sandal shoes, worn universally by Spanish peasants in the south and Spanish soldiers on the line of march. The ease and speed with which the Spanish infantry cover long distances are greatly attributed to their comfortable chaussures. Nowadays a much wider outlet has been found for esparto grass, and it is grown artificially. When rags became more and more scarce and unequal to the demands of the paper-makers, experiments were made with various substitutes, and none answered the purpose better than the wild spear-grass of southern Spain.

Almeria, while awaiting the return of maritime prosperity, can look with some complacency upon a memorable if not altogether glorious past. Its very names, Portus Magnus under the Romans, and Al Meriah, the “Conspicuous,” under the Moors, attest its importance. All the agricultural produce of the prolific Vega, the silks that were woven on Moorish looms and highly prized through the East, were brought to Almeria for transmission abroad. The security and convenience of this famous port gave it an evil reputation in after years, when it became an independent kingdom under Ibn Maymum. Almeria was the terror of the Mediterranean; its pirate galleys roved to and fro, making descents upon the French and Italian coasts, and carrying back their booty, slaves, and prizes to their impregnable home. Spaniards and Genoese presently combined against the common enemy, and Almeria was one of the earliest Christian conquests regained from the Moors. Later still the Algerian Moors took fresh revenge, and their corsairs so constantly threatened Almeria that Charles V. repaired its ancient fortifications, the old Moorish castle now called the Alcazaba, the center or keep, and hung a great tocsin bell upon its cathedral tower to give notice of the pirates’ approach. This cathedral is the most imposing object in the decayed and impoverished town. Pigs and poultry roam at large in the streets, amidst dirt and refuse; but in the strong sunlight, white and blinding as in Africa, the mean houses glisten brightly, and the abundant color seen on awnings and lattice, upon the women’s skirts and kerchiefs, in the ultramarine sea, is brought out in the most vivid and beautiful relief.

The scenery on the coast from Malaga eastward is fine, in some parts and under certain aspects magnificent. Beyond Almeria is the famous Cape de Gatt, as it is known to our mariners, the Cabo de Gata of local parlance, the Agate Cape, to give it its precise meaning. This remarkable promontory, composed of rocks encrusted with gems, is worthy a place in the “Arabian Nights.” There are miles and miles of agates and crystal spar, and in one particular spot amethysts are found. Wild winds gather and constantly bluster about this richly constituted but often storm-tossed landmark. Old sailor saws have perpetuated its character in the form of a proverb, “At the Cape de Gatt take care of your hat.” Other portions of the coast nearer Malaga are still more forbidding and dangerous: under the Sierra Tejada, for example, where the rocky barriers which guard the land rise tier above tier as straight as a wall, in which there are no openings, no havens of safety for passing craft in an inshore gale. Behind all, a dim outline joining hands as it were with the clouds, towers the great snowy range of southern Spain, the Sierra Nevada, rejoicing in an elevation as high as the Swiss Alps, and in some respects far more beautiful.

There are, however, no such grim glaciers, no such vast snow-fields as in Switzerland, for here in the south the sun has more power, and even at these heights only the peaks and pinnacles wear white crests during the summer heats. This more genial temperature encourages a richer vegetation, and makes the ascents less perilous and toilsome. A member of the Alpine Club would laugh to scorn the conquest of Muley Hacen, or of the Picacho de la Veleta, the two crowning peaks of the range. The enterprise is within the compass of the most moderate effort. The ascent of the last-named and lowest, although the most picturesque, is the easiest made, because the road from Granada is most direct. In both cases the greatest part of the climbing is performed on horseback; but this must be done a day in advance, and thus a night has to be passed near the summit under the stars. The temperature is low, and the travellers can only defend themselves against the cold by the wraps they have brought and the fuel they can find (mere knotted roots) around their windy shelter. The ascent to where the snow still lingers, in very dirty and disreputable patches, is usually commenced about two in the morning, so that the top may be reached before dawn. If the sky is clear, sunrise from the Picacho is a scene that can never be forgotten, fairly competing with, if not outrivaling, the most famous views of the kind. The Mediterranean lies below like a lake, bounded to the north and west by the Spanish coast, to the south by the African, the faintest outlines of which may often be seen in the far, dim distance. Eastward the horizon is made glorious by the bright pageants of the rising sun, whose majestic approach is heralded by rainbow-hued clouds. All around are the strangely jagged and contorted peaks, rolling down in diminishing grandeur to the lower peaks that seem to rise from the sea.

The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada is Muley Hacen, although it has only the advantage over the Picacho de la Veleta by about a couple of hundred feet. It is a longer and more difficult ascent, but in some ways the most interesting, as it can best be reached through the Alpujarras, those romantic and secluded valleys which are full of picturesque scenery and of historical associations. The starting point, as a general rule, is Trevelez, although the ascent may be equally made from Portugos, somewhat nearer Granada. Trevelez is the other side and the most convenient coming from Malaga by way of Motril. But no one would take the latter route who could travel by the former, which leads through Alhendin, that well-known village which is said to have seen the last of the departing Moors. This is the point at which Granada is finally lost to view, and it was here that Boabdil, the last king of Granada, took his last farewell of the city whose loss he wept over, under the scathing sarcasm of his more heroic mother, who told him he might well “weep like a woman for what he could not defend as a man.” Near this village is the little hill still known as the site of “El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, the last sigh of the Moor.” This same road leads through Lanjaron, an enchanting spot, posted high upon a spur of the hills, and famous as a bathing place with health-giving mineral springs. From Portugos or Trevelez the climb is easy enough: to be accomplished a great part of the way on horseback, and in its earlier levels ascending amid forests of evergreen oak; after that, long wastes of barren rock are passed, till at length the summit is reached, on a narrow strip of table-land, the highest in Southern Europe, and with an unrivaled view. The charm of the Muley Hacen peak is its isolation, while the Picacho looks better from it than Muley Hacen does from the Picacho, and there is a longer vista across the Mediterranean Sea.

IV

BARCELONA

The flower market of the Rambla—Streets of the old town—The Cathedral of Barcelona—Description of the Columbus monument—All Saints’ Day in Spain—Mont Tibidaho—Diverse centers of intellectual activity—Ancient history—Philanthropic and charitable institutions.

“Barcelona, shrine of courtesy, harbor of the wayfarer, shelter of the poor, cradle of the brave, champion of the outraged, nurse of friendship, unique in position, unique in beauty!”

Such was the eulogium bestowed upon Barcelona by the great Cervantes several hundred years ago, an eulogium warranted by a stranger’s experience in our own day. The matchless site of the second city of Spain, its luxuriant surroundings, awaken enthusiasm as of old, whilst even the briefest possible sojourn suffices to make us feel at home. A winning urbanity, a cosmopolitan amiableness, characterize the townsfolk, Spanish hauteur is here replaced by French cordiality. Softness of manner and graces of speech lend additional charm to a race conspicuous for personal beauty. The Barcelonese are described by a contemporary as laborious and energetic, ambitious of social advance, tenacious of personal dignity, highly imaginative, at the same time eminently practical, steadfast in friendship, vehement in hate. The stir and magnificence of the city attest the progressive character of the inhabitants.

Few European capitals can boast of finer public monuments, few indeed possess such a promenade as its famous Rambla. The Rambla may be regarded as an epitome, not only of the entire city, but of all Spain, and here the curious traveller should take up his quarters. A dozen brilliant or moving spectacles meet the eye in a day, whilst the normal aspect is one of unimaginable picturesqueness and variety. The dark-eyed flower-girls with their rich floral displays; the country folks still adhering to the costume of Catalonia—the men sandaled and white-hosed, for headgear, slouch caps of crimson, scarlet, or peach-colored felt, the women with gorgeous silk kerchiefs pinned under the chin—the Asturian nursemaids in poppy-red skirts barred with black, and dainty gold and lace caps; the ladies fanning themselves as they go in November, with black lace mantillas over their pretty heads; the Guardia Civile in big, awe-inspiring cocked hats and long black cloaks reaching to the ankle; the trim soldiery in black and red tunics, knickerbockers and buskins, their officers ablaze with gold braid and lace; the spick-and-span city police, each neat as a dandy in a melodrama, not a hair out of place, collars and cuffs of spotless white, ironed to perfection, well-fitting costumes, swords at their sides; the priests and nuns; the seafaring folk of many nationalities; the shepherds of uncouth appearance from the neighboring mountains—all these at first make us feel as if we were taking part in a masquerade.

Now way is made for the funeral train of some rich citizen, the lofty car of sumptuous display of black and gold drapery, wreaths of fresh roses, violet, and heliotrope, large as carriage-wheels, fastened to the sides, the coffin, encased in black and violet velvet, studded with gold nails; following slowly, a long procession of carriages bearing priests, choristers, and mourners. And now the sounds of martial music summon the newcomer a second time to his window. It is a soldier who is borne to his rest. Six comrades accompany the bier, carrying long inverted tapers; behind march commanding officers and men, the band playing strains all too spirited it seems for such an occasion. There is always something going on in this splendid avenue animated from early morning till past midnight, market-place, parade ground, promenade in one.

The daily flower-market of itself would almost repay the journey from London. When northern skies are gloomiest, and fogs are daily fare, the Rambla is at its best. The yellowing leaves of the plane-trees look golden under the dazzling blue sky, and brilliant as in a picture are the flower-sellers and their wares. These distractingly pretty girls, with their dark locks pulled over the brow, their lovely eyes, rich olive complexions, and gleaming white teeth, have nothing of the mendicant about them. As they offer their flowers—perhaps fastening roses to a half-finished garland with one hand, whilst with the other a pot of heliotrope is reached down—the passer-by is engagingly invited to purchase. The Spanish language, even the dialect of Catalonia, is music to begin with, and the flower-maidens make it more musical still by their gentle, caressing ways. Some wear little mantillas of black, blonde, or cashmere; others, silk kerchiefs of brightest hue—orange, crimson, deep purple, or fanciful patterns of many colors. Barcelona is a flower-garden all the year round, and in mid-winter we stroll between piled-up masses of rose, carnation, and violet, to say nothing of dahlias and chrysanthemums.

It is especially on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days that the flower-market of the Rambla is seen to advantage; enormous sums are spent upon wreaths and garlands for the cemetery, the poorest then contriving to pay his floral tribute to departed kith and kin.

In striking contrast with the wide, airy, ever brilliantly illuminated Rambla, electric light doing duty for sunshine at night, are the streets of the old town. The stranger may take any turning—either to right or left—he is sure to find himself in one of these dusky narrow thoroughfares, so small ofttimes the space between window and opposite window that neighbors might almost shake hands. With their open shops of gay woolen stuffs, they vividly recall Cairene bazaars. Narrow as is the accommodation without, it must be narrower still within, since when folks move from one house to another their goods and chattels are hoisted up and passed through the front windows. The sight of a chest of drawers or a sofa in cloudland is comical enough, although the system certainly has its advantages. Much manual labor is thereby spared, and the furniture doubtless escapes injury from knocking about.

The wise traveller will elect to live on the Rambla, but to spend his time in the old town. Wherever he goes he is sure to come upon some piece of antiquity, whilst here, in a great measure, he loses sight of the cosmopolitan element characterizing the new quarters. Novel and striking as is its aspect to the stranger, Barcelona must nevertheless be described as the least Spanish of Spanish towns. The second seaport of Spain is still—as it was in the Middle Ages—one of the most important seats of international commerce on the Mediterranean. As we elbow our way along the crowded Rambla we encounter a diversity of types and hear a perplexing jargon of many tongues. A few minutes suffice to transport us into the old-world city familiar to Ford—not, however, to be described by the twentieth century tourist in Ford’s own words. “A difficult language,” he wrote just upon half a century ago, “rude manners, and a distrust of strangers, render Barcelona a disagreeable city.” Nowhere nowadays is more courtesy shown to the inquiring stranger. He is not even obliged to ask his way in these narrow tortuous streets. The city police, to be found at every turn, uninvited come to his aid, and, bringing out a pocket-map, with an infinity of pains make clear to him the route he has to take. The handsome Calle San Fernando leads to the somber but grandiose old Cathedral with its lovely cloisters, magnificent towers and bells, deep-voiced as that of Big Ben itself. All churches in Spain, by the way, must be visited in the forenoon; even then the light is so dim that little can be seen of their treasures—pictures, reliquaries, marble tombs. The Cathedral of Barcelona forms no exception to the rule. Only lighted by windows of richly stained old glass, we are literally compelled to grope our way along the crowded aisles. Mass is going on from early morning till noon, and in the glimmering jeweled light we can just discern the moving figures of priests and acolytes before the high altar, and the scattered worshippers kneeling on the floor. Equally vague are the glimpses we obtain of the chapels, veritable little museums of rare and beautiful things unfortunately consigned to perpetual obscurity, veiled in never-fading twilight. What a change we find outside! The elegant Gothic cloisters, rather to be described as a series of chapels, each differing from the other, each sumptuously adorned, enclose a sunny open space or patio, planted with palms, orange and lemon trees, the dazzlingly bright foliage and warm blue sky in striking contrast to the somber gray of the building-stone. A little farther off, on the other side, we may see the figures of the bell-ringers high up in the open belfry tower, swinging the huge bells backwards and forwards with tremendous effort, a sight never to be missed on Sundays and fête days.

This stately old Cathedral, like so many others, was never finished and works of reparation and restoration are perpetually going on. Close by stands the Palais de Justice, with its beautiful Gothic court and carved stone staircase, the balustrade supported by lovely little statuettes or gargoyles, each an artistic study in itself. Abutting this is the Palais de Diputacion, Provincial or local Parliament House, a building of truly Spanish grandeur. Its wide marble staircases, its elaborate ceilings of carved wood, its majestic proportions, will, perhaps, have less interest for some travellers than its art-treasures, two chefs d’œuvre of the gifted Fortuny. Barcelona was the patron of this true genius—Catalan by birth—so unhappily cut off in his early prime. With no little pride the stately officials show these canvases—the famous “Odalisque” and the “Battle of Tetuan”—the latter, alas! left unfinished. It is a superb piece of life and color, but must be seen on a brilliant day as the hall is somber. Nothing can exceed the courtesy of the Barcelonese to strangers, and these pictures are shown out of the regular hours. But let no one incautiously offer a fee. The proffered coin will be politely, even smilingly, rejected, without humiliating reproof, much less a look of affront. Ford’s remark that “a silver key at all times secures admission” does not hold good in these days.

Near the Cathedral, law courts, and Provincial Parliament House stands another picturesque old palace of comparatively modern date, yet Saracenic aspect, and containing one of the most curious historic treasures in Europe. This is the palace of the kings of Aragon, or Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon. The exterior, as is usual with Spanish buildings, is massive and gloomy. Inside is a look of Oriental lightness and gaiety. Slender columns, painted red, enclose an open court, and support a little terrace planted with shrubs and flowers. Here in perfect order and preservation, without a break, are stored the records of upwards of a thousand years, the earlier consisting of vellum scrolls and black letter, the latter showing the progress of printing from its beginning down to our own day. The first parchment bears date A. D. 875. Among the curiosities of the collection are no less than eight hundred and two Papal Bulls from the year 1017 to 1796. Besides the archives of Barcelona itself, and of the kingdom of Aragon, to which it was annexed in the twelfth century, the palace contains many deeply interesting manuscripts found in the suppressed monasteries.

The archives have been ingeniously arranged by the learned keeper of records. The bookcases, which are not more than six feet high, stand on either side of the vast library, at some distance from the wall, made staircase-wise; one set of volumes just above the other, with the result that no accumulation of dust is possible, and that each set is equally accessible. The effect on the eye of these symmetrically-placed volumes in white vellum is very novel and pleasing. We seem to be in a hall, the walls of which are of fluted cream-colored marble.

The little museum of local antiquities in the ruined Church of Santa Agneda, the somber old churches of San Pablo del Campo, Santa Maria del Mar and Belen, the fragments of mediæval domestic architecture remaining here and there—all these will detain the archæologist. Of more general interest are the modern monuments of Barcelona. In no city have civic lavishness and public spirit shone forth more conspicuously.

A penny tramway—you may go anywhere here for a penny—takes you to the beautiful Park and Fountain of Neptune. The word “fountain” gives an inadequate notion of the splendid pile, with its vast triple-storied marble galleries, its sculptured Naiads and dolphins, and on the summit, towering above park and lake and cascades, its three gigantic sea-horses and charioteers richly gilt, gleaming as if indeed of massive gold. Is there any more sumptuous fountain in the world? I doubt it. In spite of the gilded sea-horses and chariot, there is no tawdriness here; all is bold, splendid, and imposing. Below the vast terraced galleries and wide staircases, all of pure marble, flows in a broad sheet the crystal-clear water, home of myriads of gold fish. The entourage is worthy of so superb a construction. The fountain stands in the midst of a scrupulously-kept, tastefully laid-out, ever-verdant park or public pleasure-ground. In November all is fresh and blooming as in an English June. Palms, magnolias, bananas, oleanders, camellias, the pepper-tree, make up a rich, many-tinted foliage. Flowers in winter-time are supplanted by beds of brilliant leaved plants that do duty for blossoms. The purple, crimson, and sea-green leaves are arranged with great effect, and have a brilliant appearance. Here surrounded by gold green turf, are little lakes which may be sailed across in tiny pleasure skiffs. At the chief entrance, conspicuously placed, stands the fine equestrian monument to Prim, inaugurated with much civil and military pomp some years ago. It is a bold statue in red bronze. The general sits his horse, hat in hand, his fine, soldier-like face turned towards the city. On the sides of the pedestal are bas-reliefs recording episodes of his career, and on the front these words only, “Barcelona à Prim.” The work is that of a Spanish artist, and the monument as a whole reflects great credit alike to local art and public spirit.

But a few minutes’ drive brings us within sight of a monument to one of the world’s heroes. I allude to the memorial column recently raised to Columbus by this same public-spirited and munificent city of Barcelona. Columbus, be it remembered, was received here by Ferdinand and Isabella after his discovery of America in 1493. Far and wide over hills and city, palm-girt harbor, and sea, as a lighthouse towers the tremendous obelisk, the figure of the great Genoese surmounting it, his feet placed on a golden sphere, his outstretched arm pointing triumphantly in the direction of his newly-discovered continent as much as to say, “It is there!”

Never did undertaking reflect more credit upon a city than this stupendous work. The entire height of the monument is about two-thirds of the height of the Monument of London. The execution was entrusted to Barcelonese craftsmen and artists; the materials—bronze, stone, and marble—all being supplied in the neighborhood.

On the upper tier of the pedestal are statues of the four noble Catalans who materially aided Columbus in his expedition—by name Fray Boyl, monk of Montserrat, Pedro Margarit, Jaime Ferrer, and Luis Sentangel. Below are allegorical figures representing, in the form of stately matrons, the four kingdoms of Catalonia, Castille, Aragon, and Leon. Bas-reliefs, illustrating scenes in the career of the discoverer, adorn the hexagonal sides, six magnificent winged lions of greystone keep jealous watch over the whole, and below these, softening the aspect of severity, is a belt of turf, the following inscription being perpetually written in flowers: “Barcelona à Colon.” The column is surmounted by a globe burnished with gold, and above rises the colossal figure of Columbus.

No happier site could have been selected. The monument faces the sea, and is approached from the town by a palm-bordered walk and public garden. The first object to greet the mariner’s eye as he sights land is the figure of Columbus poised on his glittering ball; the last to fade from view is that beacon-like column towering so proudly above city and shore. A little excursion must be made by boat or steamer, in order to realize the striking effect of this monument from the sea.

To obtain a bird’s-eye view of Barcelona itself, the stranger should go some distance inland. The Fort of Montjuich, commanding the town from the south, or Mont Tibidaho to the north, will equally answer his purpose. A pretty winding path leads from the shore to a pleasure-garden just below the fort, and here we see the entire city spread as in a map at our feet. The panorama is somewhat monotonous, the vast congeries of white walls and grey roofs only broken by gloomy old church towers and tall factory chimneys, but thus is realized for the first time the enormous extent of the Spanish Liverpool and Manchester in one. Thus, indeed, may Barcelona be styled. Looking seaward, the picture is animated and engaging—the wide harbor bristling with shipping, lateen-sailed fishing boats skimming the deep-blue sunny waves, noble vessels just discernible on the dim horizon.

The once celebrated promenade of the Murallo del Mar, eulogized by Ford and other writers, no longer exists, but the stranger will keep the sea-line in search of the new cemetery. A very bad road leads thither, on All Saints’ and All Souls’ days followed by an unbroken string of vehicles, omnibuses, covered carts, hackney carriages, and private broughams; their occupants, for the most part, dressed in black. The women, wearing black Cashmere mantillas, are hardly visible, being hidden by enormous wreaths, crosses, and bouquets of natural and also of artificial flowers. The new cemetery is well placed, being several miles from the city, on high ground between the open country and the sea. It is tastefully laid out in terraces—the trees and shrubs testifying to the care bestowed on them. Here are many costly monuments—mausoleums, we should rather say—of opulent Barcelonese, each family possessing its tiny chapel and burial-place.

It is to be hoped that so progressive a city as Barcelona will ere long adopt the system of cremation. Nothing can be less hygienic, one would think, than the present mode of burial in Spain. To die there is literally—not figuratively—to be laid on the shelf. The terrace-like sides of the cemetery ground have been hollowed out into pigeon-holes, and into these are thrust the coffins, the marble slab closing the aperture bearing a memorial inscription. Ivy and other creepers are trained around the various divisions, and wreaths of fresh flowers and immortelles adorn them; the whole presenting the appearance of a huge chest of drawers divided into mathematically exact segments. To us there is something uncanny—nay, revolting—in such a form of burial; which, to say the least of it, cannot be warranted on æsthetic, much less scientific, principles. It is satisfactory to find that at last Protestants and Jews have their own burial-place here, shut off from the rest, it is true by a wall at least twenty feet high, but a resting-place for all that. It was not so very long ago that Malaga was the only Spanish town according Protestants this privilege, the concession being wrung from the authorities by the late much-esteemed British consul, Mr. Mark.

For some days preceding the festival of All Saints the cemetery presents a busy scene. Charwomen, gardeners, masons, and painters then take possession of the place. Marble is scoured, lettering is repainted, shrubs clipped, turf cut—all is made spick and span, in time for the great festival of the dead. It must be borne in mind that All Saints’ Day in Spain has no analogy with the same date in our own calendar. Brilliant sunshine, air soft and balmy as of July, characterize the month of November here. These visits to the cemetery are, therefore, less depressing than they would be performed amid English fog and drizzle. We Northerners, moreover, cannot cast off gloomy thoughts and sad retrospection as easily as the more elastic, more joyous Southern temperament. Mass over, the pilgrimage to the cemetery paid, all is relaxation and gaiety. All Saints’ and All Souls’ days are indeed periods of unmitigated enjoyment and relaxation. Public offices, museums, schools, shops, are closed. Holiday folk pour in from the country. The city is as animated as Paris on the 14th of July.

In the forenoon it is difficult to elbow one’s way through the crowded thoroughfares. Every street is thronged, men flocking to mass as zealously as devotees of the other sex. In these early hours most of the ladies wear black; their mourning garb later in the day to be exchanged for fashionable toilettes of all colors. The children are decked out gaily, as for a fancy fair. Service is being held in every church, and from all parts may be heard the sonorous Cathedral bells. Its vast, somber interior, now blazing with wax-lights, is a sight to remember. Crowds in rapt devotion are kneeling on the bare stones, the ladies heedless of their silks; here and there the men kneeling on a glove or pocket-handkerchief, in order to protect their Sunday pantaloons. Rows of poor men—beggars, it would seem, tidied up for the occasion—sit in rows along the aisle, holding lighted tapers. The choir is filled with choristers, men and boys intoning the service so skilfully that they almost seem to sing. Soon the crowds fall back, and a procession passes from choir to high altar—priests and dignitaries in their gorgeous robes, some of black, embroidered with crosses in gold, others of white and purple or yellow, the bishop coming last, his long violet train borne by a priest; all the time the well-trained voices of the choristers—sweet treble of the boys, tenor, and base—making up for lack of music. At last the long ceremony comes to an end, and the vast congregation pours out to enjoy the balmy air, the warm sunshine, visits, confectionery, and other distractions.

Such religious holidays should not be missed by the traveller, since they still stamp Spain as the most Catholic country in the world. Even in bustling, cosmopolitan, progressive Barcelona people seem to spend half their time in church.

In the capital of Catalonia, twentieth-century civilization and the mediæval spirit may still be called next-door neighbors. The airy boulevards and handsome villas of suburban Algiers are not more strikingly contrasted with the ancient Moorish streets than the new quarters of Barcelona with the old. The Rambla, its electric lights, its glittering shops, cafés, clubs, and theaters, recalls a Parisian boulevard. In many of the tortuous, malodorous streets of the old town there is hardly room for a wheelbarrow to be drawn along; no sunbeam has ever penetrated the gloom.

Let us take a penny tramway from the Rambla to the gloomy, grandiose old church of Santa Maria del Mar. Between the city and the sea rises the majestic monument to Columbus, conspicuous as a lighthouse alike from land and sea. We follow a broad palm-bordered alley and pleasure garden beyond which are seen the noble harbor bristling with masts and the soft blue Mediterranean. Under the palms lounge idle crowds listening to a band, shading themselves as best they can from the burning sun of November! What a change when we leave the tramway and the airy, handsome precincts of the park, and plunge into the dark, narrow street behind the Lonja Palace. The somber picture is not without relief. Round about the ancient façade of the church are cloth-shops, the gay wares hanging from each story, as if the shopmen made a display of all their wares. Here were reds, yellows, greens of brightest hue, some of these woolen blankets, shawls, and garments of every description being gay to crudeness; grass green, scarlet, orange, sky-blue, dazzled the eye, but the general effect was picturesque and cheerful. The dingy little square looked ready for a festival. In reality, a funeral service was taking place in the church. If Spanish interiors are always dark and depressing, what must they be when draped with black? No sooner does the door swing behind us here than daylight is shut out completely as on entering a mine; we are obliged to grope our way by the feeble rays of light penetrating the old stained glass of the clerestory. The lovely lancets of the aisles are hidden by huge black banners, the vast building being only lighted by a blaze of wax tapers here and there. Sweet soft chanting of boys’ voices, with a delicious organ accompaniment, was going on when I entered, soon to be exchanged for the unutterably monotonous and lugubrious intoning of black-robed choristers. They formed a procession and, chanting as they went, marched to a side altar before which a priest was performing mass. The Host elevated, all marched back again, the dreary intoning now beginning afresh. It is impossible to convey any adequate notion of the dreariness of the service. If the Spaniards understand how to enjoy to the uttermost what Browning calls “the wild joy of living,” they also know how to clothe death with all the terrors of mediæval superstition. It takes one’s breath away, too, to calculate the cost of a funeral here, what with the priests accomplished in the mystic dance—so does a Spanish writer designate the performance—the no less elaborate services of the choristers, the lighting up of the church, the display of funeral drapery. The expense, fortunately, can only be incurred once. These ancient churches—all somberness and gloom, yet on fête days ablaze with light and colors—symbolize the leading characteristics of Spanish character. No sooner does the devotee rise from his knees than the Southern passion for joy and animation asserts itself. Religious exercise and revel, penitence and enjoyment, alternate one with the other; the more devout the first, all the more eagerly indulged in the last.

On the Sunday morning following the Festival of All Saints—the 4th of November—the splendid old cathedral was the scene of a veritable pageant. Wax lights illuminated the vast interior from end to end, the brocades and satins of priestly robes blazed with gold embroidery, the rich adornments and treasure of altar and chapels could be seen in full splendor. Before the grand music of the organ and the elevation, a long, very long, sermon had to be listened to, the enormous congregation for the most part standing; scattered groups here and there squatted on the stone piers, not a chair to be had anywhere, no one seeming to find the discourse too long. When at last the preacher did conclude, the white-robed choristers, men and boys, passed out of the choir, and formed a double line. Then the bishop in solemn state descended from the high altar. He wore a crimson gown with long train borne by a priest, and on his head a violet cap, with pea-green tuft. The dresses of the attendant clergy were no less gorgeous and rich in texture, some of crimson with heavy gold trimmings, others of mauve, guinea-gold, peach color, or creamy white, several wearing fur caps. The procession made the round of the choir, then returned to the starting-point. As I sat behind the high altar on one of the high-backed wooden benches destined for the aged poor, two tiny chorister boys came up, both in white surplices, one with a pink, the other with sky-blue collar. Here they chatted and laughed with their hands on the bell-rope, ready to signal the elevation. On a sudden the tittering ceased, the childish hands tugged at the rope, the tinkling of the bell was heard, and the multitude, as one man, fell on its knees, the organ meantime being played divinely. Service over, the crowds emerged into the dazzling sunshine: pleasure parties, steamboat trips, visits, theaters, bull-fights occupied the rest of the day, the Rambla presenting the appearance of a masquerade.

An excursion northwards of the city is necessary, in order to see its charming, fast-increasing suburbs. Many, as is the case with those of Paris, Passy, Auteuil, Belleville, and others, were formerly little towns, but are fast becoming part of Barcelona itself.

Most musically named is Gracia, approached by rail or tramway, where rich citizens have their orange and lemon gardens, their chateaux and villas, and where religious houses abound. In this delightful suburban retreat alone no less than six nunneries may be counted; somber prison-like buildings, with tiny barred windows, indicating the abode of cloistered nuns of ascetic orders. That of the Order of St. Domingo has been recently founded. The house looks precisely like a prison. Here also are several congregations of the other sex—the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, the Fathers of San Filipe, and others.

Gracia may be called the Hampstead of Barcelona. Hardly a house but possesses its garden. Above the high walls trail gorgeous creepers and datura, whilst through the iron gates we obtain glimpses of dahlias in full splendor, roses red and white, and above these the glossy-leaved orange and lemon trees with their ripening fruit. The pleasantest suburb of Barcelona is well worthy of its name. As Sarria is approached, the scenery becomes more rural, and under the brilliant November sunshine reminds the traveller of the East, the square, white, low-roofed houses rising amid olive and palm trees. The aloes and prickly pears on the waste ground again and again recall Algeria. Here are vast stretches of vegetable gardens and vineyards supplying the city markets, and standing in their own grounds on sunny hill-sides, the quintas or country houses of rich citizens and grandees.

From the little town of Sarria—hardly as yet to be called suburban—a glorious view is obtained of city, port, and sea. The narrow dusty streets, with their close-shuttered houses, have a sleepy look; yet Sarria possesses one of the largest cotton-mills in Spain, several thousand hands being employed by one firm. The branch railway ends at Sarria. Here tourists and holiday-makers alight; the hardy pedestrian to reach the summit of Mont Tibidaho on foot—a matter of two hours or so—the less enterprising, to accept one of the covered cars awaiting excursionists outside the station. Mont Tibidaho is the favorite holiday ground of the citizens. Even in November numerous pleasure parties are sure to be found here, and the large restaurants indicate the extent of summer patronage. On the breezy heights round about are the sumptuous mansions of nobles and merchant princes; whilst down below are numerous picturesque valleys, notably that of San Cugat. The stranger fortunate enough to obtain admission will find himself in the kind of fairyland described by Tennyson in his “Haroun-al-Raschid,” Owen Meredith in “The Siege of Constantinople,” or Gayangos in his delightful translation of the “Chronicles of Al-Makkari.” Marble courts, crystal fountains, magnificent baths, mosaic pavements, statuary, tapestries, aviaries, rare exotics, gold and silver plate, are now combined with all modern appliances of comfort. A sojourn in one of the well-appointed hotels will suffice to give some notion of Spanish society. During the holidays many families from the city take up their quarters here. Social gatherings, picnics, excursions, concerts, are the order of the day, and good military bands enliven the gardens on Sundays.

To the south-east of Barcelona lies the suburb of Barceloneta, frequented by the seafaring population. Penny boats ply between city and suburb, on Sundays and holidays the music of a barrel-organ being thrown into the bargain. The harbor is then black with spectators, and the boats and little steamers, making the cruise of the port for half a franc, are crowded with holiday-makers. The bright silk head-dresses of the women, the men’s crimson or scarlet sombreros and plaids, the uniforms of the soldiers, the gay dresses of the ladies, make up a picturesque scene. On board the boats the music of the barrel-organ must on no account be paid for. A well-intentioned stranger who should offer the musician a penny is given to understand that the treat is gratuitous and generously supplied by the owners of the craft. Greed being almost universal in those parts of the world frequented by tourists, it is gratifying to be able to chronicle such exceptions. Seldom, indeed, has the sightseer at Barcelona to put his hand in his pocket.

If inferior to other Spanish cities in picturesqueness and interest generally, the capital of Catalonia atones for the deficit by its abundance of resources. It possesses nothing to be called a picture-gallery; the museums are second-rate, the collections of antiquities inconsiderable. But what other city in Spain can boast of so many learned bodies and diverse centers of intellectual activity? Excessive devotion and scientific inquiry do not here seem at variance. Strange to say, a population that seems perpetually on its knees is the first to welcome modern ideas.

The Academy of Arts was founded in 1751, and owes its origin to the Junta, or Tribunal of Commerce of Catalonia. This art school is splendidly lodged in the Lonja Palace, and attached to it is a museum, containing a few curious specimens of old Spanish masters, some rather poor copies of the Italian schools, and one real artistic treasure of the first water. This is a collection of studies in black and white by the gifted Fortuny, whose first training was received here. The sketches are masterly, and atone for the insignificance of the remaining collection. Students of both sexes are admitted to the classes, the course of study embracing painting in all its branches, modeling, etching, linear drawing and perspective, anatomy and æsthetics. It is gratifying to find that girls attend these classes, although as yet in small numbers.

The movement in favor of the higher education of women marches at a snail’s pace in Spain. The vast number of convents and what are called “Escuelas Pias,” or religious schools, attest the fact that even in the most cosmopolitan and enlightened Spanish town the education of girls still remains chiefly in the hands of the nuns. Lay schools and colleges exist, also a normal school for the training of female teachers, founded a few years ago. Here and there we find rich families entrusting their girls to English governesses, but such cases are rare.

We must remember, however, that besides the numerous “Escuelas pias” and secular schools, several exist opened under the auspices of the Spanish Evangelical body, and also the League for the Promotion of lay Teaching. We need not infer, then, that because they do not attend the municipal schools the children go untaught.

How reluctantly Catholic countries are won over to educate their women we have witnessed in France. Here in the twentieth century the chief occupation of an educated Spanish lady seems to be that of counting her beads in church.

Music is universally taught, the cultivation of the piano being nowhere more assiduous. Pianoforte teachers may be counted by the hundred; and a Conservatorium, besides academies due to private initiative, offers a thorough musical training to the student. Elegant pianos, characterized by great delicacy of tone and low price, are a leading feature of Barcelona manufacture, notably of the firm Bernareggi.

The University, attended by two thousand five hundred students, was founded so long ago as 1430, and rebuilt in 1873.

A technical school—the only complete school of arts and sciences existing in Spain—was opened under the same roof in 1850; and, in connection with it, night classes are held. Any workman provided with a certificate of good conduct can attend these classes free of cost. Schools of architecture and navigation are also attached to the University.

Thirst after knowledge characterizes all classes of the community. A workman’s literary club, or Athenæum, founded a few years back, is now a flourishing institution, aided by municipal funds. No kind of recreation is allowed within its walls. Night-schools opened here are attended by several hundred scholars. Barcelona also boasts of an Academy of Belles Lettres, the first founded in Spain; schools of natural science, chemistry, agriculture, of medicine and surgery, of jurisprudence, an academy devoted to the culture of the Catalonian language, and containing library and museum. This society has greatly contributed to the protection of ancient buildings throughout the province, besides amassing valuable treasure, legend, botanical and geological specimens and antiquities. The Archæological Society of Barcelona has also effected good work: to its initiative the city is mainly indebted for the charming little collection of antiquities known as the “Museo Provincial,” before alluded to.

In places of public entertainment Barcelona is unusually rich. Its Opera House, holding four thousand spectators, equals in spaciousness the celebrated house of Moscow. The unpretentious exterior gives no idea of the splendor within. A dozen theaters may be counted besides. Bull-fights, alas! still disgrace the most advanced city of the Peninsula. The bull-ring was founded in 1834, and the brutal spectacle still attracts enormous crowds, chiefly consisting of natives. The bull-fight is almost unanimously repudiated by foreign residents of all ranks.

A few words must now be said about the history of this ancient place. The city founded here by Hamilcar Barco, father of the great Hannibal, is supposed to stand on the site of one more ancient still, existing long before the foundation of Rome. The Carthaginian city in 206 B. C. became a Roman colonia, under the title of “Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barzino,” which was eclipsed in importance, however, by Tarragona, the Roman capital. In 409 A. D. it was taken by the Goths, and under their domination increased in size and influence, coining its own money stamped with the legend “Barcinona.” On the destruction of Tarragona by the Moors Barcelona capitulated, was treated with clemency, and again became a metropolis. After many vicissitudes it was ruled in the ninth century by a Christian chief of its own, whose descendants till the twelfth governed it under the title of Counts of Barcelona, later assuming that of Kings of Aragon, to which kingdom the province was annexed. During the Middle Ages Barcelona played a foremost part in the history of commerce. In the words of Ford, “Like Carthage of old, it was the lord and terror of the Mediterranean. It divided with Italy the enriching commerce of the East. It was then a city of commerce, conquest, and courtiers, of taste, learning, and luxury—the Athens of the troubadour.”

Its celebrated commercial code, framed in the thirteenth century, obtained acceptance throughout Europe. Here one of the first printing-presses in Spain was set up, and here Columbus was received by Ferdinand and Isabella after his discovery of a new world. A hundred years later a ship was launched from the port, made to move by means of steam. The story of Barcelona is henceforth but a catalogue of tyrannies and treacheries, against which the brave, albeit turbulent, city struggled single-handed. In 1711 it was bombarded and partly ruined by Philip V.; a few years later, after a magnanimous defense, it was stormed by Berwick, on behalf of Louis XIV., and given up to pillage, outrage, fire, and sword. Napoleon’s fraudulent seizure of Barcelona is one of the most shameful pages of his shameful history. The first city—the key of Spain, as he called it—only to be taken in fair war by eighty thousand men, was basely entrapped, and remained in the hands of the French till the Treaty of Paris in 1814. From that time Barcelona has only enjoyed fitful intervals of repose. In 1827 a popular rising took place in favor of Don Carlos. In 1834 Queen Christina was opposed, and in 1840 public opinion declared for Espartero. In 1856 and 1874 insurrections occurred, not without bloodshed.

Barcelona is a great gathering-place of merchants from all parts of Europe. In its handsome hotels is heard a very Babel of tongues. The principal manufactures consist of woolen stuffs—said to be inferior to English in quality—silk, lace, firearms, hats, hardware, pianos; the last, as has been already stated, of excellent quality, and low in price. Porcelain, crystal, furniture, and inlaid work, must be included in this list, also ironwork and stone blocks.

Beautifully situated on the Mediterranean between the mouths of two rivers,—the Llobregat and the Besos—and possessing one of the finest climates in the world, Barcelona is doubtless destined ere long to rival Algiers as a health resort. Three lines of railway now connect it directly with Paris, from which it is separated by twenty-eight hours’ journey. The traveller may leave Barcelona at five o’clock in the morning and reach Lyons at midnight with only a change of carriages on the frontier. The route viâ Bordeaux is equally expeditious; that by way of Clermont-Ferrand less so, but more picturesque. Hotels in the capital of Catalonia leave nothing to desire on the score of management, hygiene, comfort, and prices strictly regulated by tariff. The only drawback to be complained of is the total absence of the feminine element—not a woman to be seen on the premises. Good family hotels, provided with lady clerks and chambermaids, is a decided desideratum. The traveller wishing to attain a knowledge of the Spanish language, and see something of Spanish life and manners, may betake himself to one of the numerous boarding-houses.

Barcelona is very rich in philanthropic and charitable institutions. Foremost of these is its Hospital of Santa Cruz, numbering six hundred beds. It is under the conjoint management of sisters and brothers of charity and lay nurses of both sexes. An asylum for the insane forms part of the building, with annexes for the convalescent. The Hospital del Sagrado Corazon, founded by public subscription in 1870 for surgical cases, also speaks volumes for the munificence of the citizens. The only passport required of the patient is poverty. One interesting feature about this hospital is that the committee of management consists of ladies. The nursing staff is formed of French Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. Besides these must be named the orphanage for upwards of two thousand children of both sexes—Casa de Caridad de la Provincia de Barcelona—asylums for abandoned infants, for the orphaned children of seamen, maternity hospitals, crêches, etc. There is also a school for the blind and deaf mutes, the first of the kind established in Spain. Here the blind of both sexes receive a thorough musical training, and deaf mutes are taught according to the system known as lip-speech. All teaching is gratuitous.

Barcelona possesses thirty-eight churches, without counting the chapels attached to convents, and a vast number of conventual houses. Several evangelical services are held on Sundays both in the city and in the suburb of Barceloneta. The Protestant communities of Spain, England, France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries, have here their representative and organization. Sunday-schools and night-schools for adults are held in connection with these churches. The Protestant body seems active. We find here a branch depôt of the Religious Tract Society; various religious magazines, many of them translations from the English and German, are published. Among these are the “Revista Christiana,” intended for the more thoughtful class of readers; “La Luz,” organ of the Reformed Church of Spain; and several illustrated periodicals for children. Will Protestantism ever take deep root in the home of the Inquisition? Time will show.

That very advanced political opinions should be held here need hardly surprise us. We find the following Democratic clubs in existence: The Historic Republican Club (“Centro Republicano Historico”), the Possibilist Republican Club (“Circulo Republicano Possibilista”), the Democratic Progressist Club, the Federal Republican Club, and many others. When next a great popular movement takes place in Spain—and already the event looms in the distance—without doubt the first impulse will be given at Barcelona.

Electric lighting was early introduced here, a company being founded so long back as 1880, and having branches in the capital, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao, and other towns. The importance of Barcelona as a center of commerce is attested by the extraordinary number of banks. At every turn the stranger comes upon a bank. “Compared to the mighty hives of English industry and skill, here everything is petty,” wrote Ford, fifty years ago. Very different would be his verdict could he revisit the Manchester and Liverpool of Catalonia in our own day.

One curious feature of social life in Spain is the extraordinary number of religious fête days and public holidays. No Bank Holiday Act is needed, as in the neighboring country of France. Here is a list of days during which business is for the most part suspended in this recreation-loving city: Twelfth-cake Day is the great festival of the little ones—carnival is kept up, if with less of former splendor, nevertheless with much spirit; on Ash Wednesday rich and poor betake themselves to the country; Holy Thursday and Good Friday are celebrated with great pomp in the churches; on Easter Eve takes place a procession of shepherds in the park; Easter Monday is a day given up to rural festivity; the 19th of March St. José’s Day—is a universal fête, hardly a family in Spain without a José among its number. The first Sunday in May is a feast of flowers and poetic competitions; the days consecrated to St. Juan and St. Pedro are public holidays, patronized by enormous numbers of country-folks; All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days are given up, as we have seen, to alternate devotion and festivity. On the 20th of December is celebrated the Feast of the Nativity, the fair and the displays of the shops attracting strangers from all parts. But it is especially the days sacred to the Virgin that are celebrated by all classes. Balls, banquets, processions, miracle-plays, illuminations, bull-fights, horse-races, scholastic fêtes, industrial exhibitions, civic ceremonial, besides solemn services, occupy old and young, rich and poor. Feasting is the order of the day, and the confectioners’ windows are wonderful to behold.

Although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the curious street sights described by Ford fifty years ago, and the Mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. The goodly show of dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious description of a Spanish reception. “Those who receive,” he wrote, “provide very little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space, light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry, easily-pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. To those who, by hospitality and entertainment, can only understand eating and drinking—food for man and beast—such hungry proceedings will be more honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend much on latitude and longitude.” Be this as it may, either the climate of Barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized Spanish digestion. Thirty years ago, when travelling in Spain, it was no unusual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant, and, with much form and ceremony, breakfast off a tiny omelette. Nowadays we find plenty of Spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice to a plentiful board. English visitors in a Spanish house will not only get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality of material sort.

The Spain of which Ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted, often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. Many national characteristics remain—the passion for the brutal bull-fight still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater portion of their lives in church, religious intolerance at the beginning of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly progressive nation. On the other hand, and nowhere is the fact more patent than at Barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution, described by contemporary Spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in closer sympathy with her neighbors. Many young Spaniards, for instance, are now educated in England, English is freely spoken at Malaga, and its literature is no longer unknown to Spanish readers. These facts indicate coming change. The exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of this richly-dowed and attractive country is on the wane. Who shall say? We may ere long see dark-eyed students from Barcelona at Girton College, and a Spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of bulls and horses for the public pleasure.

Already—all honor to her name—a Spanish woman novelist, the gifted Caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler treatment of animals in general. For the most part, it must be sadly confessed, in vain!

In spite of its foremost position, in intellectual and commercial pre-eminence, Barcelona has produced no famous men. Her noblest monument is raised to an alien; Lopez, a munificent citizen, honored by a statue, was born at Santander. Prim, although a Catalan, did not first see the light in the capital. By some strange concatenation of events, this noble city owes her fame rather to the collective genius and spirit of her children than to any one. A magnanimous stepmother, she has adopted those identified with her splendor to whom she did not herself give birth.

Balzac wittily remarks that the dinner is the barometer of the family purse in Paris. One perceives whether Parisians are flourishing or no by a glance at the daily board. Clothes afford a nice indication of temperature all the world over. We have only to notice what people wear, and we can construct a weather-chart for ourselves. Although the late autumn was, on the whole, favorable, I left fires, furs, and overcoats in Paris. At Lyons, a city afflicted with a climate the proper epithet of which is “muggy,” ladies had not yet discarded their summer clothes, and were only just beginning to refurbish felt hats and fur-lined pelisses.

At Montpellier the weather was April-like—mild, blowy, showery; waterproofs, goloshes, and umbrellas were the order of the day. On reaching Barcelona I found a blazing sun, windows thrown wide open, and everybody wearing the lightest garments. Such facts do duty for a thermometer.

Boasting, as it does of one of the finest climates in the world, natural position of rare beauty, a genial, cosmopolitan, and strikingly handsome population, and lastly, accessibility, Barcelona should undoubtedly be a health resort hardly second to Algiers. Why it is not, I will undertake to explain.

In the first place, there is something that invalids and valetudinarians require more imperatively than a perfect climate. They cannot do without the ministrations of women. To the suffering, the depressed, the nervous, feminine influence is ofttimes of more soothing—nay, healing—power than any medical prescription.

Let none take the flattering unction to their souls—as well look for a woman in a Bashaw’s army, or on a man-of-war, as in the palatial, well-appointed, otherwise irreproachable hotels of Barcelona! They boast of marble floors, baths that would not have dissatisfied a Roman epicure, salons luxurious as those of a West-end club, newspapers in a score of languages, a phalanx of gentlemanly waiters, a varied ordinary, delicious wines, but not a daughter of Eve, old or young, handsome or ugly—if, indeed, there exists an ugly woman in Barcelona—to be caught sight of anywhere! No charming landlady, as in French hotels, taking friendliest interest in her guests, no housemaids, willing and nimble as the Marys and Janes we have left at home, not even a rough, kindly, garrulous charwoman scrubbing the floors. The fashionable hotel here is a vast barrack conducted on strictly impersonal principles. Visitors obtain their money’s worth, and pay their bills. There the transaction between innkeeper and traveller ends.

Good family hotels or “pensions,” in which invalids would find a home-like element, are sadly needed in this engaging, highly-favored city. The next desideratum is a fast train from Port Bou—the first Spanish town on the frontier. An express on the Spanish line would shorten the journey to Lyons by several hours. New carriages are needed as much as new iron roads. Many an English third-class is cleaner and more comfortable than the so-called “first” here. It must be added that the officials are all politeness and attention, and that beyond slowness and shabbiness the traveller has nothing to complain of. Exquisite urbanity is still a characteristic of the Barcelonese as it was in the age of Cervantes. One exception will be mentioned farther on.

If there are no women within the hotel walls—except, of course, stray lady tourists—heaven be praised, there are enough, and to spare, of most bewitching kind without. Piquancy is, perhaps, the foremost charm of a Spanish beauty, whether a high-born señora in her brougham, or a flower-girl at her stall. One and all seem born to turn the heads of the other sex, after the fashion of Carmen in Merimée’s story. Nor is outward attraction confined to women. The city police, cab-drivers, tramway-conductors, all possess what Schopenhauer calls the best possible letter of introduction, namely, good looks.

The number of the police surprise us. These bustling, brilliant streets, with their cosmopolitan crowds, seem the quietest, most orderly in the world. It seems hard to believe that this tranquillity and contentment should be fallacious—on the surface only. Yet such is the case, as shown by the recent outbreak of rioting and bloodshed.

“I have seen revolution after revolution,” said to me a Spanish gentleman of high position, an hidalgo of the old school; “I expect to see more if my life is sufficiently prolonged. Spain has no government; each in power seeks but self-aggrandizement. Our army is full of Boulangers, each ready to usurp power for his own ends. You suggest a change of dynasty? We could not hope to be thereby the gainers. A Republic, say you? That also has proved a failure with us. Ah, you English are happy; you do not need to change abruptly the existing order of things, you effect revolutions more calmly.”

I observed that perhaps national character and temperament had something to do with the matter. He replied very sadly, “You are right; we Southerners are more impetuous, of fiercer temper. Whichever way I look, I see no hope for unhappy Spain.”

Such somber reflections are difficult to realize by the passing traveller. Yet, when we consider the tremendous force of such a city as Barcelona, its progressive tendencies, its spirit of scientific inquiry, we can but admit that an Ultramontane regency and reactionary government must be out of harmony with the tendencies of modern Spain.

There is only one occupation which seems to have a deteriorating effect upon the Spanish temper. The atmosphere of the post-office, at any rate, makes a Catalan rasping as an east wind, acrimonious as a sloe-berry. I had been advised to provide myself with a passport before revisiting Spain, but I refused to do so on principle.

What business have we with this relic of barbarism at the beginning of the twentieth century, in times of peace among a friendly people? The taking a passport under such circumstances seemed to me as much of an anachronism as the wearing of a scapular, or seeking the royal touch for scrofula. By pure accident, a registered letter containing bank notes was addressed to me at the Poste Restante. Never was such a storm in a teacup, such groaning of the mountain before the creeping forth of a tiny mouse! The delivery of registered letters in Spain is accompanied with as much form as a marriage contract in France. Let future travellers in expectation of such documents provide themselves, not only with a passport, but a copy of their baptismal register, of the marriage certificate of their parents, the family Bible—no matter its size—and any other proofs of identity they can lay hands upon. They will find none superfluous.

V

MARSEILLES

Its Greek founders and early history—Superb view from the sea—The Cannebière—The Parado and Chemin de la Corniche—Château d’If and Monte-Cristo—Influence of the Greeks in Marseilles—Ravages by plague and pestilence—Treasures of the Palais des Arts—The chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde—The new Marseilles and its future.

About six hundred years before the birth of Christ, when the Mediterranean, ringed round with a long series of commercial colonies, was first beginning to transform itself with marvelous rapidity into “a Greek lake,” a body of adventurous Hellenic mariners—young Columbuses of their day—full of life and vigor, sailed forth from Phocæa in Asia Minor, and steered their course, by devious routes, to what was then the Far West, in search of a fitting and unoccupied place in which to found a new trading city. Hard pressed by the Persians on their native shore, these free young Greeks—the Pilgrim Fathers of modern Marseilles—left behind for ever the city of their birth, and struck for liberty in some distant land, where no Cyrus or Xerxes could ever molest them. Sailing away past Greece and Sicily, and round Messina into the almost unknown Tyrrhenian Sea, the adventurous voyagers arrived at last, after various false starts in Corsica and elsewhere, at some gaunt white hills of the Gaulish coast, and cast anchor finally in a small but almost land-locked harbor, under the shelter of some barren limestone mountains. Whether they found a Phœnician colony already established on the spot or not, matters as little to history nowadays as whether their leaders’ names were really Simos and Protis or quite otherwise. What does matter is the indubitable fact that Massalia, as its Greek founders called it, preserved through all its early history the impress of a truly Hellenic city; and that even to this moment much good Greek blood flows, without question, in the hot veins of all its genuine native-born citizens.

The city thus founded has had a long, a glorious, and an eventful history. Marseilles is to-day the capital of the Mediterranean, the true commercial metropolis of that inland sea which now once more has become a single organic whole, after its long division by the Mohammedan conquest of North Africa and the Levant into two distinct and hostile portions. Naples, it is true, has a larger population; but then, a population of Neapolitan lazzaroni, mere human drones lounging about their hive and basking in the sunlight, does not count for much, except for the macaroni trade. What Venice once was, that Marseilles is to-day; the chief gate of Mediterranean traffic, the main mart of merchants who go down in ships on the inland sea. In the Cannebière and the Old Port, she possesses, indeed, as Edmond About once graphically phrased it, “an open door upon the Mediterranean and the whole world.” The steamers and sailing vessels that line her quays bind together the entire Mediterranean coast into a single organic commercial whole. Here is the packet for Barcelona and Malaga; there, the one for Naples, Malta, and Constantinople. By this huge liner, sunning herself at La Joliette, we can go to Athens and Alexandria; by that, to Algiers, Cagliari, and Tunis. Nay, the Suez Canal has extended her bounds beyond the inland sea to the Indian Ocean; and the Pillars of Hercules no longer restrain her from free use of the great Atlantic water-way. You may take ship, if you will, from the Quai de la Fraternité for Bombay or Yokohama, for Rio or Buenos Ayres, for Santa Cruz, Teneriffe, Singapore, or Melbourne. And this wide extension of her commercial importance Marseilles owes, mainly no doubt, to her exceptional advantages of natural position, but largely also, I venture to think, to the Hellenic enterprise of her acute and vigorous Græco-Gaulish population.

And what a marvelous history has she not behind her! First of all, no doubt, a small fishing and trading station of prehistoric Gaulish or Ligurian villagers occupied the site where now the magnificent façade of the Bourse commemorates the names of Massalia’s greatest Phocæan navigators. Then the Phœnicians supervened upon the changeful scene, and built those antique columns and forgotten shrines whose scanty remains were recently unearthed in the excavations for making the Rue de la République. Next came the early Phocæan colonists, reinforced a little later by the whole strength of their unconquerable townsmen, who sailed away in a body, according to the well-known legend preserved in Herodotus, when they could no longer hold out against the besieging Persian. The Greek town became as it were a sort of early Calcutta for the Gaulish trade, with its own outlying colonies at Nice, Antibes, and Hyères, and its inland “factories” (to use the old familiar Anglo-Indian word) at Tarascon, Avignon, and many other ancient towns of the Rhône valley. Her admirals sailed on every known sea: Euthymenes explored the coasts of Africa as far as Senegal; Pytheas followed the European shore past Britain and Ireland to the north of the Shetlands. Till the Roman arrived upon the Gaulish coast with his dreaded short-sword, Massalia, in short, remained undisputed queen of all the western Mediterranean waters.

Before the wolf of the Capitol, however, all stars paled. Yet even under the Roman Empire Massilia (as the new conquerors called the name, with a mere change of vowel) retained her Greek speech and manners, which she hardly lost (if we may believe stray hints in later historians) till the very eve of the barbarian invasion. With the period of the Crusades, the city of Euthymenes became once more great and free, and hardly lost her independence completely up to the age of Louis XIV. It was only after the French Revolution, however, that she began really to supersede Venice as the true capital of the Mediterranean. The decline of the Turkish power, the growth of trade with Alexandria and the Levant, the final crushing of the Barbary pirates, the conquest of Algeria, and, last of all, the opening of the Suez Canal—a French work—all helped to increase her commerce and population by gigantic strides in half a dozen decades. At the present day Marseilles is the chief maritime town of France, and the acknowledged center of Mediterranean travel and traffic.

The right way for the stranger to enter Marseilles is, therefore, by sea, the old-established high road of her antique commerce. The Old Port and the Cannebière are her front door, while the railway from Paris leads you in at best, as it were, through shabby corridors, by a side entry. Seen from the sea, indeed, Marseilles is superb. I hardly know whether the whole Mediterranean has any finer approach to a great town to display before the eyes of the artistic traveller. All round the city rises a semicircle of arid white hills, barren and bare indeed to look upon; but lighted up by the blue Provençal sky with a wonderful flood of borrowed radiance, bringing out every jutting peak and crag through the clear dry air in distinct perspective. Their sides are dotted with small square white houses, the famous bastides or country boxes of the good Marseillais bourgeois. In front, a group of sunlit rocky isles juts out from the bay, on one of which tower the picturesque bastions of the Chateau d’If, so familiar to the reader of “Monte-Cristo.” The foreground is occupied by the town itself, with its forest of masts, and the new dome of its checkered and gaudy Byzantine Cathedral, which has quite supplanted the old cathedral of St. Lazare, of which only a few traces remain. In the middle distance the famous old pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde crowns the summit of a pyramidal hill, with its picturesque mass of confused architecture. Away to right and left, those endless white hills gleam on with almost wearying brightness in the sun for miles together; but full in front, where the eye rests longest, the bustle and commotion of a great trading town teem with varied life upon the quays and landing-places.

If you are lucky enough to enter Marseilles for the first time by the Old Port, you find yourself at once in the very thick of all that is most characteristic and vivid and local in the busy city. That little oblong basin, shut in on its outer side by projecting hills, was indeed the making of the great town. Of course the Old Port is now utterly insufficient for the modern wants of a first-class harbor; yet it still survives, not only as a historical relic but as a living reality, thronged even to-day with the crowded ships of all nations. On the quay you may see the entire varied Mediterranean world in congress assembled. Here Greeks from Athens and Levantines from Smyrna jostle cheek by jowl with Italians from Genoa and Arabs or Moors from Tangier or Tunis. All costumes and all manners are admissible. The crowd is always excited, and always animated. A babel of tongues greets your ears as you land, in which the true Marseillais dialect of the Provençal holds the chief place—a graceful language, wherein the predominant Latin element has not even yet wholly got rid of certain underlying traces of Hellenic origin. Bright color, din, life, movement: in a moment the traveller from a northern climate recognizes the patent fact that he has reached a new world—that vivid, impetuous, eager southern world, which has its center to-day on the Provençal seaboard.

Go a yard or two farther into the crowded Cannebière, and the difference between this and the chilly North will at each step be forced even more strikingly upon you. That famous thoroughfare is firmly believed by every good son of old Marseilles to be, in the familiar local phrase, “la plus belle rue de l’univers.” My own acquaintance with the precincts of the universe being somewhat limited (I have never travelled myself, indeed, beyond the narrow bounds of our own solar system), I should be loth to endorse too literally and unreservedly this sweeping commendation of the Marseillais mind; but as regards our modest little planet at least, I certainly know no other street within my own experience (save Broadway, New York) that has quite so much life and variety in it as the Cannebière. It is not long, to be sure, but it is broad and airy, and from morning till night its spacious trottoirs are continually crowded by such a surging throng of cosmopolitan humanity as you will hardly find elsewhere on this side of Alexandria. For cosmopolitanism is the true key-note of Marseilles, and the Cannebière is a road that leads in one direction straight to Paris, but opens in the other direction full upon Algiers and Italy, upon Egypt and India.

What a picture it offers, too, of human life, that noisy Cannebière! By day or by night it is equally attractive. On it centers all that is alive in Marseilles—big hotels, glittering cafés, luxurious shops, scurrying drays, high-stepping carriage-horses, and fashionably-dressed humanity; an endless crowd, many of them hatless and bonnetless in true southern fashion, parade without ceasing its ringing pavements. At the end of all, the Old Port closes the view with its serried masts, and tells you the wherefore of this mixed society. The Cannebière, in short, is the Rue de Rivoli of the Mediterranean, the main thoroughfare of all those teeming shores of oil and wine, where culture still lingers by its ancient cradle.

Close to the Quai, and at the entrance of the Cannebière, stands the central point of business in new Marseilles, the Bourse, where the filial piety of the modern Phocæans has done ample homage to the sacred memory of their ancient Hellenic ancestors. For in the place of honor on the façade of that great palace of commerce the chief post has been given, as was due, to the statues of the old Massaliote admirals, Pytheas and Euthymenes. It is this constant consciousness of historical continuity that adds so much interest to Mediterranean towns. One feels as one stands before those two stone figures in the crowded Cannebière, that after all humanity is one, and that the Phocæans themselves are still, in the persons of their sons, among us.

The Cannebière runs nearly east and west, and is of no great length, under its own name at least; but under the transparent alias of the Rue de Noailles it continues on in a straight line till it widens out at last into the Allées de Meilhan, the favorite haunt of all the gossips and quidnuncs of Marseilles. The Allées de Meilhan, indeed, form the beau idéal of the formal and fashionable French promenade. Broad avenues of plane trees cast a mellow shade over its well-kept walks, and the neatest of nurses in marvelous caps and long silk streamers dandle the laciest and fluffiest of babies, in exquisite costumes, with ostentatious care, upon their bountiful laps. The stone seats on either side buzz with the latest news of the town; the Zouave flirts serenely with the bonnetless shop-girls; the sergeant-de-ville stalks proudly down the midst, and barely deigns to notice such human weaknesses. These Allées are the favorite haunt of all idle Marseilles, below the rank of “carriage company,” and it is probable that Satan finds as much mischief still for its hands to do here as in any other part of that easy-going city.

At right angles to the main central artery thus constituted by the Cannebière, the Rue de Noailles, and the Allées de Meilhan runs the second chief stream of Marseillais life, down a channel which begins as the Rue d’Aix and the Cours Belzunce, and ends, after various intermediate disguises, as the Rue de Rome and the Prado. Just where it crosses the current of the Cannebière, this polyonymous street rejoices in the title of the Cours St. Louis. Close by is the place where the flower-women sit perched up quaintly in their funny little pulpits, whence they hand down great bunches of fresh dewy violets or pinky-white rosebuds, with persuasive eloquence to the obdurate passer-by. This flower-market is one of the sights of Marseilles, and I know no other anywhere—not even at Nice—so picturesque or so old-world. It keeps up something of the true Provençal flavor, and reminds one that here, in this Greek colony, we are still in the midst of the land of roses and of Good King René, the land of troubadours, and gold and flowers, and that it is the land of sun and summer sunshine.

As the Rue de Rome emerges from the town and gains the suburb, it clothes itself in overhanging shade of plane-trees, and becomes known forthwith as the Prado—that famous Prado, more sacred to the loves and joys of the Marseillais than the Champs Elysées are to the born Parisian. For the Prado is the afternoon-drive of Marseilles, the Rotten Row of local equestrianism, the rallying-place and lounge of all that is fashionable in the Phocæan city as the Allées de Meilhan are of all that is bourgeois or frankly popular. Of course the Prado does not differ much from all other promenades of its sort in France: the upper-crust of the world has grown painfully tame and monotonous everywhere within the last twenty-five years: all flavor and savor of national costume or national manners has died out of it in the lump, and left us only in provincial centers the insipid graces of London and Paris, badly imitated. Still, the Prado is undoubtedly lively; a broad avenue bordered with magnificent villas of the meretricious Haussmannesque order of architecture; and it possesses a certain great advantage over every other similar promenade I know of in the world—it ends at last in one of the most beautiful and picturesque sea-drives in all Europe.

This sea-drive has been christened by the Marseillais, with pardonable pride, the Chemin de la Corniche, in humble imitation of that other great Corniche road which winds its tortuous way by long, slow gradients over the ramping heights of the Turbia between Nice and Mentone. And a “ledge road” it is in good earnest, carved like a shelf out of the solid limestone. When I first knew Marseilles there was no Corniche: the Prado, a long flat drive through a marshy plain, ended then abruptly on the sea-front; and the hardy pedestrian who wished to return to town by way of the cliffs had to clamber along a doubtful and rocky path, always difficult, often dangerous, and much obstructed by the attentions of the prowling douanier, ever ready to arrest him as a suspected smuggler. Nowadays, however, all that is changed. The French engineers—always famous for their roads—have hewn a broad and handsome carriage-drive out of the rugged rock, here hanging on a shelf sheer above the sea; there supported from below by heavy buttresses of excellent masonwork; and have given the Marseillais one of the most exquisite promenades to be found anywhere on the seaboard of the Continent. It somewhat resembles the new highway from Villefranche to Monte Carlo; but the islands with which the sea is here studded recall rather Cannes or the neighborhood of Sorrento. The seaward views are everywhere delicious; and when sunset lights up the bare white rocks with pink and purple, no richer coloring against the emerald green bay, can possibly be imagined in art or nature. It is as good as Torquay; and how can cosmopolitan say better?

On the Corniche, too, is the proper place nowadays to eat that famous old Marseillais dish, immortalized by Thackeray, and known as bouillabaisse. The Réserve de Roubion in particular prides itself on the manufacture of this strictly national Provençal dainty, which proves, however, a little too rich and a little too mixed in its company for the fastidious taste of most English gourmets. Greater exclusiveness and a more delicate eclecticism in matters of cookery please our countrymen better than such catholic comprehensiveness. I once asked a white-capped Provençal chef what were the precise ingredients of his boasted bouillabaisse; and the good man opened his palms expansively before him as he answered with a shrug, “Que voulez-vous? Fish to start with; and then—a handful of anything that happens to be lying about loose in the kitchen.”

Near the end of the Prado, at its junction with the Corniche, modern Marseilles rejoices also in its park or Public Garden. Though laid out on a flat and uninteresting plain, with none of the natural advantages of the Bois de Boulogne or of the beautiful Central Park at New York, these pretty grounds are nevertheless interesting to the northern visitor, who makes his first acquaintance with the Mediterranean here, by their curious and novel southern vegetation. The rich types of the south are everywhere apparent. Clumps of bamboo in feathery clusters overhang the ornamental waters; cypresses and araucarias shade the gravel walks; the eucalyptus showers down its fluffy flowers upon the grass below; the quaint Salisburia covers the ground in autumn with its pretty and curious maidenhair-shaped foliage. Yuccas and cactuses flourish vigorously in the open air, and even fan-palms manage to thrive the year round in cosy corners. It is an introduction to the glories of Rivieran vegetation, and a faint echo of the magnificent tones of the North African flora.

As we wind in and out on our way back to Marseilles by the Corniche road, with the water ever dashing white from the blue against the solid crags, whose corners we turn at every tiny headland, the most conspicuous object in the nearer view is the Château d’If, with the neighboring islets of Pomègues and Ratonneau. Who knows not the Château d’If, by name at least, has wasted his boyhood. The castle is not indeed of any great antiquity—it was built by order of François I—nor can it lay much claim to picturesqueness of outline or beauty of architecture; but in historical and romantic associations it is peculiarly rich, and its situation is bold, interesting, and striking. It was here that Mirabeau was imprisoned under a lettre de cachet obtained by his father, the friend of man; and it was here, to pass from history to romance, that Monte-Cristo went through those marvelous and somewhat incredible adventures which will keep a hundred generations of school-boys in breathless suspense long after Walter Scott is dead and forgotten.

But though the Prado and the Corniche are alive with carriages on sunny afternoons, it is on the quays themselves, and around the docks and basins, that the true vivacious Marseillais life must be seen in all its full flow and eagerness. The quick southern temperament, the bronzed faces, the open-air existence, the hurry and bustle of a great seaport town, display themselves there to the best advantage. And the ports of Marseilles are many and varied: their name is legion, and their shipping manifold. As long ago as 1850, the old square port, the Phocæan harbor, was felt to have become wholly insufficient for the needs of modern commerce in Marseilles. From that day to this, the accommodation for vessels has gone on increasing with that incredible rapidity which marks the great boom of modern times. Never, surely, since the spacious days of great Elizabeth, has the world so rapidly widened its borders as in these latter days in which we are all living. The Pacific and the Indian Ocean have joined the Atlantic. In 1853 the Port de la Joliette was added, therefore, to the Old Harbor, and people thought Marseilles had met all the utmost demands of its growing commerce. But the Bassin du Lazaret and the Bassin d’Arenc were added shortly after; and then, in 1856, came the further need for yet another port, the Bassin National. In 1872 the Bassin de la Gare Maritime was finally executed; and now the Marseillais are crying out again that the ships know not where to turn in the harbor. Everywhere the world seems to cosmopolitanize itself and to extend its limits: the day of small things has passed away for ever; the day of vast ports, huge concerns, gigantic undertakings is full upon us.

Curiously enough, however, in spite of all this rapid and immense development, it is still to a great extent the Greek merchants who hold in their hands—even in our own time—the entire commerce and wealth of the old Phocæan city. A large Hellenic colony of recent importation still inhabits and exploits Marseilles. Among the richly-dressed crowd of southern ladies that throngs the Prado on a sunny afternoon in full season, no small proportion of the proudest and best equipped who loll back in their carriages were born at Athens or in the Ionic Archipelago. For even to this day, these modern Greeks hang together wonderfully with old Greek persistence. Their creed keeps them apart from the Catholic French, in whose midst they live, and trade, and thrive; for, of course, they are all members of the “Orthodox” Church, and they retain their orthodoxy in spite of the ocean of Latin Christianity which girds them round with its flood on every side. The Greek community, in fact, dwells apart, marries apart, worships apart, and thinks apart. The way the marriages, in particular, are most frequently managed, differs to a very curious extent from our notions of matrimonial proprieties. The system—as duly explained to me one day under the shady plane-trees of the Allées de Meilhan, in very choice modern Greek, by a Hellenic merchant of Marseilles, who himself had been “arranged for” in this very manner—is both simple and mercantile to the highest degree yet practised in any civilized country. It is “marriage by purchase” pure and simple; only here, instead of the husband buying the wife, it is the wife who practically buys the husband.

A trader or ship-owner of Marseilles, let us say, has two sons, partners in his concern, who he desires to marry. It is important, however, that the wives he selects for them should not clash with the orthodoxy of the Hellenic community. Our merchant, therefore, anxious to do the best in both worlds at once, writes to his correspondents of the great Greek houses in Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, and Alexandria; nay, perhaps even in London, Manchester, New York, and Rio, stating his desire to settle his sons in life, and the amount of dot they would respectively require from the ladies upon whom they decided to bestow their name and affections. The correspondents reply by return of post, recommending to the favorable attention of the happy swains certain Greek young ladies in the town of their adoption, whose dot and whose orthodoxy can be equally guaranteed as beyond suspicion. Photographs and lawyers’ letters are promptly exchanged; settlements are drawn up to the mutual satisfaction of both the high contracting parties; and when all the business portion of the transaction has been thoroughly sifted, the young ladies are consigned, with the figs and dates, as per bill of lading, to the port of entry, where their lords await them, and are duly married, on the morning of their arrival, at the Greek church in the Rue de la Grande Armée, by the reverend archimandrite. The Greeks are an eminently commercial people, and they find this idyllic mode of conducting a courtship not only preserves the purity of the orthodox faith and the Hellenic blood, but also saves an immense amount of time which might otherwise be wasted on the composition of useless love-letters.

It was not so, however, in the earlier Greek days. Then, the colonists of Marseilles and its dependent towns must have intermarried freely with the native Gaulish and Ligurian population of all the tributary Provençal seaboard. The true antique Hellenic stock—the Aryan Achæans of the classical period—were undoubtedly a fair, a light-haired race, with a far more marked proportion of the blond type than now survives among their mixed and degenerate modern descendants. In Greece proper, a large intermixture of Albanian and Sclavonic blood, which the old Athenians would have stigmatized as barbarian or Scythian, has darkened the complexion and blackened the hair of a vast majority of the existing population. But in Marseilles, curiously enough, and in the surrounding country, the genuine old light Greek type has left its mark to this day upon the physique of the inhabitants. In the ethnographical map of France, prepared by two distinguished French savants, the other Mediterranean departments are all, without exception, marked as “dark” or “very dark,” while the department of the Bouches du Rhône is marked as “white,” having, in fact, as large a proportion of fair complexions, blond hair, and light eyes as the eastern semi-German provinces, or as Normandy and Flanders. This curious survival of a very ancient type in spite of subsequent deluges, must be regarded as a notable instance of the way in which the popular stratum everywhere outlasts all changes of conquest and dynasty, of governing class and ruling family.

Just think, indeed, how many changes and revolutions in this respect that fiery Marseilles has gone through since the early days of her Hellenic independence! First came that fatal but perhaps indispensable error of inviting the Roman aid against her Ligurian enemies, which gave the Romans their earliest foothold in Southern Gaul. Then followed the foundation of Aquæ Sextiæ or Aix, the first Roman colony in what was soon to be the favorite province of the new conquerors. After that, in the great civil war, the Greeks of Marseilles were unlucky enough to espouse the losing cause; and, in the great day of Cæsar’s triumph, their town was reduced accordingly to the inferior position of a mere Roman dependency. Merged for a while in the all-absorbing empire, Marseilles fell at last before Visigoths and Burgundians in the stormy days of that vast upheaval, during which it is impossible for even the minutest historian to follow in detail the long list of endless conquests and re-conquests, while the wandering tribes ebbed and flowed on one another in wild surging waves of refluent confusion. Ostrogoth and Frank, Saracen and Christian, fought one after another for possession of the mighty city. In the process her Greek and Roman civilization was wholly swept away and not a trace now remains of those glorious basilicas, temples, and arches, which must once, no doubt, have adorned the metropolis of Grecian Gaul far more abundantly than they still adorn mere provincial centers like Arles and Nîmes, Vienne, and Orange. But at the end of it all, when Marseilles emerges once more into the light of day as an integral part of the Kingdom of Provence, it still retains its essentially Greek population, fairer and handsomer than the surrounding dark Ligurian stock; it still boasts its clear-cut Greek beauty of profile, its Hellenic sharpness of wit and quickness of perception. And how interesting in this relation to note, too, that Marseilles kept up, till a comparatively late period in the Middle Ages, her active connection with the Byzantine Empire; and that her chief magistrate was long nominated—in name at least, if not in actual fact—by the shadowy representative of the Cæsars at Constantinople.

May we not attribute to this continuous persistence of the Greek element in the life of Marseilles something of that curious local and self-satisfied feeling which northern Frenchmen so often deride in the born Marseillais? With the Greeks, the sense of civic individuality and civic separateness was always strong. Their Polis was to them their whole world—the center of everything. They were Athenians, Spartans, Thebans first; Greeks or even Bœotians and Lacedæmonians in the second place only. And the Marseillais bourgeois, following the traditions of his Phocæan ancestry, is still in a certain sense the most thoroughly provincial, the most uncentralized and anti-Parisian of modern French citizens. He believes in Marseilles even more devoutly than the average boulevardier believes in Paris. To him the Cannebière is the High Street of the world, and the Cours St. Louis the hub of the universe. How pleased with himself and all his surroundings he is, too! “At Marseilles, we do so-and-so,” is a frequent phrase which seems to him to settle off-hand all questions of etiquette, of procedure, or of the fitness of things generally. “Massilia locuta est; causa finita est.” That anything can be done better anywhere than it is done in the Cannebière or the Old Port is an idea that never even so much as occurs to his smart and quick but somewhat geographically limited intelligence. One of the best and cleverest of Mars’s clever Marseillais caricatures exhibits a good bourgeois from the Cours Pierre Puget, in his Sunday best, abroad on his travels along the Genoese Riviera. On the shore at San Remo, the happy, easy-going, conceited fellow, brimming over to the eyes with the happy-go-lucky Cockney joy of the South, sees a couple of pretty Italian fisher-girls mending their nets, and addresses them gaily in his own soft dialect: “Hé bien, més pitchounettes, vous êtes tellement croussetillantes que, sans ézaggérer, bagasse! ze vous croyais de Marseille!” To take anyone elsewhere for a born fellow-citizen was the highest compliment his good Marseillais soul could possibly hit upon.

Nevertheless, the Marseillais are not proud. They generously allow the rest of the world to come and admire them. They throw their doors open to East and West; they invite Jew and Greek alike to flow in unchecked, and help them make their own fortunes. They know very well that if Marseilles, as they all firmly believe, is the finest town in the round world, it is the trade with the Levant that made and keeps it so. And they take good care to lay themselves out for entertaining all and sundry as they come, in the handsomest hotels in Southern Europe. The mere through passenger traffic with India alone would serve to make Marseilles nowadays a commercial town of the first importance.

Marseilles, however, has had to pay a heavy price, more than once, for her open intercourse with the Eastern world, the native home of cholera and all other epidemics. From a very early time, the city by the Rhône has been the favorite haunt of the Plague and like oriental visitants; and more than one of its appalling epidemics has gained for itself a memorable place in history. To say the truth, old Marseilles laid itself out almost deliberately for the righteous scourge of zymotic disease. The vieille ville, that trackless labyrinth of foul and noisome alleys, tortuous, deeply worn, ill-paved, ill-ventilated, has been partly cleared away by the works of the Rue de la République now driven through its midst; but enough still remains of its Dædalean maze to show the adventurous traveller who penetrates its dark and drainless dens how dirty the strenuous Provençal can be when he bends his mind to it. There the true-blooded Marseillais of the old rock and of the Greek profile still lingers in his native insanitary condition; there the only scavenger is that “broom of Provence,” the swooping mistral—the fierce Alpine wind which, blowing fresh down with sweeping violence from the frozen mountains, alone can change the air and cleanse the gutters of that filthy and malodorous mediæval city. Everywhere else the mistral is a curse: in Marseilles it is accepted with mitigated gratitude as an excellent substitute for main drainage.

It is not to be wondered at that, under such conditions, Marseilles was periodically devastated by terrible epidemics. Communications with Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Levant were always frequent; communications with Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco were far from uncommon. And if the germs of disease were imported from without, they found at Marseilles an appropriate nest provided beforehand for their due development. Time after time the city was ravaged by plague or pestilence; the most memorable occasion being the great epidemic of 1720, when, according to local statistics (too high, undoubtedly), as many as forty thousand persons died in the streets, “like lambs on the hill-tops.” Never, even in the East itself, the native home of the plague, says Méry, the Marseilles poet-romancer, was so sad a picture of devastation seen as in the doomed streets of that wealthy city. The pestilence came, according to public belief, in a cargo of wool in May, 1720: it raged till, by September, the tale of dead per diem had reached the appalling number of a thousand.

So awful a public calamity was not without the usual effect in bringing forth counterbalancing examples of distinguished public service and noble self-denial. Chief among them shines forth the name of the Chevalier Rose, who, aided by a couple of hundred condemned convicts, carried forth to burial in the ditches of La Tourette no less than two thousand dead bodies which infected the streets with their deadly contagion. There, quicklime was thrown over the horrible festering mass, in a spot still remembered as the “Graves of the Plague-stricken.” But posterity has chosen most especially to select for the honors of the occasion Monseigneur Belzunce—“Marseilles’ good bishop,” as Pope calls him, who returned in the hour of danger to his stricken flock from the salons of Versailles, and by offering the last consolations of religion to the sick and dying, aided somewhat in checking the orgy of despair and of panic-stricken callousness which reigned everywhere throughout the doomed city. The picture is indeed a striking and romantic one. On a high altar raised in the Cours which now bears his name, the brave bishop celebrated Mass one day before the eyes of all his people, doing penance to heaven in the name of his flock, his feet bare, a rope round his neck, and a flaming torch held high in his hand, for the expiation of the sins that had brought such punishment. His fervent intercession, the faithful believed, was at last effectual. In May, 1721, the plague disappeared; but it left Marseilles almost depopulated. The bishop’s statue in bronze, by Ramus, on the Cours Belzunce, now marks the site of this strange and unparalleled religious service.

From the Belzunce Monument, the Rue Tapis Vert and the Allées des Capucins lead us direct by a short cut to the Boulevard Longchamp, which terminates after the true modern Parisian fashion, with a vista of the great fountains and the Palais des Arts, a bizarre and original but not in its way unpleasing specimen of recent French architecture. It is meretricious, of course—that goes without the saying: what else can one expect from the France of the Second Empire? But it is distinctly, what the children call “grand,” and if once you can put yourself upon its peculiar level, it is not without a certain queer rococo beauty of its own. As for the Château d’Eau, its warmest admirer could hardly deny that it is painfully baroque in design and execution. Tigers, panthers, and lions decorate the approach; an allegorical figure representing the Durance, accompanied by the geniuses of the Vine and of Corn, holds the seat of honor in the midst of the waterspouts. To right and left a triton blows his shelly trumpet; griffins and fauns crown the summit; and triumphal arches flank the sides. A marvelous work indeed, of the Versailles type, better fitted to the ideas of the eighteenth century than to those of the age in which we live at present.

The Palais des Arts, one wing of this monument, encloses the usual French provincial picture-gallery, with the stereotyped Rubens, and the regulation Caraccio. It has its Raffael, its Giulio Romano, and its Andrea del Sarto. It even diverges, not without success, into the paths of Dutch and Flemish painting. But it is specially rich, of course, in Provençal works, and its Pugets in particular are both numerous and striking. There is a good Murillo and a square-faced Holbein, and many yards of modern French battles and nudities, alternating for the most part from the sensuous to the sanguinary. But the gem of the collection is a most characteristic and interesting Perugino, as beautiful as anything from the master’s hand to be found in the galleries of Florence. Altogether, the interior makes one forgive the façade and the Château d’Eau. One good Perugino covers, like charity, a multitude of sins of the Marseillais architects.

Strange to say, old as Marseilles is, it contains to-day hardly any buildings of remote antiquity. One would be tempted to suppose beforehand that a town with so ancient and so continuous a history would teem with Græco-Roman and mediæval remains. As Phocæan colony, imperial town, mediæval republic, or Provençal city, it has so long been great, famous, and prosperous that one might not unnaturally expect in its streets to meet with endless memorials of its early grandeur. Nothing could be farther from the actual fact. While Nîmes, a mere second-rate provincial municipality, and Arles, a local Roman capital, have preserved rich mementoes of the imperial days—temples, arches, aqueducts, amphitheaters—Marseilles, their mother city, so much older, so much richer, so much greater, so much more famous, has not a single Roman building; scarcely even a second-rate mediæval chapel. Its ancient cathedral has been long since pulled down; of its oldest church but a spire now remains, built into a vulgar modern pseudo-Gothic Calvary. St. Victor alone, near the Fort St. Nicolas, is the one really fine piece of mediæval architecture still left in the town after so many ages.

St. Victor itself remains to us now as the last relic of a very ancient and important monastery, founded by St. Cassian in the fifth century, and destroyed by the Saracens—those incessant scourges of the Provençal coast—during one of their frequent plundering incursions. In 1040 it was rebuilt, only to be once more razed to the ground, till, in 1350, Pope Urban V., who himself had been abbot of this very monastery restored it from the base, with those high, square towers, which now, in their worn and battered solidity, give it rather the air of a castellated fortress than of a Christian temple. Doubtless the strong-handed Pope, warned by experience, intended his church to stand a siege, if necessary, on the next visit to Marseilles of the Paynim enemy. The interior, too, is not unworthy of notice. It contains the catacombs where, according to the naïve Provençal faith, Lazarus passed the last days of his second life; and it boasts an antique black image of the Virgin, attributed by a veracious local legend to the skilful fingers of St. Luke the Evangelist. Modern criticism ruthlessly relegates the work to a nameless but considerably later Byzantine sculptor.

By far the most interesting ecclesiastical edifice in Marseilles, however, even in its present charred and shattered condition, is the ancient pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, the antique High Place of primitive Phœnician and Ligurian worship. How long a shrine for some local cult has existed on the spot it would be hard to say, but, at least, we may put it at two dozen centuries. All along the Mediterranean coast, in fact, one feels oneself everywhere thus closely in almost continuous contact with the earliest religious beliefs of the people. The paths that lead to these very antique sacred sites, crowning the wind-swept hills that overlook the valley, are uniformly worn deep by naked footsteps into the solid rock—a living record of countless generations of fervent worshipers. Christianity itself is not nearly old enough to account for all those profoundly-cut steps in the schistose slate or hard white limestone of the Provençal hills. The sanctity of the High Places is more ancient by far than Saint or Madonna. Before ever a Christian chapel crested these heights they were crested by forgotten Pagan temples; and before the days of Aphrodite or Pallas, in turn, they were crested by the shrines of some long since dead-and-buried Gaulish or Ligurian goddess. Religions change, creeds disappear, but sacred sites remain as holy as ever; and here where priests now chant their loud hymns before the high altar, some nameless bloody rites took place, we may be sure, long ages since, before the lonely shrine of some Celtic Hesus or some hideous and deformed Phœnician Moloch.

It is a steep climb even now from the Old Port or the Anse des Catalans to the Colline Notre Dame; several different paths ascend to the summit, all alike of remote antiquity, and all ending at last in fatiguing steps. Along the main road, hemmed in on either side by poor southern hovels, wondrous old witches of true Provençal ugliness drive a brisk trade in rosaries, and chaplets, and blessed medals. These wares are for the pilgrim; but to suit all tastes, the same itinerant chapwomen offer to the more worldly-minded tourist of the Cookian type appropriate gewgaws, in the shape of photographs, images, and cheap trinkets. At the summit stand the charred and blackened ruins of Notre Dame de la Garde. Of late years, indeed, that immemorial shrine has fallen on evil times and evil days in many matters. To begin with, the needs of modern defence compelled the Government some years since to erect on the height a fort, which encloses in its midst the ancient chapel. Even military necessities, however, had to yield in part to the persistent religious sentiment of the community; and though fortifications girt it round on every side, the sacred site of Our Lady remained unpolluted in the center of the great defensive works of the fortress. Passing through the gates of those massive bastions a strongly-guarded path still guided the faithful sailor-folk of Marseilles to the revered shrine of their ancestral Madonna. Nay, more; the antique chapel of the thirteenth century was superseded by a gorgeous Byzantine building, from designs by Espérandieu, all glittering with gold, and precious stones, and jewels. On the topmost belfry stood a gigantic gilded statue of Our Lady. Dome and apse were of cunning workmanship—white Carrara marble and African rosso antico draped the interior with parti-colored splendor. Corsican granite and Esterel porphyry supported the massive beams of the transepts; frescoes covered every inch of the walls: the pavement was mosaic, the high altar was inlaid with costly Florentine stonework. Every Marseilles fisherman rejoiced in heart that though the men of battle had usurped the sanctuary, their Madonna was now housed by the sons of the Faithful in even greater magnificence and glory than ever.

But in 1884 a fire broke out in the shrine itself, which wrecked almost irreparably the sumptuous edifice. The statue of the Virgin still crowns the façade, to be sure, and the chapel still shows up bravely from a modest distance; but within, all the glory has faded away, and the interior of the church is no longer accessible. Nevertheless, the visitor who stands upon the platform in front of the doorway and gazes down upon the splendid panoramic view that stretches before him in the vale beneath, will hardly complain of having had his stiff pull uphill for nothing. Except the view of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River from Mont Royal Mountain, I hardly know a town view in the world to equal that from Notre Dame de la Garde, for beauty and variety, on a clear spring morning.

Close at our feet lies the city itself, filling up the whole wide valley with its mass, and spreading out long arms of faubourg, or roadway, up the lateral openings. Beyond rise the great white limestone hills, dotted about like mushrooms, with their glittering bastides. In front lies the sea—the blue Mediterranean—with that treacherous smile which has so often deceived us all the day before we trusted ourselves too rashly, with ill-deserved confidence, upon its heaving bosom. Near the shore the waves chafe the islets and the Château d’If; then come the Old Port and the busy bassins; and, beyond them all, the Chain of Estaques, rising grim and gray in serrated outline against the western horizon. A beautiful prospect though barren and treeless, for nowhere in the world are mountains barer than those great white guardians of the Provençal seaboard.

The fortress that overhangs the Old Port at our feet itself deserves a few passing words of polite notice; for it is the Fort St. Nicolas, the one link in his great despotic chain by which Louis Quatorze bound recalcitrant Marseilles to the throne of the Tuileries. The town—like all great commercial towns—had always clung hard to its ancient liberties. Ever rebellious when kings oppressed, it was a stronghold of the Fronde; and when Louis at last made his entry perforce into the malcontent city, it was through a breach he had effected in the heavy ramparts. The king stood upon this commanding spot, just above the harbor, and, gazing landward, asked the citizens round him how men called those little square boxes which he saw dotted about over the sunlit hillsides. “We call them bastides, sire,” answered a courtly Marseillais. “Every citizen of our town has one.” “Moi aussi, je veux avoir ma bastide à Marseille,” cried the theatrical monarch, and straightway gave orders for building the Fort St. Nicolas: so runs the tale that passes for history. But as the fort stands in the very best possible position, commanding the port, and could only have been arranged for after consultation with the engineers of the period—it was Vauban who planned it—I fear we must set down Louis’s bon mot as one of those royal epigrams which has been carefully prepared and led up to beforehand.

In every town, however, it is a favorite theory of mine that the best of all sights is the town itself: and nowhere on earth is this truism truer than here at Marseilles. After one has climbed Notre Dame, and explored the Prado and smiled at the Château d’Eau and stood beneath the frowning towers of St. Victor, one returns once more with real pleasure and interest to the crowded Cannebière and sees the full tide of human life flow eagerly on down that picturesque boulevard. That, after all, is the main picture that Marseilles always leaves photographed on the visitor’s memory. How eager, how keen, how vivacious is the talk; how fiery the eyes; how emphatic the gesture! With what teeming energy, with what feverish haste, the great city pours forth its hurrying thousands! With what endless spirit they move up and down in endless march upon its clattering pavements! Circulez, messieurs, circulez: and they do just circulate! From the Quai de la Fraternité to the Allées de Meilhan, what mirth and merriment, what life and movement! In every café, what warm southern faces! At every shop-door, what quick-witted, sharp-tongued, bartering humanity! I have many times stopped at Marseilles, on my way hither and thither round this terraqueous globe, farther south or east; but I never stop there without feeling once more the charm and interest of its strenuous personality. There is something of Greek quickness and Greek intelligence left even now about the old Phocæan colony. A Marseillais crowd has to this very day something of the sharp Hellenic wit; and I believe the rollicking humor of Aristophanes would be more readily seized by the public of the Alcazar than by any other popular audience in modern Europe.

“Bon chien chasse de race,” and every Marseillais is a born Greek and a born littérateur. Is it not partly to this old Greek blood, then, that we may set down the long list of distinguished men who have drawn their first breath in the Phocæan city? From the days of the Troubadours, Raymond des Tours and Barral des Baux, Folquet, and Rostang, and De Salles, and Bérenger, through the days of D’Urfé, and Mascaron, and Barbaroux, and De Pastoret, to the days of Méry, and Barthélemy, and Taxile Delord, and Joseph Autran, Marseilles has always been rich in talent. It is enough to say that her list of great men begins with Petronius Arbiter, and ends with Thiers, to show how long and diversely she has been represented in her foremost citizens. Surely, then, it is not mere fancy to suppose that in all this the true Hellenic blood has counted for something! Surely it is not too much to believe that with the Greek profile and the Greek complexion the inhabitants have still preserved to this day some modest measure of the quick Greek intellect, the bright Greek fancy, and the plastic and artistic Greek creative faculty! I love to think it, for Marseilles is dear to me; especially when I land there after a sound sea-tossing.

Unlike many of the old Mediterranean towns, too, Marseilles has not only a past but also a future. She lives and will live. In the middle of the past century, indeed, it might almost have seemed to a careless observer as if the Mediterranean were “played out.” And so in part, no doubt, it really is; the tracks of commerce and of international intercourse have shifted to wider seas and vaster waterways. We shall never again find that inland basin ringed round by a girdle of the great merchant cities that do the carrying trade and finance of the world. Our area has widened, so that New York, Rio, San Francisco, Yokohama, Shanghai, Calcutta, Bombay, and Melbourne have taken the place of Syracuse, Alexandria, Tyre, and Carthage, of Florence, Genoa, Venice, and Constantinople. But in spite of this cramping change, this degradation of the Mediterranean from the center of the world into a mere auxiliary or side-avenue of the Atlantic, a certain number of Mediterranean ports have lived on uninterruptedly by force of position from one epoch into the other. Venice has had its faint revival of recent years; Trieste has had its rise; Barcelona, Algiers, Smyrna, Odessa, have grown into great harbors for cosmopolitan traffic. Of this new and rejuvenescent Mediterranean, girt round by the fresh young nationalities of Italy and the Orient, and itself no longer an inland sea, but linked by the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean and so turned into the main highway of the nations between East and West, Marseilles is still the key and the capital. That proud position the Phocæan city is not likely to lose. And as the world is wider now than ever, the new Marseilles is perforce a greater and a wealthier town than even the old one in its proudest days. Where tribute came once from the North African, Levantine, and Italian coasts alone, it comes now from every shore of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with Australia and the Pacific Isles thrown in as an afterthought. Regions Cæsar never knew enrich the good Greeks of the Quai de la Fraternité: brown, black, and yellow men whom his legions never saw send tea and silk, cotton, corn, and tobacco to the crowded warehouses of the Cannebière and the Rue de la République.

VI

NICE

The Queen of the Riviera—The Port of Limpia—Castle Hill—Promenade des Anglais—The Carnival and Battle of Flowers—Place Masséna, the center of business—Beauty of the suburbs—The road to Monte Carlo—The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche—Aspects of Nice and its environs.

Who loves not Nice, knows it not. Who knows it, loves it. I admit it is windy, dusty, gusty. I allow it is meretricious, fashionable, vulgar. I grant its Carnival is a noisy orgy, its Promenade a meeting place for all the wealthiest idlers of Europe or America, and its clubs more desperate than Monte Carlo itself in their excessive devotion to games of hazard. And yet, with all its faults, I love it still. Yes, deliberately love it; for nothing that man has done or may ever do to mar its native beauty can possibly deface that beauty itself as God made it. Nay, more, just because it is Nice, we can readily pardon it these obvious faults and minor blemishes. The Queen of the Riviera, with all her coquettish little airs and graces, pleases none the less, like some proud and haughty girl in court costume, partly by reason of that very finery of silks and feathers which we half-heartedly deprecate. If she were not herself, she would be other than she is. Nice is Nice, and that is enough for us.

Was ever town more graciously set, indeed, in more gracious surroundings? Was ever pearl girt round with purer emeralds? On every side a vast semicircle of mountains hems it in, among which the bald and naked summit of the Mont Cau d’Aspremont towers highest and most conspicuous above its darkling compeers. In front the blue Mediterranean, that treacherous Mediterranean all guile and loveliness, smiles with myriad dimples to the clear-cut horizon. Eastward, the rocky promontories of the Mont Boron and the Cap Ferrat jut boldly out into the sea with their fringe of white dashing breakers. Westward, the longer and lower spit of the point of Antibes bounds the distant view, with the famous pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garoupe just dimly visible on its highest knoll against the serrated ridge of the glorious Esterel in the background. In the midst of all nestles Nice itself, the central gem in that coronet of mountains. There are warmer and more sheltered nooks on the Riviera, I will allow: there can be none more beautiful. Mentone may surpass it in the charm of its mountain paths and innumerable excursions; Cannes in the rich variety of its nearer walks and drives; but for mingled glories of land and sea, art and nature, antiquity and novelty, picturesqueness and magnificence, Nice still stands without a single rival on all that enchanted coast that stretches its long array of cities and bays between Marseilles and Genoa. There are those, I know, who run down Nice as commonplace and vulgarized. But then they can never have strayed one inch, I feel sure, from the palm-shaded trottoir of the Promenade des Anglais. If you want Italian mediævalism, go to the Old Town; if you want quaint marine life, go to the good Greek port of Limpia; if you want a grand view of sea and land and snow mountains in the distance, go to the Castle Hill; if you want the most magnificent panorama in the whole of Europe, go to the summit of the Corniche Road. No, no; these brawlers disturb our pure worship. We have only one Nice, let us make the most of it.

It is so easy to acquire a character for superiority by affecting to criticize what others admire. It is so easy to pronounce a place vulgar and uninteresting by taking care to see only the most vulgar and uninteresting parts of it. But the old Rivieran who knows his Nice well, and loves it dearly, is troubled rather by the opposite difficulty. Where there is so much to look at and so much to describe, where to begin? what to omit? how much to glide over? how much to insist upon? Language fails him to give a conception of this complex and polychromatic city in a few short pages to anyone who knows it by name alone as the cosmopolitan winter capital of fashionable seekers after health and pleasure. It is that, indeed, but it is so much more that one can never tell it.

For there are at least three distinct Nices, Greek, Italian, French; each of them beautiful in its own way, and each of them interesting for its own special features. To the extreme east, huddled in between the Mont Boron and the Castle Hill, lies the seafaring Greek town, the most primitive and original Nice of all; the home of the fisher-folk and the petty coasting sailors; the Nicæa of the old undaunted Phocæan colonists; the Nizza di Mare of modern Italians; the mediæval city; the birthplace of Garibaldi. Divided from this earliest Nice by the scarped rock on whose summit stood the château of the Middle Ages, the eighteenth century Italian town (the Old Town as tourists nowadays usually call it, the central town of the three) occupies the space between the Castle Hill and the half dry bed of the Paillon torrent. Finally, west of the Paillon, again, the modern fashionable pleasure resort extends its long line of villas, hotels, and palaces in front of the sea to the little stream of the Magnan on the road to Cannes, and stretches back in endless boulevards and avenues and gardens to the smiling heights of Cimiez and Carabacel. Every one of these three towns, “in three different ages born,” has its own special history and its own points of interest. Every one of them teems with natural beauty, with picturesque elements, and with varieties of life, hard indeed to discover elsewhere.

The usual guide-book way to attack Nice is, of course, the topsy-turvey one, to begin at the Haussmannised white façades of the Promenade des Anglais and work backwards gradually through the Old Town to the Port of Limpia and the original nucleus that surrounds its quays. I will venture, however, to disregard this time-honored but grossly unhistorical practice, and allow the reader and myself, for once in our lives, to “begin at the beginning.” The Port of Limpia, then, is, of course, the natural starting point and prime original of the very oldest Nice. Hither, in the fifth century before the Christian era, the bold Phocæan settlers of Marseilles sent out a little colony, which landed in the tiny land-locked harbor and called the spot Nicæa (that is to say, the town of victory) in gratitude for their success against its rude Ligurian owners. For twenty-two centuries it has retained that name almost unchanged, now perhaps, the only memento still remaining of its Greek origin. During its flourishing days as a Hellenic city Nicæa ranked among the chief commercial entrepôts of the Ligurian coast; but when “the Province” fell at last into the hands of the Romans, and the dictator Cæsar favored rather the pretensions of Cemenelum or Cimiez on the hill-top in the rear, the town that clustered round the harbor of Limpia became for a time merely the port of its more successful inland rival. Cimiez still possesses its fine ruined Roman amphitheater and baths, besides relics of temples and some other remains of the imperial period; but the “Quartier du Port,” the ancient town of Nice itself, is almost destitute of any architectural signs of its antique greatness.

Nevertheless, the quaint little seafaring village that clusters round the harbor, entirely cut off as it is by the ramping crags of the Castle Hill from its later representative, the Italianized Nice of the last century, may fairly claim to be the true Nice of history, the only spot that bore that name till the days of the Bourbons. Its annals are far too long and far too eventful to be narrated here in full. Goths, Burgundians, Lombards, and Franks disputed for it in turn, as the border fortress between Gaul and Italy; and that familiar round white bastion on the eastern face of the Castle Hill, now known to visitors as the Tour Bellanda, and included (such is fate!) as a modern belvedere in the grounds of the comfortable Pension Suisse, was originally erected in the fifth century after Christ to protect the town from the attacks of these insatiable invaders. But Nice had its consolations, too, in these evil days, for when the Lombards at last reduced the hill fortress of Cimiez, the Roman town, its survivors took refuge from their conquerors in the city by the port, which thus became once more, by the fall of its rival, unquestioned mistress of the surrounding littoral.

The after story of Nice is confused and confusing. Now a vassal of the Frankish kings; now again a member of the Genoese league; now engaged in a desperate conflict with the piratical Saracens; and now constituted into a little independent republic on the Italian model; Nizza struggled on against an adverse fate as a fighting-ground of the races, till it fell finally into the hands of the Counts of Savoy, to whom it owes whatever little still remains of the mediæval castle. Continually changing hands between France and the kingdom of Sardinia in later days, it was ultimately made over to Napoleon III. by the Treaty of Villafranca, and is now completely and entirely Gallicized. The native dialect, however, remains even to the present day an intermediate form between Provençal and Italian, and is freely spoken (with more force than elegance) in the Old Town and around the enlarged modern basins of the Port of Limpia. Indeed, for frankness of expression and perfect absence of any false delicacy, the ladies of the real old Greek Nice surpass even their London compeers at Billingsgate.

One of the most beautiful and unique features of Nice at the present day is the Castle Hill a mass of solid rearing rock, not unlike its namesake at Edinburgh in position, intervening between the Port and the eighteenth century town, to which latter I will in future allude as the Italian city. It is a wonderful place, that Castle Hill—wonderful alike by nature, art, and history, and I fear I must also add at the same time “uglification.” In earlier days it bore on its summit or slopes the château fort of the Counts of Provence with the old cathedral and archbishop’s palace (now wholly destroyed), and the famous deep well, long ranked among the wonders of the world in the way of engineering. But military necessity knows no law; the cathedral gave place in the fifteenth century to the bastions of the Duke of Savoy’s new-fangled castle; the castle itself in turn was mainly battered down in 1706 by the Duke of Berwick; and of all its antiquities none now remain save the Tour Bellanda, in its degraded condition of belvedere, and the scanty ground-plan of the mediæval buildings.

Nevertheless, the Castle Hill is still one of the loveliest and greenest spots in Nice. A good carriage road ascends it to the top by leafy gradients, and leads to an open platform on the summit, now converted into charming gardens, rich with palms and aloes and cactuses and bright southern flowers. On one side, alas! a painfully artificial cataract, fed from the overflow of the waterworks, falls in stiff cascades among hand-built rockwork; but even that impertinent addition to the handicraft of nature can hardly offend the visitor for long among such glorious surroundings. For the view from the summit is one of the grandest in all France. The eye ranges right and left over a mingled panorama of sea and mountains, scarcely to be equaled anywhere round the lovely Mediterranean, save on the Ligurian coast and the neighborhood of Sorrento. Southward lies the blue expanse of water itself, bounded only in very clear and cloudless weather by the distant peaks of Corsica on the doubtful horizon. Westward, the coast-line includes the promontory of Antibes, basking low on the sea, the Iles Lérins near Cannes, the mouth of the Var, and the dim-jagged ridge of the purple Esterel. Eastward, the bluff headland of the Mont Boron, grim and brown, blocks the view towards Italy. Close below the spectator’s feet the three distinct towns of Nice gather round the Port and the two banks of the Paillon, spreading their garden suburbs, draped in roses and lemon groves, high up the spurs of the neighboring mountains. But northward a tumultuous sea of Alps rises billow-like to the sky, the nearer peaks frowning bare and rocky, while the more distant domes gleam white with virgin snow. It is a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. One glances around entranced, and murmurs to oneself slowly, “It is good to be here.” Below, the carriages are rolling like black specks along the crowded Promenade, and the band is playing gaily in the Public Garden; but up there you look across to the eternal hills, and feel yourself face to face for one moment with the Eternities behind them.

One may descend from the summit either by the ancient cemetery or by the Place Garibaldi, through bosky gardens of date-palm, fan-palm, and agave. Cool winding alleys now replace the demolished ramparts, and lovely views open out on every side as we proceed over the immediate foreground.

At the foot of the Castle Hill, a modern road, hewn in the solid rock round the base of the seaward escarpment, connects the Greek with the Italian town. The angle where it turns the corner, bears on native lips the quaint Provençal or rather Niçois name of Raüba Capeu or Rob-hat Point, from the common occurrence of sudden gusts of wind, which remove the unsuspecting Parisian headgear with effective rapidity, to the great joy of the observant gamins. Indeed, windiness is altogether the weak point of Nice, viewed as a health-resort; the town lies exposed in the open valley of the Paillon, down whose baking bed the mistral, that scourge of Provence, sweeps with violent force from the cold mountain-tops in the rear; and so it cannot for a moment compete in point of climate with Cannes, Monte Carlo, Mentone or San Remo, backed up close behind by their guardian barrier of sheltering hills. But not even the mistral can make those who love Nice love her one atom the less. Her virtues are so many that a little wholesome bluster once in a while may surely be forgiven her. And yet the dust does certainly rise in clouds at times from the Promenade des Anglais.

The Italian city, which succeeds next in order, is picturesque and old-fashioned, but is being daily transformed and Gallicized out of all knowledge by its modern French masters. It dates back mainly to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the population became too dense for the narrow limits of the small Greek town, and began to overflow, behind the Castle Hill, on to the eastern banks of the Paillon torrent. The sea-front in this quarter, now known as the Promenade du Midi, has been modernized into a mere eastward prolongation of the Promenade des Anglais, of which “more anon;” but the remainder of the little triangular space between the Castle Hill and the river-bed still consists of funny narrow Italian lanes, dark, dense, and dingy, from whose midst rises the odd and tile-covered dome of the cathedral of St. Réparate. That was the whole of Nice as it lived and moved till the beginning of this century; the real Nice of to-day, the Nice of the tourist, the invalid, and the fashionable world, the Nice that we all visit or talk about, is a purely modern accretion of some half-dozen decades.

This wonderful modern town, with its stately sea-front, its noble quays, its dainty white villas, its magnificent hotels, and its Casino, owes its existence entirely to the vogue which the coast has acquired in our own times as a health-resort for consumptives. As long ago as Smollett’s time, the author of “Roderick Random” remarks complacently that an acquaintance, “understanding I intended to winter in the South of France, strongly recommended the climate of Nice in Provence, which indeed I had often heard extolled,” as well he might have done. But in those days visitors had to live in the narrow and dirty streets of the Italian town, whose picturesqueness itself can hardly atone for their unwholesome air and their unsavory odors. It was not till the hard winters of 1822-23-24 that a few kind-hearted English residents, anxious to find work for the starving poor, began the construction of a sea-road beyond the Paillon, which still bears the name of the Promenade des Anglais. Nice may well commemorate their deed to this day, for to them she owes as a watering-place her very existence.

The western suburb, thus pushed beyond the bed of the boundary torrent, has gradually grown in wealth and prosperity till it now represents the actual living Nice of the tourist and the winter resident. But how to describe that gay and beautiful city; that vast agglomeration of villas, pensions, hotels, and clubs; that endless array of sun-worshipers gathered together to this temple of the sun from all the four quarters of the habitable globe? The sea-front consists of the Promenade des Anglais itself, which stretches in an unbroken line of white and glittering houses, most of them tasteless, but all splendid and all opulent, from the old bank of the Paillon to its sister torrent, the Magnan, some two miles away. On one side the villas front the shore with their fantastic façades; on the other side a walk, overshadowed with date-palms and purple-flowering judas-trees, lines the steep shingle beach of the tideless sea.

There is one marked peculiarity of the Promenade des Anglais, however, which at once distinguishes it from any similar group of private houses to be found anywhere in England. There the British love of privacy, which has, of course, its good points, but has also its compensating disadvantages, leads almost every owner of beautiful grounds or gardens to enclose them with a high fence or with the hideous monstrosity known to suburban Londoners as “park paling.” This plan, while it ensures complete seclusion for the fortunate few within, shuts out the deserving many outside from all participation in the beauty of the grounds or the natural scenery. On the Promenade des Anglais, on the contrary, a certain generous spirit of emulation in contributing to the public enjoyment and the general effectiveness of the scene as a whole has prompted the owners of the villas along the sea-front to enclose their gardens only with low ornamental balustrades or with a slight and unobtrusive iron fence, so that the passers-by can see freely into every one of them, and feast their eyes on the beautiful shrubs and flowers. The houses and grounds thus form a long line of delightful though undoubtedly garish and ornate decorations, in full face of the sea. The same plan has been adopted in the noble residential street known as Euclid Avenue at Cleveland, Ohio, and in many other American cities. It is to be regretted that English tastes and habits do not oftener thus permit their wealthier classes to contribute, at no expense or trouble to themselves, to the general pleasure of less fortunate humanity.

The Promenade is, of course, during the season the focus and center of fashionable life at Nice. Here carriages roll, and amazons ride and flâneurs lounge in the warm sunshine during the livelong afternoon. In front are the baths, bathing being practicable at Nice from the beginning of March; behind are the endless hotels and clubs of this city of strangers. For the English are not alone on the Promenade des Anglais; the American tongue is heard there quite as often as the British dialect, while Germans, Russians, Poles, and Austrians cluster thick upon the shady seats beneath the planes and carob-trees. During the Carnival especially Nice resolves itself into one long orgy of frivolous amusement. Battles of flowers, battles of confetti, open-air masquerades, and universal tom-foolery pervade the place. Everybody vies with everybody else in making himself ridiculous; and even the staid Briton, released from the restraints of home or the City, abandons himself contentedly for a week at a time to a sort of prolonged and glorified sunny southern Derby Day. Mr. Bultitude disguises himself as a French clown; Mr. Dombey, in domino, flings roses at his friends on the seats of the tribune. Everywhere is laughter, noise, bustle, and turmoil; everywhere the manifold forms of antique saturnalian freedom, decked out with gay flowers or travestied in quaint clothing, but imported most incongruously for a week in the year into the midst of our modern work-a-day twentieth-century Europe.

Only a comparatively few winters ago fashionable Nice consisted almost entirely of the Promenade des Anglais, with a few slight tags and appendages in either direction. At its eastern end stood (and still stands) the Jardin Public, that paradise of children and of be-ribboned French nursemaids, where the band discourses lively music every afternoon at four, and all the world sits round on two-sou chairs to let all the rest of the world see for itself it is still in evidence. These, and the stately quays along the Paillon bank, lined with shops where female human nature can buy all the tastiest and most expensive gewgaws in Europe, constituted the real Nice of the early eighties. But with the rapid growth of that general taste for more sumptuous architecture which marks our age, the Phocæan city woke up a few years since with electric energy to find itself in danger of being left behind by its younger competitors. So the Niçois conscript fathers put their wise heads together, in conclave assembled, and resolved on a general transmogrification of the center of their town. By continuously bridging and vaulting across the almost dry bed of the Paillon torrent they obtained a broad and central site for a new large garden, which now forms the natural focus of the transformed city. On the upper end of this important site they erected a large and handsome casino in the gorgeous style of the Third Republic, all glorious without and within, as the modern Frenchman understands such glory, and provided with a theater, a winter garden, restaurants, cafés, ball-rooms, petits chevaux, and all the other most pressing requirements of an advanced civilization. But in doing this they sacrificed by the way the beautiful view towards the mountains behind, which can now only be obtained from the Square Masséna or the Pont Vieux farther up the river. Most visitors to Nice, however, care little for views, and a great deal for the fitful and fearsome joys embodied to their minds in the outward and visible form of a casino.

This wholesale bridging over of the lower end of the Paillon has united the French and Italian towns and abolished the well-marked boundary line which once cut them off so conspicuously from one another. The inevitable result has been that the Italian town too has undergone a considerable modernization along the sea-front, so that the Promenade des Anglais and the Promenade du Midi now practically merge into one continuous parade, and are lined along all their length with the same clipped palm-trees and the same magnificent white palatial buildings. When the old theater in the Italian town was burnt down in the famous and fatal conflagration some years since the municipality erected a new one on the same site in the most approved style of Parisian luxury. A little behind lie the Préfecture and the beautiful flower market, which no visitor to Nice should ever miss; for Nice is above all things, even more than Florence, a city of flowers. The sheltered quarter of the Ponchettes, lying close under the lee of the Castle Hill, has become of late, owing to these changes, a favorite resort for invalids, who find here protection from the cutting winds which sweep with full force down the bare and open valley of the Paillon over the French town.

I am loth to quit that beloved sea-front, on the whole the most charming marine parade in Europe, with the Villefranche point and the pseudo-Gothic, pseudo-Oriental monstrosity of Smith’s Folly on one side and the delicious bay towards Antibes on the other. But there are yet various aspects of Nice which remain to be described: the interior is almost as lovely in its way as the coast that fringes it. For this inner Nice, the Place Masséna, called (like the Place Garibaldi) after another distinguished native, forms the starting point and center. Here the trams from all quarters run together at last; hence the principal roads radiate in all directions. The Place Masséna is the center of business, as the Jardin Public and the Casino are the centers of pleasure. Also (verbum sap.) it contains an excellent pâtisserie, where you can enjoy an ice or a little French pastry with less permanent harm to your constitution and morals than anywhere in Europe. Moreover, it forms the approach to the Avenue de la Gare, which divides with the Quays the honor of being the best shopping street in the most fashionable watering-place of the Mediterranean. If these delights thy soul may move, why, the Place Masséna is the exact spot to find them in.

Other great boulevards, like the Boulevard Victor Hugo and the Boulevard Dubouchage, have been opened out of late years to let the surplus wealth that flows into Nice in one constant stream find room to build upon. Châteaux and gardens are springing up merrily on every side; the slopes of the hills gleam gay with villas; Cimiez and Carabacel, once separate villages, have now been united by continuous dwellings to the main town; and before long the city where Garibaldi was born and where Gambetta lies buried will swallow up in itself the entire space of the valley, and its border spurs from mountain to mountain. The suburbs, indeed, are almost more lovely in their way than the town itself; and as one wanders at will among the olive-clad hills to westward, looking down upon the green lemon-groves that encircle the villas, and the wealth of roses that drape their sides, one cannot wonder that Joseph de Maistre, another Niçois of distinction, in the long dark evenings he spent at St. Petersburg, should time and again have recalled with a sigh “ce doux vallon de Magnan.” Nor have the Russians themselves failed to appreciate the advantages of the change, for they flock by thousands to the Orthodox Quarter on the heights of Saint Philippe, which rings round the Greek chapel erected in memory of the Czarewitch Nicholas Alexandrowitch, who died at Nice in 1865.

After all, however, to the lover of the picturesque Nice town itself is but the threshold and starting point for that lovely country which spreads on all sides its endless objects of interest and scenic beauty from Antibes to Mentone. The excursions to be made from it in every direction are simply endless. Close by lie the monastery and amphitheater of Cimiez; the Italianesque cloisters and campanile of St. Pons; the conspicuous observatory on the Mont Gros, with its grand Alpine views; the hillside promenades of Le Ray and Les Fontaines. Farther afield the carriage-road up the Paillon valley leads direct to St. André through a romantic limestone gorge, which terminates at last in a grotto and natural bridge, overhung by the moldering remains of a most southern château. A little higher up, the steep mountain track takes one on to Falicon, perched “like an eagle’s nest” on its panoramic hill-top, one of the most famous points of view among the Maritime Alps. The boundary hills of the Magnan, covered in spring with the purple flowers of the wild gladiolus; the vine-clad heights of Le Bellet, looking down on the abrupt and rock-girt basin of the Var; the Valley of Hepaticas, carpeted in March with innumerable spring blossoms; the longer drive to Contes in the very heart of the mountains: all alike are lovely, and all alike tempt one to linger in their precincts among the shadow of the cypress trees or under the cool grottos green and lush with spreading fronds of wild maidenhair.

Among so many delicious excursions it were invidious to single out any for special praise; yet there can be little doubt that the most popular, at least with the general throng of tourists, is the magnificent coast-road by Villefranche (or Villafranca) to Monte Carlo and Monaco. This particular part of the coast, between Nice and Mentone, is the one where the main range of the Maritime Alps, abutting at last on the sea, tumbles over sheer with a precipitous descent from four thousand feet high to the level of the Mediterranean. Formerly, the barrier ridge could only be surmounted by the steep but glorious Corniche route; of late years, however, the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, have hewn an admirable carriage-drive out of the naked rock, often through covered galleries or tunnels in the cliff itself, the whole way from Nice to Monte Carlo and Mentone. The older portion of this road, between Nice and Villefranche, falls well within the scope of our present subject.

You leave modern Nice by the quays and the Pont Garibaldi, dash rapidly through the new broad streets that now intersect the Italian city, skirt the square basins lately added to the more shapeless ancient Greek port of Limpia, and begin to mount the first spurs of the Mont Boron among the villas and gardens of the Quartier du Lazaret. Banksia roses fall in cataracts over the walls as you go; looking back, the lovely panorama of Nice opens out before your eyes. In the foreground, the rocky islets of La Réserve foam white with the perpetual plashing of that summer sea. In the middle distance, the old Greek harbor, with its mole and lighthouse, stands out against the steep rocks of the Castle Hill. The background rises up in chain on chain of Alps, allowing just a glimpse at their base of that gay and fickle promenade and all the Parisian prettinesses of the new French town. The whole forms a wonderful picture of the varied Mediterranean world, Greek, Roman, Italian, French, with the vine-clad hills and orange-groves behind merging slowly upward into the snow-bound Alps.

Turning the corner of the Mont Boron by the grotesque vulgarisms of the Château Smith (a curious semi-oriental specimen of the shell-grotto order of architecture on a gigantic scale) a totally fresh view bursts upon our eyes of the Rade de Villefranche, that exquisite land-locked bay bounded on one side by the scarped crags of the Mont Boron itself, and on the other by the long and rocky peninsula of St. Jean, which terminates in the Cap Ferrat and the Villefranche light. The long deep bay forms a favorite roadstead and rendezvous for the French Mediterranean squadron, whose huge ironclad monsters may often be seen ploughing their way in single file from seaward round the projecting headlands, or basking at ease on the calm surface of that glassy pond. The surrounding heights, of course, bristle with fortifications, which, in these suspicious days of armed European tension, the tourist and the sketcher are strictly prohibited from inspecting with too attentive an eye. The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche itself, Italian and dirty, but amply redeemed by its slender bell-tower and its olive-clad terraces, nestles snugly at the very bottom of its pocket-like bay. The new road to Monte Carlo leaves it far below, with true modern contempt for mere old-world beauty; the artist and the lover of nature will know better than to follow the example of those ruthless engineers; they will find many subjects for a sketch among those whitewashed walls, and many a rare sea-flower tucked away unseen among those crannied crags.

And now, when all is said and done, I, who have known and loved Nice for so many bright winters, feel only too acutely how utterly I have failed to set before those of my readers who know it not the infinite charms of that gay and rose-wreathed queen of the smiling Riviera. For what words can paint the life and movement of the sparkling sea-front? the manifold humors of the Jardin Public? the southern vivacity of the washer-women who pound their clothes with big stones in the dry bed of the pebbly Paillon? the luxuriant festoons of honeysuckle and mimosa that drape the trellis-work arcades of Carabacel and Cimiez? Who shall describe aright with one pen the gnarled olives of Beaulieu and the palace-like front of the Cercle de la Méditerranée? Who shall write with equal truth of the jewelers’ shops on the quays, of the oriental bazaars of the Avenue, and of the dome after dome of bare mountain tops that rise ever in long perspective to the brilliant white summits of the great Alpine backbone? Who shall tell in one breath of the carmagnoles of the Carnival, or the dust-begrimed bouquets of the Battle of Flowers, and of the silent summits of the Mont Cau and the Cime de Vinaigrier, or the vast and varied sea-view that bursts on the soul unawares from the Corniche near Eza? There are aspects of Nice and its environs which recall Bartholomew Fair, or the Champs Élysées after a Sunday review; and there are aspects which recall the prospect from some solemn summit of the Bernese Oberland, mixed with some heather-clad hill overlooking the green Atlantic among the Western Highlands. Yet all is so graciously touched and lighted with Mediterranean color and Mediterranean sunshine, that even in the midst of her wildest frolics you can seldom be seriously angry with Nice. The works of God’s hand are never far off. You look up from the crowd of carriages and loungers on the Promenade des Anglais, and the Cap Ferrat rises bold and bluff before your eyes above the dashing white waves of the sky-blue sea: you cross the bridge behind the Casino amid the murmur of the quays, and the great bald mountains soar aloft to heaven above the brawling valley of the snow-fed Paillon. It is a desecration, perhaps, but a desecration that leaves you still face to face with all that is purest and most beautiful in nature.

And then, the flowers, the waves, the soft air, the sunshine! On the beach, between the bathing places, men are drying scented orange peel to manufacture perfumes: in the dusty high roads you catch whiffs as you pass of lemon blossom and gardenia: the very trade of the town is an expert trade in golden acacia and crimson anemones: the very gamins pelt you in the rough horse-play of the Carnival with sweet-smelling bunches of syringa and lilac. Luxury that elsewhere would move one to righteous wrath is here so democratic in its display that one almost condones it. The gleaming white villas, with carved caryatides or sculptured porches of freestone nymphs, let the wayfarer revel as he goes in the riches of their shrubberies or their sunlit fountains and in the breezes that blow over their perfumed parterres. Nice vulgar! Pah, my friend, if you say so, I know well why. You have a vulgar soul that sees only the gewgaws and the painted ladies. You have never strolled up by yourself from the noise and dust of the crowded town to the free heights of the Mont Alban or the flowery olive-grounds of the Magnan valley. You have never hunted for purple hellebore among the gorges of the Paillon or picked orchids and irises in big handfuls upon the slopes of Saint André. I doubt even whether you have once turned aside for a moment from the gay crowd of the Casino and the Place Masséna into the narrow streets of the Italian town; communed in their own delicious dialect with the free fisherfolk of the Limpia quarter; or looked out with joy upon the tumbled plain of mountain heights from the breezy level of the Castle platform. Probably you have only sat for days in the balcony of your hotel, rolled at your ease down the afternoon Promenade, worn a false nose at the evening parade of the Carnival, or returned late at night by the last train from Monte Carlo with your pocket much lighter and your heart much heavier than when you left by the morning express in search of fortune. And then you say Nice is vulgar! You have no eyes, it seems, for sea, or shore, or sky, or mountain; but you look down curiously at the dust in the street, and you mutter to yourself that you find it uninteresting. When you go to Nice again, walk alone up the hills to Falicon, returning by Le Ray, and then say, if you dare, Nice is anything on earth but gloriously beautiful.

VII

THE RIVIERA

In the days of the Doges—Origin of the name—The blue bay of Cannes—Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat—Historical associations—The Rue L’Antibes—The rock of Monaco—“Notre Dame de la Roulette”—From Monte Carlo to Mentone—San Remo—A romantic railway.

“Oh, Land of Roses, what bulbul shall sing of thee?” In plain prose, how describe the garden of Europe? The Riviera! Who knows, save he who has been there, the vague sense of delight which the very name recalls to the poor winter exile, banished by frost and cold from the fogs and bronchitis of more northern climes? What visions of gray olives, shimmering silvery in the breeze on terraced mountain slopes! What cataracts of Marshal Niels, falling in rich profusion over gray limestone walls! What aloes and cactuses on what sun-smitten rocks! What picnics in December beneath what cloudless blue skies! But to those who know and appreciate it best, the Riviera is something more than mere scenery and sunshine. It is life, it is health, it is strength, it is rejuvenescence. The return to it in autumn is as the renewal of youth. Its very faults are dear to us, for they are the defects of its virtues. We can put up with its dust when we remember that dust means sun and dry air; we can forgive its staring white roads when we reflect to ourselves that they depend upon almost unfailing fine weather and bright, clear skies, when northern Europe is wrapped in fog and cold and wretchedness.

And what is this Riviera that we feeble folk who “winter in the south” know and adore so well? Has everybody been there, or may one venture even now to paint it in words once more for the twentieth time? Well, after all, how narrow is our conception of “everybody!” I suppose one out of every thousand at a moderate estimate, has visited that smiling coast that spreads its entrancing bays between Marseilles and Genoa; my description is, therefore, primarily for the nine hundred and ninety-nine who have not been there. And even the thousandth himself, if he knows his Cannes and his Mentone well, will not grudge me a reminiscence of those delicious gulfs and those charming headlands that must be indelibly photographed on his memory.

The name Riviera is now practically English. But in origin it is Genoese. To those seafaring folk, in the days of the Doges, the coasts to east and west of their own princely city were known, naturally enough, as the Riviera di Levante and the Riviera di Ponente respectively, the shores of the rising and the setting sun. But on English lips the qualifying clause “di Ponente” has gradually in usage dropped out altogether, and we speak nowadays of this favored winter resort, by a somewhat illogical clipping, simply as “the Riviera.” In our modern and specially English sense, then, the Riviera means the long and fertile strip of coast between the arid mountains and the Ligurian Sea, beginning at St. Raphael and ending at Genoa. Hyères, it is true, is commonly reckoned of late among Riviera towns, but by courtesy only. It lies, strictly speaking, outside the charmed circle. One may say that the Riviera, properly so called, has its origin where the Estérel abuts upon the Gulf of Fréjus, and extends as far as the outliers of the Alps skirt the Italian shore of the Mediterranean.

Now, the Riviera is just the point where the greatest central mountain system of all Europe topples over most directly into the warmest sea. And its best-known resorts, Nice, Monte Carlo, Mentone, occupy the precise place where the very axis of the ridge abuts at last on the shallow and basking Mediterranean. They are therefore as favorably situated with regard to the mountain wall as Pallanza or Riva, with the further advantage of a more southern position and of a neighboring extent of sunny sea to warm them. The Maritime Alps cut off all northerly winds; while the hot air of the desert, tempered by passing over a wide expanse of Mediterranean waves, arrives on the coast as a delicious breeze, no longer dry and relaxing, but at once genial and refreshing. Add to these varied advantages the dryness of climate due to an essentially continental position (for the Mediterranean is after all a mere inland salt lake), and it is no wonder we all swear by the Riviera as the fairest and most pleasant of winter resorts. My own opinion remains always unshaken, that Antibes, for climate, may fairly claim to rank as the best spot in Europe or round the shores of the Mediterranean.

Not that I am by any means a bigoted Antipolitan. I have tried every other nook and cranny along that delightful coast, from Carqueyranne to Cornigliano, and I will allow that every one of them has for certain purposes its own special advantages. All, all are charming. Indeed, the Riviera is to my mind one long feast of delights. From the moment the railway strikes the sea near Fréjus the traveller feels he can only do justice to the scenery on either side by looking both ways at once, and so “contracting a squint,” like a sausage-seller in Aristophanes. Those glorious peaks of the Estérel alone would encourage the most prosaic to “drop into poetry,” as readily as Mr. Silas Wegg himself in the mansion of the Boffins. How am I to describe them, those rearing masses of rock, huge tors of red porphyry, rising sheer into the air with their roseate crags from a deep green base of Mediterranean pinewood? When the sun strikes their sides, they glow like fire. There they lie in their beauty, like a huge rock pushed out into the sea, the advance-guard of the Alps, unbroken save by the one high-road that runs boldly through their unpeopled midst, and by the timider railway that, fearing to tunnel their solid porphyry depths, winds cautiously round their base by the craggy sea-shore, and so gives us as we pass endless lovely glimpses into sapphire bays with red cliffs and rocky lighthouse-crowned islets. On the whole, I consider the Estérel, as scenery alone, the loveliest “bit” on the whole Riviera; though wanting in human additions, as nature it is the best, the most varied in outline, the most vivid in coloring.

Turning the corner by Agay, you come suddenly, all unawares, on the blue bay of Cannes, or rather on the Golfe de la Napoule, whose very name betrays unintentionally the intense newness and unexpectedness of all this populous coast, this “little England beyond France” that has grown up apace round Lord Brougham’s villa on the shore by the mouth of the Siagne. For when the bay beside the Estérel received its present name, La Napoule, not Cannes, was still the principal village on its bank. Nowadays, people drive over on a spare afternoon from the crowded fashionable town to the slumbrous little hamlet; but in older days La Napoule was a busy local market when Cannes was nothing more than a petty hamlet of Provençal fishermen.

The Golfe de la Napoule ends at the Croisette of Cannes, a long, low promontory carried out into the sea by a submarine bank, whose farthest points re-emerge as the two Iles Lérins, Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat. Their names are famous in history. A little steamer plies from Cannes to “the Islands,” as everybody calls them locally; and the trip, in calm weather, if the Alps are pleased to shine out, is a pleasant and instructive one. Ste. Marguerite lies somewhat the nearer of the two, a pretty little islet, covered with a thick growth of maritime pines, and celebrated as the prison of that mysterious being, the Man with the Iron Mask, who has given rise to so much foolish and fruitless speculation. Near the landing-place stands the Fort, perched on a high cliff and looking across to the Croisette. Uninteresting in itself, this old fortification is much visited by wonder-loving tourists for the sake of its famous prisoner, whose memory still haunts the narrow terrace corridor, where he paced up and down for seventeen years of unrelieved captivity.

St. Honorat stands farther out to sea than its sister island, and, though lower and flatter, is in some ways more picturesque, in virtue of its massive mediæval monastery and its historical associations. In the early middle ages, when communications were still largely carried on by water, the convent of the Iles Lérins enjoyed much reputation as a favorite stopping-place, one might almost say hotel, for pilgrims to or from Rome; and most of the early British Christians in their continental wanderings found shelter at one time or another under its hospitable roof. St. Augustine stopped here on his way to Canterbury; St. Patrick took the convent on his road from Ireland; Salvian wrote within its walls his dismal jeremiad; Vincent de Lérins composed in it his “Pilgrim’s Guide.” The somber vaults of the ancient cloister still bear witness by their astonishingly thick and solid masonry to their double use as monastery and as place of refuge from the “Saracens,” the Barbary corsairs of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Indeed, Paynim fleets plundered the place more than once, and massacred the monks in cold blood.

Of Cannes itself, marvelous product of this gad-about and commercial age, how shall the truthful chronicler speak with becoming respect and becoming dignity? For Cannes has its faults. Truly a wonderful place is that cosmopolitan winter resort. Rococo châteaux, glorious gardens of palm-trees, imitation Moorish villas, wooden châlets from the scene-painter’s ideal Switzerland, Elizabethan mansions stuck in Italian grounds, lovely groves of mimosa, eucalyptus, and judas-trees, all mingle together in so strange and incongruous a picture that one knows not when to laugh, when to weep, when to admire, when to cry “Out on it!” Imagine a conglomeration of two or three white-faced Parisian streets, interspersed with little bits of England, of Brussels, of Algiers, of Constantinople, of Pekin, of Bern, of Nuremberg and of Venice, jumbled side by side on a green Provençal hillside before a beautiful bay, and you get modern Cannes; a Babel set in Paradise; a sort of boulevardier Bond Street, with a view across blue waves to the serrated peaks of the ever lovely Estérel. Nay; try as it will, Cannes cannot help being beautiful. Nature has done so much for it that art itself, the debased French art of the Empire and the Republic, can never for one moment succeed in making it ugly; though I am bound to admit it has striven as hard as it knew for that laudable object. But Cannes is Cannes still, in spite of Grand Dukes and landscape gardeners and architects. And the Old Town, at least, is yet wholly unspoilt by the speculative builder. Almost every Riviera watering-place has such an old-world nucleus or kernel of its own, the quaint fisher village of ancient days, round which the meretricious modern villas have clustered, one by one, in irregular succession. At Cannes the Old Town is even more conspicuous than elsewhere; for it clambers up the steep sides of a little seaward hillock, crowned by the tower of an eleventh century church, and is as picturesque, as gray, as dirty, as most other haunts of the hardy Provençal fisherman. Strange, too, to see how the two streams of life flow on ever, side by side, yet ever unmingled. The Cannes of the fishermen is to this day as unvaried as if the new cosmopolitan winter resort had never grown up, with its Anglo-Russian airs and graces, its German-American frivolities, round that unpromising center.

The Rue d’Antibes is the principal shopping street of the newer and richer Cannes. If we follow it out into the country by its straight French boulevard it leads us at last to the funny old border city from which it still takes its unpretending name. Antibes itself belongs to that very first crop of civilized Provençal towns which owe their origin to the sturdy old Phocæan colonists. It is a Greek city by descent, the Antipolis which faced and defended the harbor of Nicæa; and for picturesqueness and beauty it has not its equal on the whole picturesque and beautiful Riviera. Everybody who has travelled by the “Paris, Lyon, Méditerranée” knows well the exquisite view of the mole and harbor as seen in passing from the railway. But that charming glimpse, quaint and varied as it is, gives by no means a full idea of the ancient Phocæan city. The town stands still surrounded by its bristling fortification, the work of Vauban, pierced by narrow gates in their thickness, and topped with noble ramparts. The Fort Carré that crowns the seaward promontory, the rocky islets, and the two stone breakwaters of the port (a small-scale Genoa), all add to the striking effect of the situation and prospect. Within, the place is as quaint and curious as without: a labyrinth of narrow streets, poor in memorials of Antipolis, but rich in Roman remains, including that famous and pathetic inscription to the boy Septentrio, QVI ANTIPOLI IN THEATRO BIDVO SALTAVIT ET PLACVIT. The last three words borrowed from this provincial tombstone, have become proverbial of the short-lived glory of the actor’s art.

The general aspect of Antibes town, however, is at present mediæval, or even seventeenth century. A flavor as of Louis Quatorz pervades the whole city, with its obtrusive military air of a border fortress; for, of course, while the Var still formed the frontier between France and Italy, Antibes ranked necessarily as a strategic post of immense importance; and at the present day, in our new recrudescence of military barbarism, great barracks surround the fortifications with fresh white-washed walls, and the “Hun! Deusse!” of the noisy French drill-sergeant resounds all day long from the exercise-ground by the railway station. Antibes itself is therefore by no means a place to stop at; it is the Cap d’Antibes close by that attracts now every year an increasing influx of peaceful and cultivated visitors. The walks and drives are charming; the pine-woods, carpeted with wild anemones, are a dream of delight; and the view from the Lighthouse Hill behind the town is one of the loveliest and most varied on the whole round Mediterranean.

But I must not linger here over the beauties of the Cap d’Antibes, but must be pushing onwards towards Monaco and Monte Carlo.

It is a wonderful spot, this little principality of Monaco, hemmed in between the high mountains and the assailing sea, and long hermetically cut off from all its more powerful and commercial neighbors. Between the palm-lined boulevards of Nice and the grand amphitheater of mountains that shuts in Mentone as with a perfect semicircle of rearing peaks, one rugged buttress, the last long subsiding spur of the great Alpine axis, runs boldly out to seaward, and ends in the bluff rocky headland of the Tête de Chien that overhangs Monte Carlo. Till very lately no road ever succeeded in turning the foot of that precipitous promontory: the famous Corniche route runs along a ledge high up its beetling side, past the massive Roman ruin of Turbia, and looks down from a height of fifteen hundred feet upon the palace of Monaco. This mountain bulwark of the Turbia long formed the real boundary line between ancient Gaul and Liguria; and on its very summit, where the narrow Roman road wound along the steep pass now widened into the magnificent highway of the Corniche, Augustus built a solid square monument to mark the limit between the Province and the Italian soil, as well as to overawe the mountaineers of this turbulent region. A round mediæval tower, at present likewise in ruins, crowns the Roman work. Here the Alps end abruptly. The rock of Monaco at the base is their last ineffectual seaward protest.

And what a rock it is, that quaint ridge of land, crowned by the strange capital of that miniature principality! Figure to yourself a huge whale petrified, as he basks there on the shoals his back rising some two hundred feet from the water’s edge, his head to the sea, and his tail just touching the mainland, and you have a rough mental picture of the Rock of Monaco. It is, in fact, an isolated hillock, jutting into the Mediterranean at the foot of the Maritime Alps (a final reminder, as it were, of their dying dignity), and united to the Undercliff only by a narrow isthmus at the foot of the crag which bears the mediæval bastions of the Prince’s palace. As you look down on it from above from the heights of the Corniche, I have no hesitation in saying it forms the most picturesque town site in all Europe. On every side, save seaward, huge mountains gird it round; while towards the smiling blue Mediterranean itself the great rock runs outward, bathed by tiny white breakers in every part, except where the low isthmus links it to the shore; and with a good field-glass you can see down in a bird’s eye view into every street and courtyard of the clean little capital. The red-tiled houses, the white palace with its orderly gardens and quadrangles, the round lunettes of the old wall, the steep cobbled mule-path which mounts the rock from the modern railway-station, all lie spread out before one like a pictorial map, painted in the bright blue of Mediterranean seas, the dazzling gray of Mediterranean sunshine, and the brilliant russet of Mediterranean roofs.

There can be no question at all that Monte Carlo even now, with all its gew-gaw additions, is very beautiful: no Haussmann could spoil so much loveliness of position; and even the new town itself, which grows apace each time I revisit it, has a picturesqueness of hardy arch, bold rock, well-perched villa, which redeems it to a great extent from any rash charge of common vulgarity. All looks like a scene in a theater, not like a prosaic bit of this work-a-day world of ours. Around us is the blue Mediterranean, broken into a hundred petty sapphire bays. Back of us rise tier after tier of Maritime Alps, their huge summits clouded in a fleecy mist. To the left stands the white rock of Monaco; to the right, the green Italian shore, fading away into the purple mountains that guard the Gulf of Genoa. Lovely by nature, the immediate neighborhood of the Casino has been made in some ways still more lovely by art. From the water’s edge, terraces of tropical vegetation succeed one another in gradual steps towards the grand façade of the gambling-house; clusters of palms and aloes, their base girt by exotic flowers, are thrust cunningly into the foreground of every point in the view, so that you see the bay and the mountains through the artistic vistas thus deftly arranged in the very spots where a painter’s fancy would have set them. You look across to Monaco past a clump of drooping date-branches; you catch a glimpse of Bordighera through a framework of spreading dracænas and quaintly symmetrical fan-palms.

Once more under way, and this time on foot. For the road from Monte Carlo to Mentone is almost as lovely in its way as that from Nice to Monte Carlo. It runs at first among the ever-increasing villas and hotels of the capital of Chance, and past that sumptuous church, built from the gains of the table, which native wit has not inaptly christened “Nôtre Dame de la Roulette.” There is one point of view of Monaco and its bay, on the slopes of the Cap Martin, not far from Roquebrune, so beautiful that though I have seen it, I suppose, a hundred times or more, I can never come upon it to this day without giving vent to an involuntary cry of surprise and admiration.

Roquebrune itself, which was an Italian Roccabruna when I first knew it, has a quaint situation of its own, and a quaint story connected with it. Brown as its own rocks, the tumbled little village stands oddly jumbled in and out among huge masses of pudding-stone, which must have fallen at some time or other in headlong confusion from the scarred face of the neighboring hillside. From the Corniche road it is still quite easy to recognize the bare patch on the mountain slope whence the landslip detached itself, and to trace its path down the hill to its existing position. But local legend goes a little farther than that: it asks us to believe that the rock fell as we see it with the houses on top; in other words, that the village was built before the catastrophe took place, and that it glided down piecemeal into the tossed-about form it at present presents to us. Be this as it may, and the story makes some demand on the hearer’s credulity, it is certain that the houses now occupy most picturesque positions: here perched by twos and threes on broken masses of conglomerate, there wedged in between two great walls of beetling cliff, and yonder again hanging for dear life to some slender foothold on the precipitous hillside.

We reach the summit of the pass. The Bay of Monaco is separated from the Bay of Mentone by the long, low-headland of Cap Martin, covered with olive groves and scrubby maritime pines. As one turns the corner from Roquebrune by the col round the cliff, there bursts suddenly upon the view one of the loveliest prospects to be beheld from the Corniche. At our feet, embowered among green lemons and orange trees, Mentone half hides itself behind its villas and its gardens. In the middle distance the old church with its tall Italian campanile stands out against the blue peaks of that magnificent amphitheater. Beyond, again, a narrow gorge marks the site of the Pont St. Louis and the Italian frontier. Farther eastward the red rocks merge half indistinctly into the point of La Mortola, with Mr. Hanbury’s famous garden; then come the cliffs and fortifications of Ventimiglia, gleaming white in the sun; and last of all, the purple hills that hem in San Remo. It is an appropriate approach to a most lovely spot; for Mentone ranks high for beauty, even among her bevy of fair sisters on the Ligurian sea-board.

Yes, Mentone is beautiful, most undeniably beautiful; and for walks and drives perhaps it may bear away the palm from all rivals on that enchanted and enchanting Riviera. Five separate valleys, each carved out by its own torrent, with dry winter bed, converge upon the sea within the town precincts. Four principal rocky ridges divide these valleys with their chine-like backbone, besides numberless minor spurs branching laterally inland. Each valley is threaded by a well-made carriage-road, and each dividing ridge is climbed by a bridle-path and footway. The consequence is that the walks and drives at Mentone are never exhausted, and excursions among the hills might occupy the industrious pedestrian for many successive winters. What hills they are, too, those great bare needles and pinnacles of rock, worn into jagged peaks and points by the ceaseless rain of ages, and looking down from their inaccessible tops with glittering scorn upon the green lemon groves beneath them!

The next town on the line, Bordighera, is better known to the world at large as a Rivieran winter resort, though of a milder and quieter type, I do not say than Nice or Cannes, but than Mentone or San Remo. Bordighera, indeed, has just reached that pleasant intermediate stage in the evolution of a Rivieran watering-place when all positive needs of the northern stranger are amply supplied, while crowds and fashionable amusements have not yet begun to invade its primitive simplicity. The walks and drives on every side are charming; the hotels are comfortable, and the prices are still by no means prohibitive.

San Remo comes next in order of the cosmopolitan winter resorts: San Remo, thickly strewn with spectacled Germans, like leaves in Vallombrosa, since the Emperor Frederick chose the place for his last despairing rally. The Teuton finds himself more at home, indeed, across the friendly Italian border than in hostile France; and the St. Gotthard gives him easy access by a pleasant route to these nearer Ligurian towns, so that the Fatherland has now almost annexed San Remo, as England has annexed Cannes, and America Nice and Cimiez. Built in the evil days of the Middle Ages, when every house was a fortress and every breeze bore a Saracen, San Remo presents to-day a picturesque labyrinth of streets, lanes, vaults, and alleys, only to be surpassed in the quaint neighboring village of Taggia. This is the heart of the earthquake region, too; and to protect themselves against that frequent and unwelcome visitor, whose mark may be seen on half the walls in the outskirts, the inhabitants of San Remo have strengthened their houses by a system of arches thrown at varying heights across the tangled paths, which recalls Algiers or Tunis. From certain points of view, and especially from the east side, San Remo thus resembles a huge pyramid of solid masonry, or a monstrous pagoda hewn out by giant hands from a block of white free-stone. As Dickens well worded it, one seems to pass through the town by going perpetually from cellar to cellar. A romantic railway skirts the coast from San Remo to Alassio and Savona. It forms one long succession of tunnels, interspersed with frequent breathing spaces beside lovely bays, “the peacock’s neck in hue,” as the Laureate sings of them. One town after another sweeps gradually into view round the corner of a promontory, a white mass of houses crowning some steep point of rock, of which Alassio alone has as yet any pretensions to be considered a home for northern visitors.

VIII

GENOA

Early history—Old fortifications—The rival of Venice—Changes of twenty-five years—From the parapet of the Corso—The lower town—The Genoese palazzi—Monument to Christopher Columbus—The old Dogana—Memorials in the Campo Santo—The Bay of Spezzia—The Isola Palmeria—Harbor scenes.

Genova la Superba—Genoa the Proud—an epithet not inappropriate for this city of merchant princes of olden days, which was once the emporium of the Tyrrhenian, as was Venice of the Adriatic sea, and the rival of the latter for the commerce of the Eastern Mediterranean. No two cities, adapted to play a similar part in history, could be more unlike in their natural environments: Venice clustered on a series of mud banks, parted by an expanse of water from a low coast-line, beyond which the far-away mountains rise dimly in the distance, a fleet, as it were, of houses anchored in the shallows of the Adriatic; Genoa stretching along the shore by the deepening water, at the very feet of the Apennines, climbing up their slopes, and crowning their lower summits with its watch-towers. No seaport in Italy possesses a site so rich in natural beauty, not even Spezzia in its bay, for though the scenery in the neighborhood certainly surpasses that around Genoa, the town itself is built upon an almost level plain; not even Naples itself, notwithstanding the magnificent sweep of its bay, dominated by the volcanic cone of Vesuvius, and bounded by the limestone crags of the range of Monte S. Angelo. Genoa, however, like all places and persons, has had its detractors. Perhaps of no town has a more bitter sarcasm been uttered, than the well known one, which no doubt originated in the mouth of some envious Tuscan, when the two peoples were contending for the mastery of the western sea, and the maker of the epigram was on the losing side. Familiar as it is to many, we will venture to quote it again, as it may be rendered in our own tongue: “Treeless hills, a fishless sea, faithless men, shameless women.” As to the reproach in the first clause, one must admit there is still some truth; and in olden days, when gardens were fewer and more land was left in its natural condition, there may have been even more point. The hills around Genoa undoubtedly seem a little barren, when compared with those on the Riviera some miles farther to the south, with their extraordinary luxuriance of vegetation, their endless slopes of olives, which only cease to give place to oak and pine and myrtle. There is also, I believe, some truth in the second clause; but as to the rest it is not for a comparative stranger to express an opinion. So far however as the men are concerned the reproach is not novel. Centuries since, Liguria, of which Genoa is the principal town, was noted for the cunning and treacherous disposition of its people, who ethnologically differ considerably from their neighbors. In Virgil’s “Æneid” a Ligurian chief shows more cunning than courage in a fight with an Amazon, and is thus apostrophized before receiving his death-blow from a woman’s hand: “In vain, O shifty one, hast thou tried thy hereditary craft.” The people of this part of Italy form one of a series of ethnological islands; where a remnant, by no means inconsiderable, of an earlier race has survived the invading flood of a stronger people. This old-world race—commonly called the Iberian—is characteristically short in stature, dark in hair, eyes, and complexion. Representatives of it survive in Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the Basque Provinces, and other out-of-the-way corners of Europe; insulated or pressed back, till they could no farther go, by the advance of the Aryan race, by some or other representative of which Europe is now peopled. On the Ligurian coast, however, as might be expected, in the track of two thousand years of commerce and civilization, the races, however different in origin and formerly naturally hostile, have been almost fused together by intermarriage; and this, at any rate in Genoa, seems to have had a fortuitous result in the production of an exceptionally good-looking people, especially in the case of the younger women. I well remember some years since, when driving out on a summer evening on the western side of Genoa, to have passed crowds of women, most of them young, returning from work in the factories, and certainly I never saw so large a proportion of beautiful faces as there were among them.

Genoa for at least two thousand years has been an important center of commerce; though, of course, like most other places, it has not been uniformly prosperous. It fell under the Roman power about two centuries before the Christian era, the possession of it for a time being disputed with the Carthaginians; then it became noted as a seaport town for the commerce of the western part of the Mediterranean, it declined and suffered during the decadence and fall of the Empire, and then gradually rose into eminence during the Middle Ages. Even in the tenth century Genoa was an important community; its citizens, as beseemed men who were hardy sailors, found a natural pleasure in any kind of disturbance; they joined in the Crusades, and turned religious enthusiasm to commercial profit by the acquisition of various towns and islands in the East. The rather unusual combination of warrior and merchant, which the Genoese of the Middle Ages present, is no doubt due not only to social character, but also to exceptional circumstances. “The constant invasions of the Saracens united the professions of trade and war, and its greatest merchants became also its greatest generals, while its naval captains were also merchants.”

Genoa, as may be supposed, had from the first to contend with two formidable rivals: the one being Pisa in its own waters; the other Venice, whose citizens were equally anxious for supremacy in the Levant and the commerce of the East. With both these places the struggle was long and fierce, but the fortune of war on the whole was distinctly favorable to Genoa nearer home, and unfavorable in regard to the more distant foe. Pisa was finally defeated in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and in the year 1300 had to cede to her enemy a considerable amount of territory, including the island of Corsica; while Venice, after more than a century of conflict with very varying fortune, at last succeeded in obtaining the supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The internal history of the city during all this period was not more peaceful than its external. Genoa presents the picture of a house divided against itself; and, strange to say, falsifies the proverb by prospering instead of perishing. If there were commonly wars without, there were yet more persistent factions within. Guelphs, headed by the families of Grimaldi and Fieschi, and Ghibellines, by those of Spinola and Doria, indulged in faction-fights and sometimes in civil warfare, until at last some approach to peace was procured by the influence of Andrea Doria, who, in obtaining the freedom of the state from French control, brought about the adoption of most important constitutional changes, which tended to obliterate the old and sharply divided party lines. Yet even he narrowly escaped overthrow from a conspiracy, headed by one of the Fieschi; his great-nephew and heir was assassinated, and his ultimate triumph was due rather to a fortunate accident, which removed from the scene the leader of his opponents, than to his personal power. Then the tide of prosperity began to turn against the Genoese. The Turk made himself master of their lands and cities in the East. Venice ousted them from the commerce of the Levant. War arose with France, and the city itself was captured by that power in the year 1684. The following century was far from being a prosperous time for Genoa, and near the close it opened its gates to the Republican troops, a subjugation which ultimately resulted in no little suffering to the inhabitants.

Genoa at that time was encircled on the land side by a double line of fortifications, a considerable portion of which still remains. The outer one, with its associated detached forts, mounted up the inland slopes to an elevation of some hundreds of feet above the sea, and within this is an inner line of much greater antiquity. As it was for those days a place of exceptional strength, its capture became of the first importance, in the great struggle between France and Austria, as a preliminary to driving the Republican troops out of Italy. The city was defended by the French under the command of Massena; it was attacked on the land side by the Imperialist force, while it was blockaded from the sea by the British fleet. After fifteen days of hard fighting among the neighboring Apennines, Massena was finally shut up in the city. No less desperate fighting followed around the walls, until at last the defending force was so weakened by its losses that further aggressive operations became impossible on its part, and the siege was converted into a blockade. The results were famine and pestilence. A hundred thousand persons were cooped up within the walls. “From the commencement of the siege the price of provisions had been extravagantly high, and in its latter days grain of any sort could not be had at any cost.... The neighboring rocks within the walls were covered with a famished crowd, seeking, in the vilest animals and the smallest traces of vegetation, the means of assuaging their intolerable pangs.... In the general agony, not only leather and skins of every kind were consumed, but the horror at human flesh was so much abated that numbers were supported on the dead bodies of their fellow citizens. Pestilence, as usual, came in the rear of famine, and contagious fevers swept off multitudes, whom the strength of the survivors was unable to inter.” Before the obstinate defense was ended, and Massena, at the end of all his resources, was compelled to capitulate on honorable terms, twenty thousand of the inhabitants had perished from hunger or disease. The end of this terrible struggle brought little profit to the conquerors, for before long the battle of Marengo, and the subsequent successes of Napoleon in Northern Italy, led to the city being again surrendered to the French. It had to endure another siege at the end of Napoleon’s career, for in 1814 it was attacked by English troops under Lord William Bentinck. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the French commander decided to surrender after a few days’ severe struggle around the outer defenses. On the settlement of European affairs which succeeded the final fall of Napoleon, Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia, and now forms part of united Italy; though, it is said, the old instincts of the people give them a theoretic preference for a republican form of government.

Genoa, like so many of the chief Italian towns, has been greatly altered during the last twenty-five years. Its harbors have been much enlarged; its defenses have been extended far beyond their ancient limits. Down by the water-side, among the narrow streets on the shelving ground that fringes the sea, we are still in old Genoa—the city of the merchant princes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but higher up the slopes a new town has sprung up, with broad streets and fine modern houses, and a “corso,” bordered by trees and mansions, still retains in its zigzag outline the trace of the old fortifications which enclosed the arm of Massena. More than one spot, on or near this elevated road, commands a splendid outlook over the city and neighborhood.

From such a position the natural advantages of the site of Genoa, the geographical conditions which have almost inevitably determined its history, can be apprehended at a glance. Behind us rise steeply, as has been already said, the hills forming the southernmost zone of the Apennines. This, no doubt, is a defect in a military point of view, because the city is commanded by so many positions of greater elevation; but this defect was less serious in ancient days, when the range of ordnance was comparatively short; while the difficulty of access which these positions presented, and the obstacles which the mountain barrier of the Apennines offered to the advance of an enemy from the comparatively distant plains of Piedmont, rendered the city far more secure than it may at first sight have appeared. Beneath us lies a deeply recessed bay, in outline like the half of an egg, guarded on the east by a projecting shoulder; while on the western side hills descend, at first rapidly, then more gently, to a point which projects yet farther to the south. This eastern shoulder is converted into a kind of peninsula, rudely triangular in shape, by the valley of the Bisagno, a stream of considerable size which thus forms a natural moat for the fortifications on the eastern side of the town. In a bay thus sheltered on three sides by land, vessels were perfectly safe from most of the prevalent winds; and it was only necessary to carry out moles from the western headland and from some point on the eastern shore, to protect them also from storms which might blow from the south. The first defense was run out from the latter side, and still bears the name of the Molo Vecchio; then the port was enlarged, by carrying out another mole from the end of the western headland; this has been greatly extended, so that the town may now be said to possess an inner and an outer harbor. From the parapet of the Corso these topographical facts are seen at a glance, as we look over the tall and densely-massed houses to the busy quays, and the ships which are moored alongside. Such a scene cannot fail to be attractive, and the lighthouse, rising high above the western headland, is less monotonous in outline than is usual with such buildings, and greatly enhances the effect of the picture. The city, however, when regarded from this elevated position is rather wanting in variety. We look down over a crowded mass of lofty houses, from which, indeed, two or three domes or towers rise up; but there is not enough diversity in the design of the one, or a sufficiently marked pre-eminence in the others, to afford a prospect which is comparable with that of many other ancient cities. Still some variety is given by the trees, which here and there, especially towards the eastern promontory, are interspersed among the houses; while the Ligurian coast on the one hand, and the distant summits of the Maritime Alps on the other, add to the scene a never-failing charm.

Of the newer part of the town little more need be said. It is like the most modern part of any Continental city, and only differs from the majority of these by the natural steepness and irregularity of the site. In Genoa, except for a narrow space along the shore, one can hardly find a plot of level ground. Now that the old limits of the enceinte have been passed, it is still growing upwards; but beyond and above the farthest houses the hills are still crowned by fortresses, keeping watch and ward over the merchant city. These, of course, are of modern date; but some of them have been reconstructed on the ancient sites, and still encrust, as can be seen at a glance, towers and walls which did their duty in the olden times. For a season, indeed, there was more to be protected than merchandise, for, till lately, Genoa was the principal arsenal of the Italian kingdom; but this has now been removed to Spezzia. Italy, however, does not seem to feel much confidence in that immunity from plunder which has been sometimes accorded to “open towns,” or in the platitudes of peace-mongers; and appears to take ample precautions that an enemy in command of the sea shall not thrust his hand into a full purse without a good chance of getting nothing better than crushed fingers.

But in the lower town we are still in the Genoa of the olden time. There is not, indeed, very much to recall the city of the more strictly mediæval epoch; though two churches date from days before the so-called “Renaissance,” and are good examples of its work. Most of what we now see belongs to the Genoa of the sixteenth century; or, at any rate, is but little anterior in age to this. The lower town, however, even where its buildings are comparatively modern, still retains in plan—in its narrow, sometimes irregular, streets; in its yet narrower alleys, leading by flights of steps up the steep hill side; in its crowded, lofty houses; in its “huddled up” aspect, for perhaps no single term can better express our meaning—the characteristics of an ancient Italian town. In its streets even the summer sun—let the proverb concerning the absence of the sun and the presence of the doctor say what it may—can seldom scorch, and the bitter north wind loses its force among the maze of buildings. Open spaces of any kind are rare; the streets, in consequence of their narrowness, are unusually thronged, and thus produce the idea of a teeming population; which, indeed, owing to the general loftiness of the houses, is large in proportion to the area. They are accordingly ill-adapted for the requirements of modern traffic.

Genoa, like Venice, is noted for its palazzi—for the sumptuous dwellings inhabited by the burgher aristocracy of earlier days, which are still, in not a few cases, in possession of their descendants. But in style and in position nothing can be more different. We do not refer to the obvious distinction that in the one city the highway is water, in the other it is dry land; or to the fact that buildings in the so-called Gothic style are common in Venice, but are not to be found among the mansions of Genoa. It is rather to this, that the Via Nuova, which in this respect holds the same place in Genoa as the Grand Canal does in Venice, is such a complete contrast to it, that they must be compared by their opposites. The latter is a broad and magnificent highway, affording a full view and a comprehensive survey of the stately buildings which rise from its margin. The former is a narrow street, corresponding in dimensions with one of the less important among the side canals in the other city. It is thus almost impossible to obtain any good idea of the façade of the Genoese palazzi. The passing traveller has about as much chance of doing this as he would have of studying the architecture of Mincing Lane; and even if he could discover a quiet time, like Sunday morning in the City, he would still have to strain his neck by staring upwards at the overhanging mass of masonry, and find a complete view of any one building almost impossible. But so far as these palazzi can be seen, how far do they repay examination? It is a common-place with travellers to expatiate on the magnificence of the Via Nuova, and one or two other streets in Genoa. There is an imposing magniloquence in the word palazzo, and a “street of palaces” is a formula which impels many minds to render instant homage.

But, speaking for myself, I must own to being no great admirer of this part of Genoa; to me the design of these palazzi appears often heavy and oppressive. They are sumptuous rather than dignified, and impress one more with the length of the purse at the architect’s command than with the quality of his genius or the fecundity of his conceptions. No doubt there are some fine buildings—the Palazzo Spinola, the Palazzo Doria Tursi, the Palazzo del’ Universita, and the Palazzo Balbi, are among those most generally praised. But if I must tell the plain, unvarnished truth, I never felt and never shall feel much enthusiasm for the “city of palaces.” It has been some relief to me to find that I am not alone in this heresy, as it will appear to some. For on turning to the pages of Fergusson,[1] immediately after penning the above confession, I read for the first time the following passage (and it must be admitted that, though not free from occasional “cranks” as to archæological questions, he was a critic of extensive knowledge and no mean authority):—“When Venice adopted the Renaissance style, she used it with an aristocratic elegance that relieves even its most fantastic forms in the worst age. In Genoa there is a pretentious parvenu vulgarity, which offends in spite of considerable architectural merit. Their size, their grandeur, and their grouping may force us to admire the palaces of Genoa; but for real beauty or architectural propriety of design they will not stand a moment’s comparison with the contemporary or earlier palaces of Florence, Rome, or Venice.” Farther on he adds very truly, after glancing at the rather illegitimate device by which the façades have been rendered more effective by the use of paint, instead of natural color in the materials employed, as in the older buildings of Venice, he adds:—“By far the most beautiful feature of the greater palaces of Genoa is their courtyards” (a feature obviously which can only make its full appeal to a comparatively limited number of visitors), “though these, architecturally, consist of nothing but ranges of arcades, resting on attenuated Doric pillars. These are generally of marble, sometimes grouped in pairs, and too frequently with a block of an entablature over each, under the springing of the arch; but notwithstanding these defects, a cloistered court is always and inevitably pleasing, and if combined with gardens and scenery beyond, which is generally the case in this city, the effect, as seen from the streets, is so poetic as to disarm criticism. All that dare be said is that, beautiful as they are, with a little more taste and judgment they might have been ten times more so than they are now.”

Several of these palazzi contain pictures and art-collections of considerable value, and the interest of those has perhaps enhanced the admiration which they have excited in visitors. One of the most noteworthy is the Palazzo Brignole Sale, commonly called the Palazzo Rosso, because its exterior is painted red. This has now become a memorial of the munificence of its former owner, the Duchess of Galliera, a member of the Brignole Sale family, who, with the consent of her husband and relations, in the year 1874 presented this palace and its contents to the city of Genoa, with a revenue sufficient for its maintenance. The Palazzo Reale, in the Via Balbi, is one of those where the garden adds a charm to an otherwise not very striking, though large, edifice. This, formerly the property of the Durazzo family, was purchased by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, and has thus become a royal residence. The Palazzo Ducale, once inhabited by the Doges of Genoa, has now been converted into public offices, and the palazzo opposite to the Church of St. Matteo bears an inscription which of itself gives the building an exceptional interest: “Senat. Cons. Andreæ de Oria, patriæ liberatori, munus publicum.” It is this, the earlier home of the great citizen of Genoa, of which Rogers has written in the often-quoted lines:—

“He left it for a better; and ’tis now
A house of trade, the meanest merchandise
Cumbering its floors. Yet, fallen as it is,
’Tis still the noblest dwelling—even in Genoa!
And hadst thou, Andrea, lived there to the last,
Thou hadst done well: for there is that without,
That in the wall, which monarchs could not give
Nor thou take with thee—that which says aloud,
It was thy country’s gift to her deliverer!”

The great statesman lies in the neighboring church, with other members of his family, and over the high altar hangs the sword which was given to him by the Pope. The church was greatly altered—embellished it was doubtless supposed—by Doria himself; but the old cloisters, dating from the earliest part of the fourteenth century, still remain intact. The grander palazzo which he erected, as an inscription outside still informs us, was in a more open, and doubtless then more attractive, part of the city. In the days of Doria it stood in ample gardens, which extended on one side down to a terrace overlooking the harbor, on the other some distance up the hillside. From the back of the palace an elaborate structure of ascending flight of steps in stone led up to a white marble colossal statue of Hercules, which from this elevated position seemed to keep watch over the home of the Dorias and the port of Genoa. All this is sadly changed; the admiral would now find little pleasure in his once stately home. It occupies a kind of peninsula between two streams of twentieth-century civilization. Between the terrace wall and the sea the railway connecting the harbor with the main line has intervened, with its iron tracks, its sheds, and its shunting-places—a dreary unsightly outlook, for the adjuncts of a terminus are usually among the most ugly appendages of civilization. The terraced staircase on the opposite side of the palace has been swept away by the main line of the railway, which passes within a few yards of its façade, thus severing the gardens and isolating the shrine of Hercules, who looks down forlornly on the result of labors which even he might have deemed arduous, while snorting, squealing engines pass and repass—beasts which to him would have seemed more formidable than Lernæan hydra or Nemaean lion.

The palace follows the usual Genoese rule of turning the better side inwards, and offering the less attractive to the world at large. The landward side, which borders a narrow street, and thus, one would conjecture, must from the first have been connected with the upper gardens by a bridge, or underground passage, is plain, almost heavy, in its design, but it does not rise to so great an elevation as is customary with the palazzi in the heart of the city. The side which is turned towards the sea is a much more attractive composition, for it is associated with the usual cloister of loggia which occupies three sides of an oblong. This, as the ground slopes seaward, though on the level of the street outside, stands upon a basement story, and communicates by flights of steps with the lower gardens. The latter are comparatively small, and in no way remarkable; but in the days—not so very distant—when their terraces looked down upon the Mediterranean, when the city and its trade were on a smaller scale, when the picturesque side of labor had not yet been extruded by the dust and grime of over-much toil, no place in Genoa could have been more pleasant for the evening stroll, or for dreamy repose in some shaded nook during the heat of the day. The palazzo itself shows signs of neglect—the family, I believe, have for some time past ceased to use it for a residence; two or three rooms are still retained in their original condition, but the greater part of the building is let off. In the corridor, near the entrance, members of the Doria family, dressed in classic garb, in conformity with the taste which prevailed in the sixteenth century, are depicted in fresco upon the walls. On the roof of the grand saloon Jupiter is engaged in overthrowing the Titans. These frescoes are the work of Perini del Vaga, a pupil of Raphael. The great admiral, the builder of the palace, is represented among the figures in the corridor, and by an oil painting in the saloon, which contains some remains of sumptuous furniture and a few ornaments of interest. He was a burly man, with a grave, square, powerful face, such a one as often looks out at us from the canvas of Titian or of Tintoret—a man of kindly nature, but masterful withal; cautious and thoughtful, but a man of action more than of the schools or of the library; one little likely to be swayed by passing impulse or transient emotion, but clear and firm of purpose, who meant to attain his end were it in mortal to command success, and could watch and wait for the time. Such men, if one may trust portraits and trust history, were not uncommon in the great epoch when Europe was shaking itself free from the fetters of mediæval influences, and was enlarging its mental no less than its physical horizon. Such men are the makers of nations, and not only of their own fortunes; they become rarer in the days of frothy stump oratory and hysteric sentiment, when a people babbles as it sinks into senile decrepitude.

Andrea Doria himself—“Il principe” as he was styled—had a long and in some respects a checkered career. In his earlier life he obtained distinction as a successful naval commander, and in the curious complications which prevailed in those days among the Italian States and their neighbors ultimately became Admiral of the French fleet. But he found that Genoa would obtain little good from the French King, who was then practically its master; so he transferred his allegiance to the Emperor Charles, and by his aid expelled from his native city the troops with which he had formerly served. So great was his influence in Genoa that he might easily have obtained supreme power; but at this, like a true patriot, he did not grasp, and the Constitution, which was adopted under his influence, gradually put an end to the bitter party strife which had for so long been the plague of Genoa, and it remained in force until the French Revolution. Still, notwithstanding the gratitude generally felt for his great services to the State, he experienced in his long life—for he died at the age of ninety-two—the changefulness of human affairs. He had no son, and his heir and grand-nephew—a young man—was unpopular, and, as is often the case, the sapling was altogether inferior in character to the withering tree. The members of another great family—the Fieschi—entered into a conspiracy, and collected a body of armed men on the pretext of an expedition against the corsairs who for so long were the pests of the Mediterranean. The outbreak was well planned; on New Year’s night, in the year 1547, the chief posts in the city were seized. Doria himself was just warned in time, and escaped capture; but his heir was assassinated, and his enemies seemed to have triumphed. But their success was changed to failure by an accident. Count Fiescho in passing along a plank to a galley in the harbor made a false step, and fell into the sea. In those days the wearing of armor added to the perils of the deep; the count sank like a stone, and so left the conspirators without a leader exactly at the most critical moment. They were thus before long defeated and dispersed, and had to experience the truth of the proverb, “Who breaks pays,” for in those days men felt little sentimental tenderness for leaders of sedition and disturbers of the established order. The Fieschi were exiled, and their palace was razed to the ground. So the old admiral returned to his home and his terrace-walk overlooking the sea, until at last his long life ended, and they buried him with his fathers in the Church of S. Matteo.

Not far from the Doria Palace is the memorial to another admiral, of fame more world-wide than that of Doria. In the open space before the railway station—a building, a façade of which is not without architectural merit—rises a handsome monument in honor of Christopher Columbus. He was not strictly a native of the city, but he was certainly born on Genoese soil, and, as it seems to be now agreed, at Cogoleto, a small village a few miles west of the city. He was not, however, able to convince the leaders of his own State that there were wide parts of the world yet to be discovered; and it is a well-known story how for a long time he preached to deaf ears, and found, like most heralds of startling physical facts, his most obstinate opponents among the ecclesiastics of his day. Spain at last, after Genoa and Portugal and England had all refused, placed Columbus in command of a voyage of discovery; and on Spanish ground also—in neglect and comparative poverty, worn out by toil and anxieties—the great explorer ended his checkered career. Genoa, however, though inattentive to the comparatively obscure enthusiast, has not failed to pay honor to the successful discoverer; and is glad to catch some reflected light from the splendor of successes to the aid of which she did not contribute. In this respect, however, the rest of the world cannot take up their parable at her; men generally find that on the whole it is less expensive, and certainly less troublesome, to build the tombs of the prophets, instead of honoring them while alive; then, indeed, whether bread be asked or no, a stone is often given. So now the effigy of Columbus stands on high among exotic plants, where all the world can see, for it is the first thing encountered by the traveller as he quits the railway station.

One of the most characteristic—if not one of the sweetest—places in Genoa is the long street, which, under more than one name, intervenes between the last row of houses in the town and the harbor. From the latter it is, indeed, divided by a line of offices and arched halls; these are covered by a terrace-roof and serve various purposes more or less directly connected with the shipping. The front walls of houses which rise high on the landward side are supported by rude arches. Thus, as is so common in Italian towns, there is a broad foot-walk, protected alike from sun and rain, replacing the “ground-floor front,” with dark shops at the back, and stalls, for the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, pitched in the spaces between the arches. In many towns these arcades are often among the most ornamental features; but in Genoa, though not without a certain quaintness, they are so rude in design and construction that they hardly deserve this title. The old Dogana, one of the buildings in the street, gives a good idea of the commercial part of Genoa before the days of steam, and has a considerable interest of its own. In the first place, it is a standing memorial of the bitter feud between Genoa and Venice, for it is built with the stones of a castle which, being captured by the one from the other, was pulled down and shipped to Genoa in the year 1262. Again, within its walls was the Banca di San Georgio, which had its origin in a municipal debt incurred in order to equip an expedition to stop the forays of a family named Grimaldi, who had formed a sort of Cave of Adullam at Monaco. The institution afterwards prospered, and held in trust most of the funds for charitable purposes, till “the French passed their sponge over the accounts, and ruined all the individuals in the community.” It has also an indirect connection with English history, for on the defeat of the Grimaldi many of their retainers entered the service of France, and were the Genoese bowmen who fought at Cressy. Lastly, against its walls the captured chains of the harbor of Pisa were suspended for nearly six centuries, for they were only restored to their former owners a comparatively few years since.

Turning up from this part of the city we thread narrow streets, in which many of the principal shops are still located. We pass, in a busy piazza, the Loggia dei Banchi Borsa—the old exchange—a quaint structure of the end of the sixteenth century, standing on a raised platform; and proceed from it into the Via degli Orefici—a street just like one of the lanes which lead from Cheapside to Cannon Street, if, indeed, it be not still narrower, but full of tempting shops. Genoa is noted for its work in coral and precious metals, but the most characteristic, as all visitors know, is a kind of filigree work in gold or silver, which is often of great delicacy and beauty, and is by no means so costly as might be anticipated from the elaborate workmanship.

The most notable building in Genoa, anterior to the days when the architecture of the Renaissance was in favor, is the cathedral, which is dedicated to S. Lorenzo. The western façade, which is approached by a broad flight of steps, is the best exposed to view, the rest of the building being shut in rather closely after the usual Genoese fashion. It is built of alternating courses of black and white marble, the only materials employed for mural decoration, so far as I remember, in the city. The western façade in its lower part is a fine example of “pointed” work, consisting of a triple portal which, for elegance of design and richness of ornamentation, could not readily be excelled. It dates from about the year 1307, when the cathedral was almost rebuilt. The latter, as a whole, is a very composite structure, for parts of an earlier Romanesque cathedral still remain, as in the fine “marble” columns of the nave; and important alterations were made at a much later date. These, to which belongs the mean clerestory, painted in stripes of black and white, to resemble the banded courses of stone below, are generally most unsatisfactory; and here, as in so many other buildings, one is compelled, however reluctantly, “to bless the old and ban the new.” The most richly decorated portion of the interior is the side chapel, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century, and dedicated to St. John the Baptist; here his relics are enshrined for the reverence of the faithful and, as the guide-books inform us, are placed in a magnificent silver-gilt shrine, which is carried in solemn procession on the day of his nativity. We are also informed that women, as a stigma for the part which the sex played in the Baptist’s murder, are only permitted to enter the chapel once in a year. This is not by any means the only case where the Church of Rome gives practical expression to its decided view as to which is the superior sex. The cathedral possesses another great, though now unhappily mutilated, treasure in the sacro catino. This, in the first place, was long supposed to have been carved from a single emerald; in the next, it was a relic of great antiquity and much sanctity; though as to its precise claims to honor in this respect authorities differed. According to one, it had been a gift from the Queen of Sheba to Solomon; according to another, it had contained the paschal lamb at the Last Supper; while a third asserted that in this dish Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Saviour. Of its great antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for it was taken by the Genoese when they plundered Cæsarea so long since as the year 1101, and was then esteemed the most precious thing in the spoil. The material is a green glass—a conclusion once deemed so heretical that any experiment on the catino was forbidden on pain of death. As regards its former use, no more can be said than that it might possibly be as old as the Christian era. It is almost needless to say that Napoleon carried it away to Paris; but the worst result of this robbery was that when restitution was made after the second occupation of that city, the catino, through some gross carelessness, was so badly packed that it was broken on the journey back, and has been pieced together by a gold-setting of filigree, according to the guide-books. An inscription in the nave supplies us with an interesting fact in the early history of Genoa which perhaps ought not to be omitted. It is that the city was founded by one Janus, a great grandson of Noah; and that another Janus, after the fall of Troy, also settled in it. Colonists from that ill-fated town really seem to have distributed themselves pretty well over the known world.

More than one of the smaller churches of Genoa is of archæological interest, and the more modern fabric, called L’Annunziata, is extremely rich in its internal decorations, though these are more remarkable for their sumptuousness than for their good taste. But one structure calls for some notice in any account of the city. This is the Campo Santo, or burial-place of Genoa, situated at some distance without the walls in the Valley of the Bisagno. A large tract of land on the slope which forms the right bank of that stream has been converted into a cemetery, and was laid out on its present plan rather more than twenty-five years since. Extensive open spaces are enclosed within and divided by corridors with cloisters; terraces also, connected by flights of steps, lead up to a long range of buildings situated some distance above the river, in the center of which is a chapel crowned with a dome, supported internally by large columns of polished black Como marble. The bodies of the poorer people are buried in the usual way in the open ground of the cemetery, and the floor of the corridors appears to cover a continuous series of vaults, closed, as formerly in our churches, with great slabs of stone; but a very large number of the dead rest above the ground in vaults constructed on a plan which has evidently been borrowed from catacombs like those of Rome. There is, however, this difference, that in the latter the “loculi,” or separate compartments to contain the corpses, were excavated in the rock, while here they are constructed entirely of masonry. In both cases the “loculus” is placed with its longer axis parallel to the outer side, as was occasionally the method in the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine, instead of having an opening at the narrower end, so that the corpse, whether coffined or not, lies in the position of a sleeper in the berth of a ship. After a burial, the loculus, as in the catacombs, is closed, and an inscription placed on a slab outside. Thus in the Campo Santo at Genoa we walk through a gallery of tombs. On either hand are ranges of low elongated niches, rising tier above tier, each bearing a long white marble tablet, surrounded by a broad border of dark serpentine breccia. The interior generally is faced with white marble, which is toned down by the interspaces of the darker material, and the effect produced by these simple monumental corridors, these silent records of those who have rested from their labors, is impressive, if somewhat melancholy. In the cloisters, as a rule, the more sumptuous memorials are to be found. Here commonly sections of the wall are given up to the monuments of a family, the vaults, as I infer, being underneath the pavement. These memorials are often elaborate in design, and costly in their materials. They will be, and are, greatly admired by those to whose minds sumptuousness is the chief element in beauty, and rather second-rate execution of conceptions distinctly third-rate gives no offense. Others, however, will be chiefly impressed with the inferiority of modern statuary to the better work of classic ages, and will doubt whether the more ambitious compositions which met our eyes in these galleries are preferable to the simple dignity of the mediæval altar tomb, and the calm repose of its recumbent figure.