IC-NRLF THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID GLEANINGS FROM PICCADILLY TO PERA. "LONDON : A. and G. A. SPOTTISWOODE, New-street- Square. i> : ^ m GLEANINGS FROM PICCADILLY TO PERA. BY JOHN .OLDMIXON, ESQ., COMMANDER R.N. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1854. PREFACE. APOLOGIES for one's notions or one's nonsense, are simply absurd; but I would fain say a few words, not in extenuation of the errors and ignorances which will be found plentifully sprinkled in the following pages, but for the querulous, cynical tone which unamiably pervades the whole ! in which I view things through the cold, clouded atmosphere of an unusually severe winter ; piqued by the peculiarly unEnglish comforts and contrivances of the Continent. It will, however, be a variety, from its strong contrast to the invariable " couleur de rose" sunny pictures we have of France, Italy, and the East. Now that I have returned home, I laugh quite as heartily as younger men at all the small miseries and mishaps we must get through, without wincing, in our wanderings about the world. They are exactly the ups and downs, and joltings out of our drawing-room and club easy chairs, we set out to enjoy ! A 3 VI PBEFACE. But that which I am more seriously concerned at is, what may be thought of the freedom of my strictures on men and things ! The truth is, they were written under the more modest veil of the anonymous, and were meant to pass as impalpably harmless as the editorial we of a daily newspaper. Mine was a careless a too careless Diary, in which I thought aloud, not calculating on the assuming and egotistic look it puts on now that I have been reluc- tantly obliged to subscribe a name to it obscure, untitled, and unknown and find myself at. the foot of that crowded, critical, ticklish tribunal, of a fine, listless, indifferent, and unsympathetically fastidious West-end world ! But let me beware of prematurely making a fuss, like the duck in a puddle. I need not flatter myself with the idea of being particularly noticed in any way ; but pass on in the stream of the last things out apropos of the Turks and the Mediterranean. THE AUTHOR. London, September 22nd, 1854. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page Start from Piccadilly. Bother with Cabs. Pavilion, Folkestone. Boulogne. French Rail. Paris. French Drama. New Rue de Rivoli. Tour St. Jacques. Rail to Chalons. Fine young Lady. Wretched Weather and Steamers down the Saone. Lyons. - - - 1 CHAP. II. The Rhone. Avignon. Inland Sea of the Berre. Marseilles. Its Bastides and Cabanons. Commerce. Police Courts. The People The Country Toulon. The Dockyard and Port. - - 37 CHAP. III. Quit Toulon. Draguinan. Cannes. Rich English and their Villas, including Lord Brougham's. Antibes. The Frontier of the Var. Nice. - 88 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAP. IV. Page To Genoa by the Cornice. Look back at Nice. Its Climate, Neglect, and Beggars. Arrive at Genoa. The King. Consuls. Fetes. Opera. Review. Regatta. Start for Leghorn by Steamer. Pisa by Rail. On to Civita Vecchia. Its Port Can't land without a Consul's Visa. Appearance of the Coast. Tipsy Engineer and sick Captain. Stormy. Ischia, Bay of Naples Mole. Landing at Cus- tom House. Naples Villa Reale. Chaia. Pompeii. Baiae. Music. Campo Santo. Toledo. Mole. Opera. Goats. Europa Cafe. Flowers. Markets - - 129 CHAP. V. Leave Naples in the Screw " Sorento."< Coast of Cala- bria. Paulo. Pizzo. Band on Board. Death of Murat. Lipari Isles. Stromboli. Sicily. Messina. Industry. Poverty. Tyranny. Two Hotels. Marina. Beautiful Site of City. Reggio opposite. Theatre. Ruins of Earthquakes, and burnt Houses. Soldiers. Police. Passports. Good Gloves and bad Living. Cycle of the Port and Citadel. Hack Cabs. Fish Market. Wo- men. Weaving. Trade Taormina. Giardina. Chain Barriers. Cacti. Etna appears. Aci- reale. Catania. Coronna d'Oro. Placido. Greek Therme. Biscari's. Lava. Speronaros. Scarcity. Padre Guardo - -226 CHAP. VI. Leave Catania in Post Diligence. Cross the Plain and CONTENTS. IX Page River. Leontinum. Etna follows ! Syracuse. Albergo del Sole. Temples of Ceres and Minerva. Washerwomen in Arethusa's Bath. Jack Robinson and Sons. Embark. Schooner "Cassiopeia." Skipper. Conjuror. Cape Passero. Calms. Malta. Hotels. Troops. Transports. St. John's. Good Friday. Religious Ceremonies and Processions. Theatres. Cafes. Ices. Mids. Palace. Clean Streets. Leave in " Arabian." Horses. Mule. Goats' Milk. Dogs. Revolver Practice and Rifle. Pass Cape Matapan. Snow- capped Mountains of Greece. Siro. Mytilene. Archipelago. Tenedos - - - 261 CHAP. VII. Pera. Our Camp at Scutari. The great Cemetery. Happy Flocks. A wet Review. The Sultan's Palaces. Abdul-Medjid at Mosque. Good-natured Turks. Above the Bridges. Unknown Tongues. Galata Grog-shops. Dress of our Army. Pera Gates shut. Christians in the Saddle. Sight- seeing Firman. Old Palace and Mosques. Sultan's Stud. Pages, Baths, Library. Ladies' Garden. View from Windows. Our queer Dresses. Library and Bed Armories. Mosques. St. Sophia. Idle Intrusion. Massive Walls. Kitchen Clock. Atmeidan. Sacred Pigeons. Mahmoud's Mausoleum. Slave Markets. Banished Greeks. General Apathy - ... 285 CHAP. VIII. Turkish Women in Steamers. Turkish Economy. Lodging-Houses. Jews' Cemetery. Downs. X CONTENTS. Page Sweet Waters. Ideal Happiness. Constitutions. Local Comparisons. One Banker one Shop. Burnt Street. Horses. Burnouses. Crowded Solitude. Cocks and Hens. Moslem Rule. Idle Visions. - Turks mystified. Sterile Environs. Reform Act Odd Pachas. Modern Turkish Army. Complicated War. Dilatory Movements. Water- side Scenes. Caique Fares. Extent of Pera. Puzzling Currency. Delicacy of the Caiques. Tophana Ferry. Build of Boats - -319 CHAP. IX. Pera's Hills and Outlets. Dervishes Kiosk. Burnt Tree. Bird's-eye View. Consolatory Comparisons. - Passages Homewards. Queer Volunteers. Letters essential. Way up to Pera. Turkish Traits. Details of Pera. A Lobster Bargain. Greek and Turkish Women. Austrian Ball. Task in Music. Pera the West End. National Garbs. Women with our Army. Pleasant Com- panions. Nothing known. Scanty Supplies. Landscape Attractions. Silly Curiosity. Hot Sun, cold Winds. Treacherous Kindness. Quit Stam- bpul. Confusion at Starting. Hadjis' Reception. Salt water Amenity. Consular Forts. Call at Smyrna. Look of the town. Imperative Backshish. Self-exiled Ladies - 348 CHAP. X. Leave Smyrna. Islands. Anchor at Alexandria. The Shipping Town Light-house. Palace. CONTENTS. XI Page Pacha, Donkey Boys. Cafe Exchange Rooms. Square of Hotels. Bazaar. Canal. Pillar and Needle. Load with Cotton. And cram with Pas- sengers. Start for Malta. Coal On to Gibraltar. Silent Changes. Spain. Passage Home. A Word on- Ships and Steamers - 379 LIST OF PLATES, PLATE I. The High Street, Pera, and Turkish Women * - To face Title Page. II. Barracks, Scutari - page 99 III. Seraglio Point, from Tophana - 305 IV. The outer floating bridge over the Golden Horn - 361 ERKATA. Page 155., sixth line from bottom, for "custodium " read " custodian." 161., third line from top, for " Curlino" read " Carlino." 176., fourth line from bottom, for "custodium" read "custodian." 198., eighth line from top, for " low" read k! ton." 199., eighth line from bottom, for "/oca " read '* loco." 212., first line, dele " more." 262., fifth line from bottom, for " i " read " if." 403., third line from bottom, for "aggressions " read ; ' digressions." GLEANINGS FROM PICCADILLY TO PERA CHAPTER I. START FROM PICCADILLY. BOTHER WITH CABS. PAVILION, FOLKESTONE. BOULOGNE. FRENCH RAIL. PARIS. FRENCH DRAMA. NEW RUE DE RlVOLI. TOUR ST. JACQUES. RAIL TO CHALONS. FINE YOUNG LADY. WRETCHED WEATHER AND STEAMERS DOWN THE SOANE. LYONS. I AM leaving town already "the air bites shrewdly" but it is fine, and the sun struggles bravely towards nine o'clock, to get through the mass of housemaids' fires and factory clouds of this whole county of brick, London. I am midway in Hyde Park, near the barracks of the Horse Guards, and yet I might as well be in Thames Street for smoke and blacks. I send for a cab, and make an effort to be off in time for the South Eastern Railway express, f( twelve hours 2 BOTHER WITH CABS. to Paris ; " but we are a lazy late people, up late at both ends of the day ; so, no cabs are on the stands, except by chance, at eight o'clock in the morning : but with us every thing is left to chance the rule of thumb, and glorious uncertainty ; as the fares are, when you do get into a cab. Who is to decide as to a " fair quantity of luggage " between you and Cabby ? or when you have got to the end of a mile in our labyrinth of streets ? and how can a man have the heart to take a cab even within the mile (if he is knowing) for sixpence ? What could have been more simple and efficacious than to have followed the French plan, so much the course, so much the hour ? As to the greater distances however, and our feet very cold, to Chalons on the Saone; the fare 39 fr. 2 sous first class. We start at half-past ten, and get there by nine at night, dining at Dijon at six ; so dark, nothing could be seen of the town or surrounding coun- try, as we thread the valleys of the Seine and Yonne. About Tonnere it gets hilly and more picturesque, but this is not a very hilly or interesting track. Murray describes it, and was often referred to. We were all Eng- lish except one young Frenchman, who kept his eyes pretty constantly fixed on an " honourable " young lady, who gave herself small exclusive airs towards us Eng- lish as nobodies. This excessively provoked a fat Devonshire lady, not particularly in the high world, who was very curious to know who this little con- temptuous girl could be, with her valet, her maid, and fond papa ! Lord , going on a visit to his friend Lord Brougham at Cannes. There was another little episode which set me to think- ing on the not very good-natured peculiarity of our manners. The noble lord sat next Sir , M. P. FINE YOUNG LADY. 21 for ; one of those ci-devant parliamentary friends no doubt our ministers find it very essential to be civil to. They chatted away together on the most friendly footing, without the M.P.'s taking the slightest notice of the young lady, who sat silent immediately opposite and touching him. He was not introduced ; and so he left them. When gone, she asked her father, in that sort of tone only understood among ourselves, " Who is that man?" All this is nothing, yet something ; it lets one see that supercilious affectation, which goes on in- creasing up to the throne ; taken up and dropt in the most capricious way, according to the momentary figure and power of individuals. Let us not talk of the trifling and insincerity of the French : we certainly are the most trifling, inconsistent people on earth, in our higher circles, certainly. Yet I can well conceive that, entirely free from the fear of sliding downwards, nothing can be more charming, or more easy, or more luxurious, than our most exclusive circle, nothing more simple, true, and noble ; so entirely free from silly af- fectations and restraints ; but this must be quite among themselves. After all, this contemptible and insulting pretension is much more bearable in our really high people, than in that second set, our smaller gentry, and still worse in that other supercilious, conceited set, the writers of novels on our manners, whose affectation and airs become infinitely more disgusting; who are tho c3 22 SNOBS. very people that keep up this childish up-turning of noses, without that high breeding which rather softens it in our nobility; who are eternally talking of "snobs," themselves the very greatest ; " fooling " those above them, " to the top o' the bent." But I fear we are one and all a nation of snobs, so prone are we to worship any sort of title which carries with it a fine house in town and country, fine carriages, and fine dinners. The snob papers in " Punch " quiz those unfortunates who attempt to get into the circle above them by giving dinners they cannot afford, to be accepted by even poor titled people as a monstrous favour ! The thing is susceptible of being made ridiculous enough ; one cannot help laughing at the small accompaniment of agonising distresses; but to be cut by the very people you would fain honour and court, begging their good will and kindness on your knees, is sharper than the serpent's tooth. The best of the joke is, that these very "Punch" writers include themselves among the high and mighty, asked to Major So and So's, or Mrs. Colonel or General Blankcartridge's ball or " tea dan- sante" The really high world, with us, read all this, and have acted occasionally the cutting part ; but to see it carried out downwards into the society of writers, editors, " artistes" and the smallest pretenders to gentility, seems indeed the very acme of imbecility. Can one wonder THE " THREE PHEASANTS.' 5 23 the lower world, always aping, always pretending, should be treated like spaniels, at least they deserve it. We dine very well at Dijon, 3 fr. a head and the garqon. As we get towards the wine country, Bur- gundy, &c., wine is not charged apart; a bottle of ordi- naire is put between two, and very ordinary it is. They kept us an unconscionable time at the Chalons station, packing us in omnibuses, bag and baggage, and we were driven about to various hotels. I would not go to the " Park" because it was one of the advertised and puffed ones, but slept at the " Three Pheasants" op- posite, on the quay of the Saone, here a fine rapid river. What the " Park " may be I know not, but let nobody venture on the Pheasants Three. I had a damp bed, and miserable breakfast in a dark, dank guinguette of a brick floored room, smelling of smoke and wine, with every thing dirty and of the worst sort. Of a cold night the constant Carreau of this country (tiled floors) and a damp bed, complete any other misery of baggage or 'buses. I here caught a severe cold in my head, of all things most inconvenient travelling. It is never of any use asking if your bed is well aired, the sheets dry ? The " Basin noire " only brought out the latent humidity, and I had Hobson's choice. I observe our knowing travellers go about with a perfect load of coats, shawls, and woollen coverings, strapped in immense bundles, which they have to lug c 4 24 FRENCH STEAMERS. about, adding to their other inevitable small troubles ; but before I got rid of the cold weather I was obliged to confess one could not have too much wool to put on, however troublesome to lug about. At Chalons, though flat near this town (on the right bank of the Saone), the spurs of the Jura and the Alps are seen, and we find it much colder than at Paris. Next morning it snowed furiously ; no depth of winter at Nova Zembla could be worse ; and thus we had to embark at ten o'clock in the last of the three steam- boats which start of a morning at five, at seven, and at ten. Of all the modern stupid contrivances on water, commend me to a French river steamer ; much in the shape of a long horse-trough, so long as hardly to be turned in the river, so narrow that you cannot stir on deck or swing a cat in the cabins, so high and top- heavy that they would infallibly upset at once were it not for the paddle-wheels. Of course in such weather all rushed to the cabin, where we were packed like herrings, the side seats barely leaving a passage to pass clear of the legs and feet of the sitters ; this was the chief cabin, which cer- tainly vied in villainous discomfort and cram with the salle-a-manger before it, where half our live cargo betook themselves, and where every body set to work " a la fourchette" and " a la carte" I made a merit of necessity ; and, giving up my most ARRIVAL AT LYONS. 25 valuable cold seat (jammed between two bearded, Bur- nous'd Frenchmen) to a handsome young English mar- ried lady, was overwhelmed by thanks I little deserved. Snowing all day, and boxed up in this way, who would talk of the river or the scenery, of the various towns and vine-covered hills we passed to Macon and on to Lyons ; but even when I am delighted with landscapes on sunny days, or combinations of the sublime or beau- tiful, I shall rarely inflict descriptions on the gentle readers I hope to have ; or with past histories of castles, countries, and cities. Such things deserve a particular study, are known sufficiently to most intelligent people ; and besides, there are scores of books, particularly Murray's, Bradshaw's, &c., in every body's hands. Towards the evening it holds up; we creep on deck a little in spite of the cold ; the scenery, one can see, is growing more and more grand as we approach the hills which border the Saone in its downward course, hills covered with vines, the " Cote rotie" &c. We arrive at Lyons in the dark, and make fast at a kind of working pavilion of a custom-house on the right bank of the Saone just above the stone bridge, where the river falls in rapids, being low, over its rocky bed in the suburb about opposite the centre of the city. Here we were delayed an hour, in most admired con- fusion, scrambling and squabbling in the freezing air over the hold of the vessel, and only hindering each 26 HOTEL DE GENES. other trying to get our luggage; the unhappy gentle- men of many ladies and many trunks were to be most pitied. There seemed no sort of regulation whatever; the crowd mixed with porters packed and struggling in the dark to get a sight of the shape of each box, trunk, or bag as they were slowly handed up on deck. Luckily in this country, however dirty, rough, or uncivil, there is no swell mob, no wilful mistakes ; so, after an hour's misery, each got his things carried to the " douane" where we were only asked if we had any thing " a declarer" and allowed to pass on to the om- nibuses (drawn up at each station). When seated, we had to wait patiently another half hour while the last trunk of the last traveller was put on the roof, enough to break any ordinary omnibuses down ; and we are driven across the bridge, and on across the Belle Cour Square, the fashionable or west end, to the quays on the Rhone side of the city. I made a bad choice in going to the Hotel de Genes, (strongly recommended by a touter on board), which I found was rather a commercial Traiteur's, occupying the entresol of a noble house certainly. Here the landlady and Bonne were drying and ironing linen at the dining tables ; most of the passengers were dropt at other hotels on the way, particularly one nearly opposite, the Hotel de 1'Europe ; but it is the custom at most of the hotels LYONS. 27 to have a restaurant and talle-d'Jwte in the same room and at the same hour, as you come south. Lyons is a magnificent city, and its situation grand. The houses on the river's sides along the quays are mostly, as in the chief streets and squares, six and seven stories high, looking, indeed, more rich and handsome than on the Paris quays. But to have a clear idea of the grandeur, extent, and beauty of the whole city and landscape, one must recross the Saone over one of the centre bridges (there are ten over the Saone, and six over the Rhone), and go up the hilly suburb immediately above the Cathedral of St. John's ; by the bye, cross directly opposite, over the handsome stone bridge leading from the Place de Belle Cour. The way is tortuous and dirty enough upwards, up narrow, ill-paved streets among the weavers, and under, as you ascend, immense high old walls, backs of convents, and hospitals. Through a terraced garden they have made a short cut recently, up to the church of Notre Dame; the gilt statue (colossal) of the Virgin Mary shines conspicuous, crown- ing the spire. You pay a sou at the gate, and ascend to the upper terrace of the garden, where you take breath, and behold, looking eastward over the rivers, the city and the near and distant mountains a view rich and magnificent in the extreme. It was cloudy, and there was some smoke from the numerous factories (for al- ready there is an immense deal of coal burnt here), so 28 SUSPENSION BlilDGES. that I could not see all quite so well as on a clearer day. The hills following the Saone down on both sides, break off on the east side, and range across the northern suburbs over to the right bank of the Rhone, leaving a four or five mile tongue of level land, on which the body of the city stands between these fine rivers : not that it occupies the whole space ; below the town, to the confluence of the rivers, there is still a space of a mile or two occupied by gardens, factories, and building yards, &c., but these near hills are covered by villas and terraced gardens, forts, citadels, arsenals, convents, churches indeed the right bank of the Saone is a densely populated suburb of the town, forming, as it recedes above and below, the most beautiful feature as you walk along the streets or quays. The suburbs across the Rhone j;o the east, and the country beyond, are flat and less attractive. I fancy few of us travellers ever cross the old stone bridge of the Gillotiere. Almost all the sixteen bridges are suspension ; all very neat and handsome, of wire rope, looking much lighter than ours, probably are even stronger ; loaded waggons cross most of them. The lowest down over both rivers, in a direct line and across the south-west end of the town, are among the most recent improvements. They are named, in compliment to the emperor, Cour et Pont Napoleon. In a centre square forming here, they have just erected a fine equestrian statue of the Great Napoleon. IMPROVEMENTS IN FRENCH CITIES. 29 Nothing in French cities is more apparent than this rapid improvement in every possible way of late years, new streets, public buildings, bridges, municipal ar- rangements for the public good, gardens, pavements, roads of the environs, in spite of all their internal troubles and ephemeral governments. It would appear only to have tended to one end to make them richer and stronger in every way as a nation than they ever were. As to their increased budget and taxes, they are at least equal and inevitable, and are, after all, a trifle compared with ours. The body of the town, its two great squares (Belle Cour and Terreaux\ and its great arteries, the quays, the streets if Bourbon " and " St. Dominique," and central, north, and south, across the Place Belle Cour to the Place Terreaux north, south to the new " Place Napoleon," are soon mastered. They are the arteries, the great thoroughfares of the body of the place ; an in- tricate maze of narrow streets the sun hardly penetrates even in midsummer. There are about 16,000 troops in garrison here, and the place is governed by their general, (at present the prefecture is vacant). Just now it is Marshal Castellane, a tall thin old soldier, who in full dress uniform generally walks up and down near the band in the midst of the crowd on the Belle Cour. He wears six or seven stars and numerous clasps and crosses on his breast, quite a 30 REGIMENTAL BAND. cuirass of shining honours. He was on his usual pro- menade on Sunday, taking his hat off at every half dozen steps to return salutes, and stopping occasionally to speak to gentlemen and ladies of his acquaintance. This sort of parade (not but that his carriage appeared perfectly easy and free from affectation) may have its uses politically, but the go-ahead "jeune France " have very little respect for those in authority. The young Commis, who thought " que mademoiselle avait de beaux yeux et une belle chevelure " (the honourable little Miss who left us at Dijon), and who I met again on the Place, observed with a shrug, " tout cela me fait pitie ! " It was Sunday : the band (of one of the regiments) consisted of about sixty, and played very fairly : I could not but think of the difference between us and the French in this. Here is a strictly economical French regiment, has its music in this full handsome way; and the equal and sensible orders of their Horse Guards make it a pleasure the meanest may enjoy, far above the caprice of colonels or lieut.-colonels. On their pro- menades, as the day and hour fixed comes so does the band, no matter what garrison, or if only one regiment present. The contrast may not be so violent with our regiments of the line ; but with our Guards, and in London, of all places in the world ! who but must look back with regret and contempt at their airs, and their FRENCH AND GERMAN BANDS. 31 turn- out of some twenty or two dozen, when they do condescend to play to our admiring crowds during the season in Kensington Gardens ! Excessively mediocre as is their playing (so feeble and thin, from want of requi- site numbers), this same genteel, not fashionable, pub- lic of " nobodies " are often disappointed, even at the maximum of two fixed days each week ; this too, by regiments which cost us, in officers and men, about ten times as much as Continental ones ; whose officers be- sides are all men of fortune (or should be, as they affect to be), independent of their pay. It is useless guessing at where the fault lies in particular ; govern- ment should set all such things to rights. Few among us know or care any thing about the matter. To be sure every thing is comparative as to good, bad, and indifferent, in this artificial world of ours, and ignorance is indeed bliss. The French, though respectable in their bands, are far inferior to the German ones in numbers and in taste, if not in science. One can never forget the rich harmony of a German regimental band of ninety or one hundred strong those glorious swells ! the crescendo, and the dimi- nuendo. The weather is very cold, and they say it has rained a great deal ; and yet these two great rivers are un- usually low. I walked through the Museum, round the cloisters of its extensive court, full of well-arranged 32 MUSEUM AT LYONS. relics of antiquity, tombs and inscribed marbles of the Romans. On the first floor a rich collection of coins and medals, vases in terra cotta, women's ornaments, bracelets, rings, in gold, statuettes in bronze, &c. This department on the Rhone has been found rich in Roman remains. On the second floor a very fair gallery of paintings by artists of the town; many of them might well put to shame some of our R. A.s. on our National Gallery walls, who in thirty or forty years seem to do nothing but repeat themselves, so that what merit they once had becomes tiresome, even a defect. But whether in painting or in statuary, in enlightened taste of any sort, who would suspect that our Fine Arts Commission, and those who lead, direct, and patronise such things, were really wide awake ! that they had ever been on the Continent had ever seen what is left us of the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, or even the middle ages! Look at the frescoes and sculpture (after all) of the chosen few in our new Houses of Parliament ! fit comment and corollary to the two small boxes all our M. P.s cannot be crammed into, and our Peers can be just found a scanty room for, and where they have much ado to hear or see each other. To say nothing of the vast sums thrown away to enable a quack in physics to be a nuisance to both houses, by his blowings of hot and cold, as if the architect had not sins enough of his LYONS THEATRES. 33 own (on the whole) without this odious addition to contend with; to delay, and to swell the hundreds of thousands to the country only weakening and deform- ing. But, setting aside the interior, no man with the least eye to architectural effect can cross Westminster Bridge, and riot at once perceive that the whole building is too low platform, terrace, and all. Its little elaborate frittering, particularly of the roof, harmonises with nothing near it. It is pretty ; but we should have had something grand noble. Immense high towers will, I fear, only bring out its defects all the more conspicuous. But I am at Lyons. I went to the theatre, which is large and handsome, with a band of at least sixty. I am not orthodox in liking Robert le Diable much better than the less melodious and sadder Huguenots, the music of which is even more difficult. I thought it very well performed ; but the French are inexorable critics. They would only applaud the prima donna, Madame Barbot. This is the grand theatre; there is a second, the " Celes- tins" constantly filled; as are various concert-rooms, professional and amateur. Walking about a good deal, I see nothing of a squalid, lean manufacturing population, as I rather expected ; on the contrary, the crowd every where clean and comfort- ably clothed, and not a beggar ! Begging is very properly strictly forbidden in all French cities ; not as with us rrf D 34 ENGLISH GRIEVANCES. forbidden, and allowed to go on under the noses of our latitudinarian police ; no doubt partly from the con- tradictory orders they receive, at least the want of preci- sion in them, partaking of that comfortable harum- scarum which guides all our public affairs. I am, as I write on, conscious of what is likely to be remarked by my readers, where my comparisons, which in truth I cannot help making, are so often against ourselves : but, much as I love my country, much as I enjoy many things still left in common among us, still given us as blessings from heaven, yet would I rather sin in underrating what may be a matter of taste or a doubtful good, than run into that sort of insipid praise of every thing left behind me, and contempt of all foreign excellence, which too often marks the track of us travelling English. I can only glance comparatively at our brutalities, our ignorances, our anomalies, corruptions, nuisances, and absurdities, which any one among us reads of more at large set forth in our morning papers with a minute- ness, a truth, and fidelity which one would think could allow of no difference of opinion so monstrous, so mischievous, that one wonders any government, even the most imbecile, corrupt, or barbarous, could allow them to exist a single day. We are in the habit of setting off our personal freedom, and " glorious constitution," under which no man has any choice whatever, more than INDIFFERENCE OF PARLIAMENT. 35 on the Continent, where despotism, after all, only falls now and then heavily on a very few of the upper class* and is, at least, as years roll on, wisely and rapidly ex- tending, as in France, amelioration to the million, unobstructed by the interested efforts and clamour, of certain classes as with us making reform of any sort, or good to the whole, so difficult so impossible I These miseries are not imaginary. They beset us in our streets at our doors; they impoverish, poison, and degrade London, and more or less all our cities, our country towns, every village, every man ! In this enlightened age, we should naturally look to the House of Commons and House of Peers for an instant remedy for such crying evils. It lies with them as positively as with the most powerful autocrat and they do nothing nothing most essential. One prime minister succeeds another, the mere automaton of the day. He talks, indeed, is tired to death talking, but session after session does nothing. Even the attempt at any good is frittered away by opposition, and the most eagerly desired blessings prayed for by the multitude, are shelved. And so we rub on, eat and drink (as we can), from year to year, with full liberty to publish, and read, and feel all our defects. But not to redress them ! there lies the eternal ministerial difficulty. D 2 36 REFORMS GENERALLY SHELVED. We are now talking of a further reform, which, as I write, is cunningly shelved. Will any kind stickler for the powers, the mind, and the things that be, tell me that these are mere specks in the sun? that the whole civilised world is full of nuisances? that nobody and nothing is perfect? Sir, I am your most humble servant: who shall gravely answer that? Nay, am I not travelling amidst lots of miseries and nuisances all equally wanting putting to rights? Yes, yes ; it is a great consolation and an excellent apology for ourselves 'tis enough. 37 CHAP. II. THE RHONE. AVIGNON. INLAND SEA OF THE BERRE. MAR- SEILLES ITS BASTIDES AND CABANONS. COMMERCE. POLICE COURTS. THE PEOPLE. THE COUNTRY. TOULON. THE DOCKYARD AND PORT. LAST days of November. Very cold, but sunshiny. The Rhone is so low that several sandbanks are dry opposite the town, and the steamer is obliged this morning to remain below the town on the Saone side, instead of its usual place on the Rhone quays. As usual, we are all packed in omnibuses, and put down in the mud at the river side before daylight, always an hour before starting. The boat of the same description as those above from Chalons, and all the best places care- fully taken possession of by the French ; we were a good many of us English. The whole very crowded and disagreeable from want of room ; as to any attention or civility such as one finds in our worst-regulated steamers, that was quite out of the question. This Rhone Steam Company seem to give no orders to their servants of that kind. The hills on the right bank of the Saone still accom- pany us down the Rhone, below the junction of the two rivers, where we shoot under the viaduct, across the D 3 38 ST. ETIENNE. Saone, of the railway to St. Etienne, a town below, famous for its ribbon factories. For some miles this railway follows the river side. St. Etienne has grown into great importance of late years ; its population now exceeds 100,000. The trade between its manufactories and those of Lyons very great, and the trains on its rail- road, of fifteen leagues, very frequent, particularly in goods. The railway follows the right bank of the Rhone some distance down the river. As we proceed downwards, the hills on the right hand are responded to by others on the left, all with more or less picturesque beauty and effect, most where their rugged summits are bare rock; but they seem every where cultivated in vines, maize, or grain of some sort, wherever possible. As we proceed, particularly after the ancient city of Vienne, these hills swell to mountains, with their frequent towns, villages, and castles on both banks, which I thought often as beautiful as the Rhine. We very frequently pass under suspension bridges, even at the smaller towns ; thrown across of late years. The body of water and breadth of the Rhone on the whole rather disappointed me, to be sure it is said to be unusually low, we dragged over the gravel more than once ; and at the mauvais pas of the Pont de St. Esprit; the general breadth of the river, I should say, was about five hundred yards, not more than the Saone, or itself above their junction. A strong ARRIVAL AT AVIGNON. 39 cold wind from the north has been following us all day, increasing as we descend, and so sharp that few of us can manage to keep on deck long at a time. By the time we got down to Avignon it was almost a storm ; this is the t{ mistral" which, sweeping down the valley of the Rhone, is so much dreaded on the plains below, about Marseilles, and all across to Montpellier west- ward, as well as the country to the coast towards the Alps. In travelling, one should shake off all ideas of ordinary comforts, they are out of the question ; but it is pro- voking enough when one's discomforts are increased, as in these boats, so stupidly and unnecessarily to say nothing of their own peculiar unfitness for floating at all. There is a large island which divides the river into two branches opposite Avignon ; its left branch washes the walls of the town, but, owing to the lowness of the water just now, they are obliged to land the steam-boat pas- sengers three miles off on the branch the furthest side of the island, in a spot as wild as Australia. Being dark by this time (past five), and bitter cold, the prospect of what next, as nothing was explained, was any thing but agreeable. On making fast to a temporary plank jetty, a parcel of rough porters rush on board, and, as at Lyons, make confusion worse confounded. We had heard of these fellows demanding all sorts of unconscion- able sums for carrying a trunk a few yards in this D 4 40 AN UNFORTUNATE AMERICAN. wilderness, that is, to where all the string of omnibuses are drawn up in a meadow near this temporary landing. However, it turned out better than we expected so far, and patience perforce gets through a good deal. My fellow was content with a franc for carrying my trunk to the 'bus, where there was an immense confusion and gabbling of unknown tongues. When at length seated, I found it impossible not to laugh at some of the un- happy ones, whose baggage was carried to the wrong 'buses, or they themselves thrust into the wrong one. A woe-begone American youth in a knowing wide- awake, a transatlantic Verdant Green, could not find his luggage, being innocent of any French ; all his talk in good Bostonian English, and explanations of kind fellow travellers in bad French, only made matters more hopeless. Next day, it turned out that he at last walked the whole way across the island with one of his boxes, paying a guide, who, in a dismal spot, he had strong apprehensions, he said, would turn out what he looked excessively like a real footpad ! All this, and fifty mishaps of others, was duly related next morning at the Hotel de 1'Europe, at breakfast ; however, being safe and sound, our cousin found after all that he had lost nothing beyond five francs, paid for hunting up his missing baggage. The whole country, as we descend towards the Bouches du Rhone, is one immense flat, with the spurs OLD PALACE AT AVIGNON. 41 of rocky mountains framing the picture. Avignon on the river is sometimes flooded in the lower parts of the town ; three years ago, the salles-a-manger in this hotel were flooded half way up to the ceiling. The old palace on the terrace, so long the Papal resi- dence, is the most remarkable thing here ; it is now used as a gaol, a barrack, and a church. I ran up to this terrace; the morning a bright sunshine, though bitter cold set off the fine surrounding view to great advan- tage, one sees an immense distance on all sides. The country rich in villages, country seats, and careful cul- tivation ; besides the interest naturally attached to the first look at any new spot, extended here by the im- mense sweep over the plains west, to the borders of the Durance, south, including the celebrated Vaucluse to the north. How different things turn out from all one's pre- conceived notions of cities or countries ! how useless all descriptions ! Truth itself is not always truth, every thing depending on circumstances of infinite shades. Thus, far from wishing to linger on the Rhone, I was too happy to get into a first class carriage next morning (full of English, indeed all along we have formed more than half the first class travellers), on the railway to Marseilles, by Terrascon and Aries ; of which towns we have only a flying view, and now and then glimpses of the river. 42 VEGETATION. Flocks of sheep are fed on these plains, where nothing but a stunted grass will grow ; this is the much es- teemed prts saU mutton. We now begin to see the mulberry tree, still in leaf, and looking very like our apple trees, in the distance ; olive trees now thicken in the landscape too. These, with the vine and a few firs on the rocky hills, form the only shade of this whole country. I forget the fig, but just now its bare crooked branches scarcely catch the eye. The exceedingly even surface and perfect level of this vast plain, which divides the mouths of the Rhone, far as the eye can reach to the distant blue mountains east and west, is very remarkable ; in some spots it is covered by pebbles, once rounded by the ocean's wave. Nothing can be better than this railway; the time kept to a minute, and this easy flight, stopping at Ter- rascon and Aries but a few minutes, extremely agree- able. At the former town one sees King Rene's chateau very handsome it is : both these towns date from the middle ages, and are remarkable for quaint, picturesque old houses, towers, monasteries, and churches. This, however, applies to the whole country ; every town and village, if not rich in some Roman gateway, or viaduct, aqueduct, or bridge, is still curious in its mediaeval walls and ruins, with its story attached. The railway crosses the Durance, and follows the line of the Rhone to Aries, then across the plain to the rocky hills which encircle GRAND VIEW NEAR MARSEILLES. 43 the inland sea, or Etang de Berre, a vast estuary or lake. Approaching Marseilles, the views on all sides, as we get among the hills, grow more strikingly beautiful. These hills increase in size, and their summits, limestone rocks, crown the heights of rich valleys, particularly at St. Hamas, near the lake, where there is a Roman gate- way, or arch, and bridge still entire ; and below this (the village on the hill side very pretty) extends the immense estuary or salt lake an inlet of the Mediterranean, closed, however, externally, but having all the appear- ance, at first sight, of the sea itself. In a few minutes more, as we fly along, we run under the northern rocky hills which circle round Marseilles, I think the longest tunnel in the world longer a good deal than our Box tunnel. We now come in really on the Mediterranean, the Bay of Marseilles, and, with a gentle sweep of three or four miles among country houses and gardens, reach the station, in an elevated position of the city, above the Cour d'Aix, and tri- umphal arch, and near a large cemetery (made in 1836). The day beautifully bright and pleasant ; the varied views of the sea, the rocks, the thousands of small villas and country houses, here called bastides, with their walled gardens, showing us an inexhaustible richness on all sides, strike like magic on leaving the gloom of the tunnel ; and only ending very a propos where we had 44 SITUATION OF MARSEILLES. something else to think of, trunks and tickets, omni- buses and hotels. Continental views away from the sea-side never stand taking in detail cannot bear inspection ; the illusion is destroyed as you approach. A barn of a place, and withered long grass, and high stone walls look all very well in the far distance ; but soon one longs for our own home, meadows, and lawns, our neatness, comforts, luxuries: here, to be sure, we have grandeur one cannot well fancy any thing finer than the site of Marseilles; an inner and outer port, the bay sheltered by two islands outside, the Ratonneau and Chateau d'Iff, with a semicircle of rocky hills swelling to mountains framing in the extensive suburbs and city. To see this grand whole at a glance, sea, city, and country round, the shortest and most pleasant way is to walk up the ' ' Cour " to the " Mount Buonaparte ; " to the left, over the harbour's mouth and the Citadel St. Nicholas ; it is indeed a glorious panorama. The inner harbour which runs a mile into the heart of the city, as full as it can cram of ships, the rocky circling coast to the north- west, the countless garden houses rising from the suburbs and extending on their hills on all sides for miles to the picturesque rocky frame all round, steamers and sailing vessels coming in and out, complete this most magnificent scene. This " Cour " or Boulevard Buonaparte is the nearest MARSEILLES. 45 comeatable walk out of the upper end of the fashionable street St. Feriol. The ascent is gentle at first, but pretty steep when within the kind of garden, up which the walks zig-zag to the column Buonaparte, now a broken neglected pedestal. I came every day to enjoy this beautiful view, which fine weather and flying clouds set off to the greatest advantage ; besides, one gets clear of the dirt, the smoke, and the most disagreeable smells of the streets and harbour, which, having no current through it, is made even a greater abomination than our own poor dear Thames, in spite of good stringent regulations. Marseilles is full of fine houses, giving one, indeed, a good idea of the riches of her merchants; but the streets are very irregular, narrow, and dirty ; the foot pave- ments neglected, hardly known of old, are still very badly attended to, and whatever the sanitary regu- lations may be, filth of all sorts meets you at every step. At this season, the first week in December, there is indeed more sheer mud and less of those dreadful smells than in the warmer weather; but they are bad even now I find occasionally. To add to all this, night carts (there are no sewers, a grand one to encircle the harbour is in contemplation) go about during the day collecting from door to door : on them is painted " salubrite publique" The heart of the city round the harbour is very 46 ITS BASTIDES AND CABANONS. densely peopled ; blind alleys and back streets, five yards wide, with houses six stories high, intersect each other, keeping out the sun, and keeping in all sorts of noxious vapours. They have gone on increasing in trade and riches even from the beginning of this our present century, in spite of war, revolutions, dreadful epidemics, even plagues; the city itself and suburbs covers three times the ground it did forty years ago, and its inhabitants are doubled at least, so that one would at least expect something better for the " salu- britd publique." All the richer and leading people, however, have their country seats close by on the terraced hills all round, quite clear of these disagreeables : during the summer they are only in town during business hours, the women and children at their " Bastides," as their country boxes are called. Omnibuses run up and down these hills in all directions to a distance of three and four miles, so that even the moderately well off easily get in and out : some of these Bastides are very small, with but three or four tiny rooms. A smaller set still, perched on their walled terraces or bare rocks, with a fig, and vine, or an olive are called Cabanons. Both the Bastides and Cabanons are very generally shut up during the winter season, when the families remove into town, for even the rich practice a very exact economy ; one sees very few private carriages in the streets, those above omnibuses COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND TRADE. 47 taking cabs (mostly handsome broughams), and at the same rate as the Paris ones. I find them behindhand with their shops, except a few in the Rues St. Feriol and Paradis, in furniture, silk mercers, ornamental por- celain, and gilt bronze ; their grocers' are miserable dens, tea is bought at their druggists': much as it was an age ago. The harbour's face on the north side is filled by slop sellers, and grog shops as a matter of course, counting and warehouses ; the quays, always a very active, busy scene, crowded with curious groups of Greeks, Turks, Arabs, and specimens of all the Mediterranean shores. The commercial activity is very great, loading and unloading, the shipping lying in tiers close packed, their bows and sterns touching the wharves. On fine days large spaces are occupied by men winnowing, measuring, and sacking great piles of wheat with sieves hung from a triangle ; all the produce of the East and West is carrying in every possible way to and from the ships and warehouses; dried fruits, cotton, liquors, wines, hardware, china, and all the vast aggregate called dry goods. The chief trade lies with the Adriatic and Archi- pelago, Spain and the United States, Algiers and Alexandria, and some little with England ; with us, on the contrary, there should be the greatest, to our mutual benefit. It is a curious thing to find, so far on in the 48 FRENCH AND ENGLISH STATESMEN. century, leading statesmen on both sides checking, indeed hindering, that beneficent intercourse which should reciprocally flow in ; but so it is. With us every good move meets difficulties from bad laws and the tender immunities of monopolies ; ministers can do nothing without first sweeping off, by acts of Parlia- ment, these barbarous hindrances which beset our ports and damp the spirit of our sailors and merchants, hurt our shipping, and raise the price of all good things to us, while it blocks the outlet of our own manufactures and natural products. Our free trade enactments are yet far from free : the first step to a really free trade would be sweeping off all custom-houses and that army of drones, custom-house officers, vide that pleasant lawsuit of last summer, the tyranny of our custom- house triumphing, after all, over our long vexed and impeded merchants. The French of late, with an absolute government, still keep up their old absurd and hurtful system of enormous duties and prohibitions; any thing but friendly, though our fleets are acting in concert, and it is the fashion happily, at this moment, to pay each other compliments, rather hollow, however. We per- sist in not taking their wine and brandy, and they will not have our iron, coal, and cotton ; and thus one sees very little of our flag in their harbours : the Americans have almost entirely superseded us. However, as far as passengers go, we have a pretty MEDITERRANEAN PACKETS. 49 brisk intercourse here, and a few of our merchantmen are seen in the port occasionally. Indeed there is a constant current of travellers across France to and from the steam-boats here to all parts of the Mediterranean. The French steamers start regularly for Algiers, Alex- andria, the Adriatic, and Constantinople. There are Spanish steamers too to the neighbouring Spanish ports all round to Cadiz, a regular line of French steamers to Italy, and another line of Italian steamers running to Naples and Sicily ; of late we have a line of steamers here too, rather larger than the French, every two weeks making the passage round the Italian coast, stopping at Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, Naples, and Malta. Our own countrymen and women may, I think, stand for a good third of their passengers, in all these various boats, except perhaps to Algiers, to which shore we are not particularly tempted as yet. I am told the English boats are the best the Yectis and Valetta they cer- tainly are the most liberal, as the passage is the same (6/. to Naples) in both; the English boats including meals, the French charging them additional. They make the regulations too, on embarking, very expensive and vexa- tious, by compelling passengers to take their clumsy, but safe, roomy boats, and harbour watermen, who ply at the stairs at the lower end of the Canebiere Street (the head of the harbour), when one might so much easier E 50 THE CANEBIERE. walk on board! besides the usual passport, and "permit" nuisance, which our consuls are so improperly allowed to countenance, by deriving an additional fee from the imposition ; in short, they (our consuls and the police) play into each other's hands, to add, wantonly, one would think, to the inevitable disgust of travelling on the continent. December 8th. The weather for this last week has been constant sunshine, and just cool enough to make walking pleasant. The body of the town is soon known, and the few squares and streets most fre- quented, all near the port itself. The one great street and thoroughfare most crowded, and, as a starting point, where all the great hotels and cafes are, is the Canebiere, a short, wide street, opening on the inner harbour. Of late years they have con- structed an outer harbour (hardly yet completed), of great capacity, for their increased trade, called the (De la) Goliette, close to the north of the northern fort of St. John, at the inner harbour's mouth. This outer grand harbour is very extensive, stretching to the foot of the rocky cliff of the old quarantine fort or lazaretto, removed lately to the larger Island Ratonneau, outside the Chateau tflff. The Place Royale, the Rue Paradis, and the Rue St. Ferriol, open out on the Canebiere, which, running in an easterly direction upwards, crosses the Cour St. Louis (a sort of boulevard, stretching to the ENVIRONS OF MARSEILLES. 51 triumphal arch, north), cutting the city in two, up the narrow Rue de Noailles, and upwards along the Allee Meilhan, into the new streets of the eastern suburb, every where rather up hill all round, no matter what street you may fancy to explore. The bright sun gilds and makes every thing beau- tiful. I have already talked of the great beauty of the environs of Marseilles ; that is, when from any eminence you take in the whole scene, far and near, framed by the picturesque rocky hills and mountains, four and six miles off. But when you get out of the dirty streets (as is every where the case on the continent), you find your- self in a muddy or dusty narrow road, shut in between two high stone walls ; in vain you walk a mile or two out any one suburb, you can see nothing. However, by perseverance, and by taking various omnibuses (fares 9 sous) running out of town, (their stands are chiefly in the Cour St. Louis, and near the Canebiere) to the distant villages, north to St. Louis, north-east to La Ease, south-east to St. BarnaM (all saints), and south to St. Margariteand the Prado, one manages at last to get rid of these eternal stone walls and hanging terraces. Some of the villas (bastides) are pretty enough, in their small walled gardens shaded by firs, vines, figs, and olive trees ; but grass plots and trim lawns, as with us, are of course out of the question, all such things are here very much in the rough. The 2 52 FOUNTAINS AND RESERVOIRS. most wealthy seem to keep no gardener; and at this season most of their country houses are shut up en- tirely, and left to take care of themselves. I see a good many to let and sell, and lots of inviting " lots " for sale, freehold, to build on. To be sure this is an extraordinary cold winter, but in this hot climate, where every thing during summer and autumn is burnt up, where the roads are an inch or two thick in dust, and the white rocks every where, together with stone walls, are reflecting back the sun's rays that one great blessing of life, water, is very ably aud abundantly supplied; fountains are every where spouting in the streets, and the gutters rushing beside you. The great aqueduct coming from the north (beyond the range of rocky hills in sight, sup- plied by the Durance), crossing at one spot " Roc Favoured on stupendous arches 240 feet high, much exceeding the grandeur of the " Pont du Garde ; " it is led along a canal on the summit of the northern hills of the " Aguelades," and is brought into reservoirs com- manding the highest parts of the city, in a never-failing abundance, paid for when laid on, but prodigally supplied to every body in the streets : they have re- cently made a vast covered filtering tank on the high platform near the Colonne Bonaparte. But such are the ample dimensions of this body of water, that it supplies the villas in its passage, to all M. DE CASTELANE. 53 who will be at the expense of pipes, and under certain regulations. I saw it in great profusion in the gardens of M. de Castelane, at Les Aguelades, and several of his neighbours, and at the " Chalet " tavern and garden near the village, where it is the fashion to go in parties of pleasure. This is one of the spots, a mile and half north of St. Louis, cited for its fine coup d'oeil. M. de Cas- telane (there is an omnibus up to his gate, which I missed, and went a steeple chase across under the rail- road) is quoted as one of the millionaires of the city ; he is brother to the marshal. He comes out of town every evening to his shades and cascades here ; but we should call his grounds miserably kept ; the walks, the parterres, the cascades, the flowers, a sort of negligent, weedy wildness, not quite disagreeable, by way of change, to an Englishman. They were, though so very late in the year, making hay a precious thing in this country in his meadow below his garden; through which, by the way, he very liberally allows every body to pass to and from the village beyond him. I could only get snatches of the view here, so I continued on up through the steep, dirty street of the place, to the rocks and firs half a mile beyond, to a stone bridge over the canal, whose waters, clear, deep and swift, were hurrying on to the city, well able to afford all sorts of garden fountains in its course along these hills ; here, E 3 54 CEMETERY. indeed, the view is delightful, but so it is wherever one can reach any unobstructed, rising ground. It is a bright sunny Sunday, people dressed, and many shops shut, a custom gaining ground since the renewed empire. I take a fresh ramble every day. I have just been musing, melancholy enough, about the cemetery, near the railway station, in the upper part of the town, beyond the arch (Porte d'Aix). They were bringing in some poor creature's remains, followed by a group of humble friends ; a priest and cross headed the procession till it turned aside to the <( fosse commune," where, an outward shell taken off, a plain deal board coffin was quietly slid down into the trench (filling by degrees, as is usual in the larger towns). Here we all bent our heads uncovered, while an old man, apparently the nearest relative, said a short prayer, and so an end. The priest's part of the cere- mony had previously ceased, I conclude, at some church, for he had left. The railway sweeps round this emi- nence to the north, going under the hills near the defile of " Les Egalades," under these hills runs the long tunnel I have mentioned. The front face of Marseilles is nearly north and south to the sea, every where a steep rocky shore ; a kind of indurated clay in some spots (though generally OURSONS. 55 all these hills are limestone), mixed with ocean pebbles, a conglomerate. Near the sea baths, about a mile out of town, at the circle of the Octroi, guarded at every quarter or half mile by a custom-house officer, I came out on the rocks by the beach, where a fine stream joins the sea. Here I observed several parties, ladies and gentlemen, eating a curious kind of shell-fish called " oursons" (bear's cubs), very much resembling a chesnut bur in its outward black husk, for it is not a shell, but a tough, black, prickly integument, which the fisherman cuts open, and comes at the fish, a kind of reddish lobes, like fish- row or blubber, or whatever it is; it clings to the rocks, and people eat it, they say, to give an appetite ! Oysters here are scarce and dear, which may account for this sort of queer substitute. I found it eaten all round the coast of Italy to Naples, and every port badly sup- plied with fish ; one hardly ever sees a lobster, prawn, or crab, or turbot, brill, cod, or salmon, a sort of coarse trout and whiting, and a few soles only. Besides this stream to the north of the city, there is another small river, the Garret, which, running round the eastern suburbs, joins a third, the Haonne, and falls into the sea on the south shore at the Prado, which is the fashionable drive and promenade of the town ; omnibuses go to it every half-hour, out the Rue St. Ferriol: in this southern suburb, and onto the village of St. Margarite, to the left, are said to be the most V 4 56 THE STKEETS. favoured " bastides " of the merchants. It is, indeed, less hilly near the town, though leading to the highest mountain, the Penne, and gives them more space for larger gardens ; but those very bare, abrupt hills, and bald, rocky precipices overhanging the sea, to the south of the harbour, and under the high mount of " Notre Dame de la Garde " (a thousand yards up the rocks, above the garden and Colonne Buonaparte), it is, which to me constitute the great charm of the spot. Perhaps it is that I am tired of the fat, earthy, clayey, dead level of London, and our market gardens, with our smoke and damp. Thence, for a time at least, these rugged, bare, health -breathing, lofty contrasts delight. I ignorantly wonder at the bad taste of their owners, shutting up their villas, and even their " ca- banons " of perhaps two rooms, to go and begrime themselves in the dirty narrow streets below in the city. Nor are they without smoke ; of late coal is much burned, and factory chimneys send forth their black poisons in all directions, so that more than once, when it has been rather calm, I found a tolerably thick curtain of smoke hiding half the body of the town. It was so at Lyons, and Paris itself is beginning to have its clear skies tinged. Few are interested about statistics, besides I have no data to go by, and know not a soul to ask a question of. I find this city now is said to contain 200,000 THE THEATRE. 57 souls; and, as to its commerce, one may guess it is thriving, from the outward signs of its two harbours full of shipping, and the constant coming and going of merchantmen, and by the crowds daily collected at the exchange on the Place Royale, even to overflowing, up the Hue Paradis ; other signs of opulence may be seen at the two theatres, filled nightly. The grand theatre has an opera every other night. I went to see " Moise " (Rossini's) excellently done in every way. The singing, the dresses, the ballet, and the orchestra of eighty to ninety musicians ! equal to our own Queen's theatre ; the band more numerous ! This is a very large, handsome house, and well filled by a well-dressed audience. I looked round the premiere circle and private boxes in search of an English face ; I think there must have been a few, though our young men abroad, by letting their beards grow, &c., make them- selves doubtful at a distance ; yet I could detect here and there one of ourselves, by a certain affected car- riage, a want of repose! and a too marked use of the opera glass. Don't let us fancy our manners are not observed, and severely criticised by the Continent ; we are certainly not conspicuous for ease or grace ; our constant affectation of some sort at home contrasts very lamely abroad in loquacious bad French or Italian ; an incessant puerile bustle and curiosity, and a straining after originality, much better let alone, as an "original" 58 BAD FKENCH. is always said in contempt of any one in France. The sooner we learn to be very quiet, and say very little, the better. A professor here remarked, that the " institute " were indeed very good-natured to sit so long patiently under the boring of a certain law lord's bad French, and most uninteresting matter; but this is of a very great original, who wanted to be a lord and a French citizen at the same time ! Another sign of prosperity here is the total absence of beggars, begging is indeed forbidden, but I do not see such rags, such utter reckless destitution, in any of the narrow meaner streets, or the more lonely suburbs, as among ourselves; indeed I have not seen a single being in rags, or unmistakeably a beggar. This sets me to thinking on that line of Pope's about govern- ments : " Whate'er is best administered, is best." Here is an active, unmistakeable comment on the scribbling of the age among ourselves, of ten thousand brilliant, but very worthless speeches in " both hovses." In spite of various wars, civil wars, changes of dynas- ties, in spite of much ignorance, much hot-headedness, much religious superstition, and even, worst of all, much scarcity this winter, both in bread and wine, here is a land, whose government we affect to despise or pity, that BEGGARS. 59 has infinitely more reason to despise or pity us ! They retain at least the solid good to the poorest creature; they have enough to eat, and are decently clothed ; their police courts drag to light nothing approaching the dire distress, nor the excessive, heartless brutality of our lowest classes. What signifies diversity of ignorant or prejudiced opinions ! It is indeed high time for us to be awake to facts, our opinions would be too ridicu- lous were they not too melancholy, but we love our opinions, we live on and enjoy them : very well mean- time " clothes, food, and fire" for the multitude becomes every day a more and more serious question, only helped a little of late by the tide of emigration. Crime is multiplied even by the very laws made to redress it. Beggars swarm in our streets, beset our doors; the children of our back slums and blind alleys, left to run wild, pour out and commit all sorts of petty mischief, besides their noise, quite unchecked by the police, who stalk about holding familiar conversations with pot- boys, maid servants, or with the knots of idlers hanging about our taverns and gin palaces, where there can be no doubt they are too often treated by the most good for nothing characters, and made safe! It is now the middle of December, and though warm in the sun occasionally, yet it is oftener very cold and wet. To-day I attended a lecture, very thoroughly and well given or rather a good honest lesson by the professor of 60 LECTURES. Arabic here, M. de Salles. There were however only five in his class, the government rather discouraging it, though, indeed, if ever useful, it must be now the empire includes Algiers, besides so much of the trade with the East and the African shores. It lasted an hour and a half. (There is no university, but professors give lec- tures in philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, appointed and paid by government.) From thence to the police court, where, up behind the town hall (hotel de ville), and close to the cathedral, is one of the courts of the " Palais Imperial de Justice." This office corresponds essentially with our London police offices, and as it is nearly the same all over France, I will briefly describe it. At the farther end of a large pannelled room, on a raised platform, the president and two assistant judges, with their black caps and gowns (entering from a door at their end), took their seats behind their desks ; on their right on one side sat the clerk and assistant, on their left the deputy attorney-general, or avocat for the crown, who generally explained, and allowed nothing essential in law to be overlooked, for or against the prisoners. In front of the judges, below them on the floor, was a sort of counter the front of it a seat for the accused, after their interrogation or plea standing. Behind this counter stood an avocat for the defence, in answer, where retained, to whatever the attorney for the crown insisted on. POLICE CO.UBT. 61 Several avocats, in their caps and gowns, came in and out, and several gensdarmes. Benches with backs occupied nearly half the room behind, and a further good space was densely crowded by the standing audience. The poorer classes were equally admitted to the benches, where, on the left hand, the various prisoners sat among their friends and others concerned, the witnesses and principals being often mixed with the mere spectators. Where the crown did not prosecute, the plaintiff was first called by the clerk, repeated by an active personage in a black gown, the Huissier ; but an officer in more authority, and of more consequence than our beadles. He kept "silence," put people in their seats, and others, when too full, out of the court, &c., handed in papers, explained to the women, &c. At two o'clock the judges were announced, and took their seats. The plaintiff as well as defendant is addressed by the presi- dent, asked their names, their profession, their age, their residence, and the prisoner or defendant if ever he has been " condemned." He is then told to relate the facts, which done, he is told to resume his seat. I forget that, previous to the complaint or defence, both parties, as they stand alternately in front of the judge, are reminded that they are there to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, to which they are told to raise their hands and swear ! They answer, (< out, je le 62 FORM OF JUSTICE. jure" extending their uplifted right hand. After the accusation, and the plaintiff has retired to his seat, the accused is called, and in the same way told to tell his story. To both parties the president, and even the attorney, occasionally make remarks as they proceed if too prolix, or if contradictory or absurd clearing the case of obscurity, &c. The accused is then told to sit down (in front, on the prisoners' seat), a pause takes place, the judges consult for a moment, or the president asks a question of the attorney, if anything obscure or contradictory to the written evidence, or he asks either party for a further explanation, for or against them, refer- ring to the Code Napoleon (that blessing to the nation!) ; he pronounces sentence in the form, " attendu que" &c, If a simple case of theft or ill conduct, resisting the police, drunkenness and threats, &c., they were con- demned to a week's or a month's prison ; boys under 1 6 to the house of correction for five years ! two cases for stealing five francs from a little girl (who gave her evi- dence wonderfully clear and well, at the, to her, awful tribunal, as she stood in front of the president, and all eyes on her) ; in another case for stealing rabbits from a woman, so that these lads will be corrected, and made honest men of, instead of being sent to prison, as ours are, just long enough to harden and make them ten times worse. Most of the cases were quickly despatched two, TREATMENT OF CASES. 63 however, were of more consequence : a gentleman was complained of as threatening the harbour master, to provoke him to a duel ; in this case, after the accused was heard, the attorney pleaded warmly for the crown against him, while his barrister replied in mitigation much more at length. The whole thing seemed trivial enough; a slight push had been given by the lieutenant of the navy ; his opponent (on the stairs at his office- door) had called him a " lache" our "coward," and dared him to follow him to the street. There was a longer consultation between the judges, the president hesitated ; at length the defendant was told to stand up, and the judge, addressing him, began with the con- stant formula, " attendu que vous avez," &c. " la cour vous condamne " to a month's imprisonment. This seemed to me severe. In one case, where a young man had no passport, and could not give a clear account of himself, though he had done nothing wrong, and was working about whenever he could get a job, he was condemned to a week's prison, and told meantime to write to his village or to somebody who might know something about him. Two young men were condemned as idle vagabonds, hanging on their poor relations, to a week's prison, with a strict injunction to take to better ways. They had taken some trifle from a cart, not exactly a theft. Their mothers came in front in tears, as did indeed the mothers of the boys, and they 64 FRENCH JUSTICE. were listened to patiently, and answered mildly. In one case, where a working man had behaved rudely to a Commissaire de Police, who had detained his passport for some reason, he was condemned to a month's prison, the prison, by the way, is in the same building as the court house, the temporary one at least. In all this there is nothing but what one sees at home in our own police courts, except the mixture of pleading, the robes, and the greater ceremony. French justice is condemned among us for sifting the truth too closely; on the other hand, what can be so absurd, so utterly silly, as warning accused parties not to implicate themselves! as if on purpose to thwart the ends of justice, and puzzle the clearest evidence. Thence the monstrous verdicts so often given with us against the clearest facts or rather the original clear evidence be muddled, twisted, and obscured till at last the jury can make neither head nor tail of it, and the greatest villains are acquitted, and let loose afresh on the town. In London this imbecile system gets more mischievous and more dreadful every day ; hardly a day passes that our daily papers have not to comment on these imbecile and " most lame conclusions." Some- times the judge, sometimes the jury, indeed our juries get so bad, that the " TIMES," which never wants for that strong male sense which seizes on the most probable or true side of any mixed question, has more than once FRENCH JUSTICE. 65 lamented the power of our ignorant or prejudiced juries returning verdicts against the plainest evidence, against facts, against probability ; in the same way as some of our judges have directed and given as extraordinary sentences. However, such is the inextricable con- fusion and self-contradiction of our laws, that both parties find an excuse in their endless obscure labyrinths. Considering that this is supposed to be the most turbulent city in France, next to Lyons, there was another feature in this police court, filled by the poorer classes, worth noting. They were all decently dressed, prisoners and all ; all behaved with the utmost decorum, all spoke clearly, and to the pur- pose ; and, as in the case of the gentleman who had threatened the harbour master, whatever we may think of the severity of some of the sentences, not a word was uttered by the suffering party. One equal law (good or bad) was dealt, in form and in substance, to high and low. After all, the consequences might have been very serious, had the lieutenant waived his right of appeal to the laws, and followed his man to the street or the field; with us no gentleman would have been even fined, much less imprisoned ; but have simply given security not to repeat the hostile threat for six months or a year. In French towns all the regulations, all acts and gene- ral public decisions, are in the name of the mayor ; the F 66 COUNTRY KAMBLE. prefect, though a superior authority, is only politically so, connected with the Home Secretary. I see an order issued to the bakers (on an understood arrangement) to have ready, 10,000 kilogrammes (20,000 Ib.) of bread, to be distributed to the poor, Christmas or New Year's Day, instead of the usual cakes or presents to customers, called pompes, which, it is presumed, their wealthier patrons will be too happy to give up, for once, this severe and scarce winter. We are in some sort familiar with France and Italy, with their towns, their manners, their customs ; but not only every ten and twenty years things materially change, but in fact we really know very little about the matter. Any man might usefully write a volume of Marseilles as it is, so little do we know about it. I am asked if I have been to this church, seen this or that picture: no ; I see none of the very obvious, oft de- scribed, cut and dried sights. I ramble about the wharfs, the shores, the nearest hills, watch the water- courses, gather wild thyme on the hill sides. " I know a bank where the wild thyme grows ! " ay, beyond the Cabot, a hamlet a mile beyond the village St. Marguerite, where a kind 'bus put me down in the mud, and where, as at all their cabarets, " On sert a boire et manger; " but I did not trouble them. On this road, which here winds through these beauteous mountains to the town of La Cassis, I followed a charm- RURAL RETIREMENT. 67 ing watercourse newly made, to supply more rising bastides in this quarter ; and plots of ground inclosing, at the foot of these hills, freehold for sale. To get a good look at the plain and city I left three or four miles behind me I went up a hill to the right, whose summit is crowned by a small chapel (St. Joseph's I think) ; not that I shall tediously dwell on beautiful views, they are multiplied at every step ; the immense network of stone walls and inclosures making the distances mixed with dark clumps of firs, all the richer. I filled my pockets with sprigs of this universal sweet thyme, and fancied, here, in some little nook, I could be content in a tiny cabanon to pass what remains to me of declining life far, far from the heart burnings, trifling distinc- tions, contumelies, miseries, and nonsenses of our West End ! of our modern England ; the clack and scandal of our villages, or the second-hand airs of our genteel watering-places; where no man must build or possess anything not under the ground rent of lord this or that, or squire this or that ; all with us so careful to let go no inch of their many miles of manor. But the weaknesses, the follies, the clack of these villages, of these kind neighbours, are, mayhap, still the same done into French ! not a doubt of it softened of some of our extra-sectarian acerbity ! but one might here shut them all out by a good high freehold wall ! and commune only with this sweet thyme and the hum of F 2 68 LIVING AT MARSEILLES. its summer bees; drink in the smile of this laughing landscape, or dwell on the ripple of the blue waters ; which, clear as crystal, wash yon shores; easily reached by a mile and a half's walk, or round by the walled roads in a little coupe and pet nag, which would serve to run in and out of town with, to market, or to an opera or concert now and then, and perhaps, to bring to one some not too mighty friend, who would not eat one's dinner with that supercilious and critical mockery only known amongst us modern English, pleasantly shown off in the pages of Punch, or certain of our weekly and monthly novelists ! One would think we English are the most hollow, shallow, interested, selfish, affected, foolish race of people just now in this world. Where are our ten thousand virtues ! Oh ! we have them all too ; the difficulty is got rid of when we confess we are so excessively inconsistent never a week or a day together the same thing. Marseilles is called dear; house rent is, and shows a rising wealth. It is not a land of butter and milk, yet both can be had very tolerable and very reasonable, the butter not very good, the milk chiefly supplied by goats one sees in flocks in the streets and environs, tended by their goatherds, even as in the most rural mountains. There is great plenty of fine poultry, delicate lamb and mutton the smallest legs I ever saw, and vegetables and fruit of all kinds, all at a moderate rate, much less CAF^S. 69 than the same thing in England anywhere, or even in Paris or some of the northern towns. There are several well supplied markets prolonged into the streets, in the French way, on each side under slight sheds or huge umbrellas. Chestnut roasters and boilers abound, and women selling bits of coloured sugar-candy in trays under the trees of the leading avenues or te cours" and the Canebiere, which, together with the northern quays or harbour side, is always crowded. No French city, even the smallest, is without its gay cafes ; but here amongst dozens, are two in the Canebicre, which would be remarkable even in Paris : the Cafe de rUnivers for its paintings, mirrors, classic figures, and gilding ; and the Cafe Turc, which is one mass of mirrors and rich gilding, ceiling and all, reflecting its customers a thousand-fold in every direction. All the cafes are full of an evening, without the least distinction of rank. Privates can't afford it ; but corpo- rals and sergeants of the garrison, carters, people in blouses, country peasants, small shop-keepers and their wives sit mixed with merchants and gentlemen of al] kinds of pretensions. One is smothered, indeed, in a cloud of smoke \ for every body smokes, in doors and out of doors. It grows quite a madness you rarely ever see a man without a cigar or a pipe in his mouth. I find I must learn to smoke in my own defence! But here they take snuff too, men and women. I was told r 3 70 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. that some of the women even eat snuff! We hear so very little of Marseilles, that my dwelling on a few superficial things concerning it may be excused ; we in England have but a confused idea of its being the very hotbed of sanguinary revolutions, with an unruly, unscrupulous, wretched population ! I find it the most decent, orderly city possible ; the working classes salute you on the slightest occasion, people universally wish each other good day, and salute each other getting in and out of their omnibuses. In all the mixtures and crowds of the quays and the fair now going on, I have not seen a single instance of quarrelling nor a drunken person, the only exception was yesterday and, ah me ! an English sailor ! Every costume, men and women decently dressed, and the great majority comfortably ; no where any token of hunger unsatisfied. The city I should say, like all French towns, is well and most impartially governed by the prefect and the mayor, who stand out in a position which does not allow of either idle indifference to their duties, or that ignorant selfishness which marks the direction of the most urgent affairs of our municipal system ; where nobody is ac- countable to anybody ; where one sees nothing whatever done, except by private individuals for their own exclu- sive benefit. It certainly with us beautifies and im- proves in some sort as far as it goes ; but there is no wise and general direction for the public good, nor any IMPROVEMENTS. 71 one man of education, taste, and enlightened views, to direct things. Our noblemen and gentry quite ignore country towns ; they drive in and drive out, with no more concern or interest in them, than if they were Timbuctoos, without the curiosity. Not that French cities advance rapidly in improve- ments, as there is the most pinching economy in all the city rates ; some of those not wise, the octroi for instance ; but there is a most rigid account kept of all moneys raised, the salaries of all public officers are on the most economical scale, and much is done on very limited means. Here of late, the outer harbour, of immense magnitude and benefit ; the shifting of the Lazaretto, many bridges and roads in the environs ; and above all, the grand aqueduct, bringing the waters of the Durance through the whole city. The arches of the Roc Favoure are stupendous, a work worthy of antiquity ; it far sur- passes indeed the Pont de Garde. Whatever is done, is done with good taste, perfectly scientific, and of an admirable solidity. Their grand sewer, now in agitation, round the inner harbour, will no doubt be carried out ; in the mean time, there is a very strict regulation in such things. Nothing that can possibly be prevented, is allowed to defile this precious piece of water; one may imagine, literally covered by ships and floating vessels as it is, how much impurity it must suffer ; no current or tide helps it, or F 4 72 CLIMATE. but in a very trifling degree. There is a canal inside the Fort St. John, at its mouth, leading to La Goliette harbour outside, for the coasters to pass to and fro ; but too far from the upper end to make any perceptible cleansing current. Workmen are constantly blasting the rocks away from the harbour side, and sea face, gaining more ground where it is so precious, among the mercantile warehouses and docks on the south side ; and this same limestone is a inine of wealth for building purposes. No doubt the leading people here are quite alive to the imperious necessity for the most stringent sanitary regulations; so that however one may be annoyed by the street sides, (according to French cus- tom from time immemorial, and as there are no outlets, so there are no sewers ;) at least, the most offensive impurities are carted beyond the suburbs. However, the streets are nowhere kept so clean as they ought to be, in spite of a good regulation for sweeping before their doors the first thing of a morning. After all, in travelling to the south, whether in France, Spain, or Italy, one catches at a glance all their advantages and disadvantages ; of climate, their manner of living and of government; at least as we should feel them, much of it nor this nor that. How is it possible to speak positively as a truth of one or the other, since such things must remain for ever a matter of doubt and dispute ! We, at a distance, envy them DESPOTISM. 73 their sun, their vines, their magnificent remains of antiquity, their beautiful mountain distances, their lighter taxes much of this charm flies on a nearer approach. The summers are to us intolerably hot and oppressive, myriads of insects, flies, and mosquitos, tor- ment one night and day ; the whole country, except along their watercourses, is burnt up ; there are no parks, few cool shades of nature, no lawns, no gardens ; not a thing we consider a luxury or comfort ; their roads everywhere smothered with dust, for none are ever watered, not even in the environs of their cities. They dance of a Sunday and at fetes in a thick layer of fine choking dust ! dancing on a green is unheard of. With what longing do we look back on our deserted lawns and flowers ! our especial comforts and luxuries in doors and out ; no more felt and understood in any part of the Continent, than fifty years ago, or a hundred and fifty. Of our own government, whether it helps or hinders us is not so much the question as the provoking passport nuisances abroad ; as galling as it is futile and absurd. The centralisation and despotism we shudder at other- wise, we find everywhere conducive to the general good, in its vigour and impartiality ; their poor are no where so very poor as our own, nor so miserably degraded, while our own individual freedom dwindles to no general good in any one great undertaking or amelioration ; all 74 JOURNEY TO TOULON. our great wants as a people are, from year to year, left untouched ; and the enormous wealth and energy of the empire frittered away on nepotism, jobs, partialities, and monopolies. If a great pride in, and innate love of one's country did not make one feel indignant at such strange perversities in our rulers, it would be easy to join the richer flock of geese who fatten on the general common, bare as it is pecked ! who hiss at all animals, not of themselves. CHRISTMAS EVE. The weather though fine grows very cold: it freezes. I ran off this morning to secure a seat in one of the four or five diligences running twice daily to Toulon, about 40 miles (70 kilometres); at all the offices but a single place left, and in the worst part, the rotonde. Anxious to see as much of the mountainous country as possible between these great neighbouring cities, I avoided night travelling. This Toulon diligence sets off punctually from the Cour St. Louis at half-past eleven, well packed; seven of us in the rotonde ; it was meant for six small persons, but a good woman contrived to have her little daughter of ten or eleven years old on her lap, into the bargain, with various bundles. The fare is very moderate only four shillings; baggage not weighed, which I was surprised at, as well as nothing being ex- pected by the conductor. We leave Marseilles passing to the south east, by the village of St. Loup ; the road not ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 75 bad, the country and views varying every moment, delightful rocky mountains everywhere framed in the picture ; along meadows, vineyards, stone walls and water- courses. We relayed pretty often. At Aubonne, a good large village, we begin to creep upwards to one of the several mountain passes on this road, a pretty long but not steep ascent. They have lately established an electric telegraph on this road ; the fir poles, of about twenty-five feet high, are in some places giving way to the tension of the wires, where the angle was too acute ; at such points it would have been easy to have set up stouter poles; some of those giving way already were braced to the nearest tree or rock by supporting wires ; but it is evident this oversight must be made up for, and at double trouble and expense. This, the only highway connecting the coastline between the two cities, has been of late years much bettered in its zigzags of ascent and descent, by viaducts, bridges, and blasting away rocks round some of the most difficult places. All this coast round the Mediterranean is mountainous, with very short intervals of plain, till beyond the gulf of Spezzia it lowers to the valleys of the Arno. I was not sorry that we made no stop beyond changing horses, anywhere: now and then, in the two steepest passes, two or three additional horses were put to (" renforts ") ; but the ascent was nowhere steeper than 76 CUGES. what we should trot up or down ; in France, the least rise in the road brings the horses to a walk. One might be eloquent on the beauty and grandeur of these mountains, were not eloquence itself tiresome sometimes. What exquisite pictures for amateur painters, if they could set up their easel, by the road side, or perched on some gray limestone rock, among the pines, the olives, and wild thyme of the hills ! All the lower country as we came along is, however, well wooded in oak, elm, chestnut, &c., but particularly the track of the pretty river Olhonne, along the banks of which our road lay as far as Aubonne. From the top of the first defile we look down on the plain and town of Cuges. Here, for the first time in my life, I see them culti- vating capers ; in small conical mounds, much as sweet potatoes are in America. In all this route there is a most careful industrious husbandry on all sides ; no half acre of ground is anywhere lost, up to the vertical bare rocks ; in terraces, on the slopes where the vine peeps out through their loose stone walls ; between the rows of vines, particularly on the plains, they sow a strip of wheat or other grain, sometimes Indian corn or vege- tables. The vines themselves, in their stumpy knotted stems, look of an everlasting age ; self-supporting, and not staked as in the north of France ; their last summer shoots, now trailing bare on the ground, are cut down TOULON. 77 at different periods during the winter, and made up into small faggots to light fires with. Beyond Cuges, which is not quite half way, we have another long ascent along a very rich picturesque country dotted with farms and hamlets, but above all made interesting by the more distant mountains which increase in magni- tude. Five miles short of Toulon, at Olioles, we descend through their closing defiles, with the rocks close above the road for hundreds of feet ; but here night closed in on us, so that I could not make out the immediate vicinity of Toulon ; all however partaking of the same features. We did not arrive till after seven o'clock ; they repeated fifty times most confidently that we should be there by five ; but at coach and steamboat offices they seem determined never to tell the truth ; they knew very well we should be two hours longer, as a matter of course. At a hamlet on the road we were asked for our passports by a gendarme ; and at the gate of the town were made to give them up, to be sent for next day to the police office. This is the beginning of the passport tyranny, which goes on getting more intense and provoking up to its perfection of insolence at Naples. We were driven into a little square, "Place au Foin," bordered with trees, and boasting a rustic foun- tain, crown'd gracefully by intertwined dolphins, to the coach office, next door to the (said to be) best hotel, 78 HOTEL. the " Croix de Malte." M. Castan, the landlord, speaks English very fairly, but does not understand it much, as he has never been in England. This hotel is extra French. Here all we English put up, recommended by Murray's book ; and here come a good many of the French naval officers ; as to the George at Portsmouth. The house is very dark; bright as the sun is, one cannot make out the various maps and sketches hung up along the low entrance, nor read or write in the salle a manger, if there were any means or appliances for such a thing; but along the whole length of its two low dining-rooms, as usual in France, the various restaurant and table d'hote tables are always laid. A sunshiny and bitter cold Christmas Day passes off dull enough, without even the satisfaction of a good fire or good dinner. The landlord has been connected with forges or ironworks, and to my surprise tells me that it is a mistake to suppose their iron-masters opposed to free trade ! that on the contrary they wish it. This, however, is certainly contradicted in all reports on the subject, and forms the chief excuse for the French government's exclusion of our iron and metals ; those excessive and killing duties are however relaxing a little, in the same way as ours on their wines. Toulon is rather a small town; strictly confined on three sides within its fortifications, opening out only on the harbour face in a straight line of half a mile, on a THE QUAY. 79 clean, well paved, broad quay ; at the north west end of which is the arsenal or dockyard. About the middle of the quay is the townhall ; and an old man of war, the " Finisterre? moored ; fitted up as ah office for certain naval authorities ; a kind of receiving-ship, a temporary violon or lock up too for sailors, and as a mark beyond which, towards the dockyard, merchantmen and coasters must not make fast, load, or unload. At this spot there is a handsome bronze colossal statue of the genius of the sea, pointing with a fine determined expression to seaward. On the pedestal are various figures in relief, expressive of commerce, and tablets with the names of distinguished navigators and inventive geniuses ; among others I observed Watt, Davis, Cook, Drake, Dampier, &c., others again stretching into the remote and classic ages of Greece and Egypt. This sunny quay is full of sailors (men of war's men) just now the three decker screw " Napoleon" (flush upper deck) has part of her men quartered in the dockyard and they outnumber the others. A frigate-steamer, the Montezuma, starts to-day for Senegal ; an old ad- miral and two or three other naval friends come down to bid the captain farewell, and his lady, I think ; kisses on the cheek are returned all round ; the men toss up their oars, of a double-banked cutter, and the coxswain gives them the time with his call ; the third whistle is "give way;" all the sailors are neatly and exactly 80 SCREW STEAMERS. dressed in blue jacket and trowsers, the shirt down over the collar, with anchor buttons, and black glazed hats with the name of their ship on the band, the ends hanging Jack-fashion behind ; all this they have taken from us, but it is much more precise and regular. Their sailor " cannoniers " have a blue tunic or frock coat, their number and name worked in red. A large frigate, the " Urania," has just anchored ; her captain has come on shore in a large double-banked yawl or cutter, sixteen oars ; the men in white shirts with the collars trimmed with blue stripes; some lady relative was sitting waiting his return in the stern sheets, made more ample in its dimensions than any our frigates possess. This boat must have been at least twenty-five feet keel, and from eight to nine feet broad. They are about to lengthen one of the line of battle ships after our fashion, and have a screw fitted ; I doubt very much the wisdom of lengthening men of war for steam ; to say nothing of the enormous expense, as sea boats they are made weaker and spoilt ; what they may possibly gain in speed is hardly a set-off to make up for it, or for a requisite handiness; besides, a man-of-war, or any vessel, should have other qualities more essential than mere swiftness. I observe on our parts a general tendency towards long, low, narrow structures for steamers ; in a heavy sea-way it is the most helpless and unsafe build pos- MEN-OF-WAR'S MEN. 81 sible; even in the smoothest river navigation, if they gave them flatter floors and more beam it would be infinitely better both for speed and safety : all our new iron boats are detestable ; besides, their incapacity, their speed is no great things. In violent contrast with the general well-dressed and trim appearance of the French men-of-war's men, I was sorry to see, where indeed one would least expect it, the jolly-boat men (of a schooner yacht at anchor a little way off) unshaved, unwashed any how, in dirty banyans, as bad as if in a collier clearing coals. Thefast gentleman owner, and his lady, a fine tall girl, stepped into his boat, just as the French man-of-war boat pushed off. This, on a bright festival, Christmas Day ! We are the most anomalous creatures on earth! It put me in mind of an eccentric lord some years ago (looking, with his thin cane-coloured beard, very much like good master Slender), going about our watering places, out of his yacht, dressed up like his men, in a frowsy red woollen banyan, and cap to match. But surely, however such poor distinction may go down at home, we should be careful about all sorts of affec- tations abroad! Our yachtmen are generally smart enough. Here everything is naval and military, much as at our Portsmouth ; but much more decent, orderly, and strictly regulated than with us. All the Government 82 ST. MANDKIEB. sailors uniformly and well dressed ; no drunkenness, no quarrelling; nothing to be seen in the streets to shock the most delicate sense of good manners and propriety. Such indeed was the case at Marseilles. Here the streets, however, are kept much cleaner, and lively streams rush down the gutters from the fountains in the leading thoroughfares the streets, "Royale," "La Fayette," and " Chaudronier." I am often asked by the little fellows who clean boots and shoes in the streets (as is the fashion every- where in France), if I want a commissionaire to go of any errand. Here the girls clean shoes on the wharf to me a new picture of female industry. The watermen who ply on the quay are very civil, and well regulated ; their boats strong and large, with one lateen sail. These boats, like those at Mar- seilles, are very high and broad, not easily upset or swamped, with a row of paving stones for ballast ; but such is their solidity and width, that it would be very difficult to upset them under sail; and, though three times as large as our wherries, it is remark- able how well a single man manages them ; always keeping his mast stepped, and yard up, ready to make sail to the breeze, which generally prevails in the outer harbour. I was recommended to see St. Mandrier, hospital and forts, on an outer point about four miles off, across PATRON VINCENT. 83 the mouth of the outer harbour. The wind was pretty fair, but blowing rather hard ; so by the time we got to the left-hand fort opposite the outer guard-ship (vessels entering pass close to, and are hailed by, this guardo, a corvette), opening the harbour's mouth, which appears land-locked from its centre, we found the sea rather rough, as we cut through it, sending the spray over us. In addition to this salt wetting, it came on to rain ; so that, what with a December coolness in addition, I gave up the pleasure of it ; we put about and returned. I was glad to find no permit required ; my man answered for me, passing the guard-house on the north wall of the inner harbour. This trip, which lasted nearly an hour, cost but a franc, which is the regulated fare by the hour, not that I specified by the hour ; and the water- man was well content. So much for sensible, clear regulations; the good, whatever it may be, (and the pleasure,) is enhanced on both sides. Besides, in lighting on " Patron Vincent " (my waterman), I found an intelligent fellow, not a bad sea cicerone. He pointed out various things to me: the " Murion " frigate (now the flag-ship), which brought back Napoleon from Egypt ; the convict hulks (they have 4000 " fo^ats " here, chiefly in the dock- yard); showed me the fort on the opposite side of the harbour's mouth on the hill, where early in life Napoleon distinguished himself as captain of artillery ; G 2 84 CAPE SICIE. completing his battery in a single night. It appeared to me too distant to be very dangerous to men-of-war going in or out, but appearances are not always to be trusted. Looming in the distance beyond this tongue of land, the famous Cape Sicie is seen, a cape, during our long naval war with France, abhorred of British sailors, from the frequent adverse gales off it, (our fleet watching the Toulon fleet.) I must try and give some general idea of this great sea- port. The town itself, within its bastions, is on a flat, which sweeps round the harbour westward, forming the bay ; but the mountains rise immediately at the back of it, almost in a semicircle, very grand and bold in their outline, and rocky and sterile enough ; supplying inexhaustible quarries : for about a mile in width towards them, it is full of villas, gardens, vineyards, and country houses, still on the rise, till meeting the small pines which everywhere grow at the bases of the higher ranges of rock. The city itself confined by its forti- fications is small, and long suburbs have sprung up on the roads east and west ; they talk of throwing down the old walls, and taking extended lines, now much required. Most travellers, who will give themselves the trouble, see the great lion here, the dockyard ; but the thing is hedged round with so much formality, that it requires A PLANTON. 85 some patience. The naval officers here, and indeed wherever I have met them, show no wish to be civil or assist one to anything ; they are not impolite, but they only speak to each other. Here, in this hotel, day after day, I sit near them at dinner; but though I am evi- dently a stranger, and English, not one has opened his mouth, nor can I well break the ice. To see the dockyard a permit is required : given by the captain at the " etat major " with the additional clog of a " planton " or petty officer, to show you about, and to expect a fee. It rained yesterday in the afternoon, after I got the said permit, which, when I presented it, was refused at the gate ; being without my bear- leader or planton, who did not choose to come before half-past twelve ; when, as it rained, I consulted my own feelings, and did not return to the office. To-day I betake myself once more to the Place d'Armes where the office is, and find I must have a new permit, the planton annoyed at my not returning in the rain yes- terday. So cap in hand, once more to his excellency, the triton of the minnows and sea captain. Talking to his sea friends (other captains), he signs a second, and in due time I get in, but the best part of the day lost. My clog of a man began telling me that two and two made four, I begged him just kindly and simply to tell me if we came across anything new, but in short, there was nothing new. All very well and G 3 86 THE DOCKYARD. neatly arranged ; and the warehouses, lofts, rope-walk, building slips, admirably solid. The work-shops, steam machinery, forges, all well adapted to their various purposes. The armoury ingeniously arranged in pistols, muskets, daggers, &c. ; but without the minie rifle. So of the mast-houses, masts, yards, tops, spars. The rope manufacture is by steam, and of great extent. The model-room had nothing very striking ; all the models old, and much entirely gone by. In the carving branch, nothing new ; some of the old ornaments, how- ever, fine, and in the best taste. No monstrosities in wood by way of figure-head, such as one sees too often laboriously deforming the cutwater of our men-of-war. But the French are not so profuse of late years of their beautiful figure-heads and carvings. Iron tanks, chain cables, parks of guns, sixty and eighty pounders (paixhans), shot in piles, &c., ranged on the north-west side of the great basin, which has room for all their fleet, great and small : several two and three deckers and frigates lay in tiers, the steamers ranged on the outer face ; all large fine vessels. Among the men-of- war, I went on board of but one, the Napoleon, screw, of 960 horse power. Sailor sentinels, bayonet in hand, stopped us, till leave was obtained of the lieu- tenant on deck. The engine-room seemed to me much too confined, but they are at this moment making alterations. One cannot judge of a man-of-war in dock NATURAL FEATURES. 87 or repairing ; the decks lumbered, and everything temporarily displaced : most things done afloat seem copied originally from us. They talk, as of a thing decided, enlarging the town by razing the present curtains and bastions, and renewing them in a more extended semicircle. It is certainly much wanted, as its extent is insig- nificant for a place of so much importance ; and how magnificent its situation ! It seems to me impossible to exaggerate the beauty and excellence in every way of the sites of Marseilles and Toulon, both backed and surrounded by noble mountains, forming inexhaustible quarries for every possible building. Both cities are supplied in profusion by an over- flowing abundance of sparkling, clear fresh, water ; Toulon, from springs from the rocks of the mountains in the immediate vicinity. The land for miles round the shore is fruitful enough, on its rocky bed, for all the purposes of country seats and kitchen gardens ; without that damp and exhalation of more extended arid fatter plains and meadows, as with us. Hay and vegetables are rather scarce and dear, and inferior to ours ; but the comparison should be with our sea ports. How- ever, in the absence of grass and hay, their horses have plenty of corn of all sorts. Even in this cold scarce winter, it is pleasant to see the good care they take of their cattle. G 4 88 CHAP. III. QUIT TOULON. DRAGU1NAN. CANNES. RICH ENGLISH AND THEIR VILLAS, INCLUDING LORD BROUGHAM'S. ANTIBES. THE FRONTIER ON THE VAR. NICE. WE have all heard so much of the sunny warmth of Hyeres and its islands, though only twelve miles off on this same rocky mountainous coast, and in sight from any of these hills, that no wonder one fancies impossibilities ; that the cold here and the discomfort of the hotels will begot rid of. The magnificent Hotel of the Golden Isles ("" les lies d? Or "), is spoken of as something very fine and comfortable what a contrast it must be to this Croix de Malte, where one vegetates under the iron and copper rule of a most abominable cook, and sulky or careless waiters. So, in spite of the civil blandishments of the landlord, I paid my bill, and took my place in one of the four diligences which run between the two places daily, for four o'clock. At these hotels they never tell you anything going on in the town ; in vain you ask about what may be doing, or to see ; they never know till too late, or after you have stumbled on the fact your- self. I did not like going so late in the day : by chance, at the Porte d'ltalie, I found a small diligence putting to THE GOLDEN ISLES. 89 its horses at noon ; there was but a single place left be- side the driver outside with a most piercing north-west wind, it freezes hard in the shade) ; but I am tired to death of freezing in Toulon, so I send for my things, forfeit my four o'clock place, and get up beside my Cocker luckily this cutting wind is in our backs; it is but a two hours' drive, going at a very slow pace. Indeed, as there are omnibuses as far la Vallette, a village a third of the way on, to walk the rest of the distance and beat this diligence ( ' a Depeche " would be no great feat. I was recommended the Hotel d'Europe by M. Castan, but it sounded very French and uncomfortable, besides I was curious and fascinated about the " Golden Isles; " and so in spite of my Jehu got down ; and he wouldn't give me my baggage, but took it on to his bureau on the place ; - as this very grand, good looking hotel is at the entrance of the town, at its west end. The landlord received me with that kind of equality-civility every- where assumed on the Continent just as if lord Some- body, or So and So, esq., at home, took it into his head to let out his rooms and keep a table at so much a day per head merely as a whim to please himself; but here all similitude ends, for nothing can be more mean or uncomfortable than a French hotel. They may live by the English for a life, but never by any chance do they stumble on, or condescend to understand, any of our 90 LANDLORDS' DEVICES. ways, our habits, our manner of living, our ideas of com- fort, our anything. I soon left the Golden Islands. The turning to ashes of the apples of the Dead Sea cannot be a greater disappoint- ment ; the only good room I saw was the salle a manger in this cold comfortless hotel, where the least possible appearance of a tiny wood-fire flickered occasionally at the further end ; the weather freezing, and the whole house exposed to the full force of the north-west rushing winds down the hill side. Wood is sold here at a most exorbitant price, and perhaps tenfold more exorbitant at these hotels. By way of compelling you to have a fire in your bed- room, they take care to have no fire anywhere else : this was one of the cunning devices of the landlord. There is a supposed salle de societe\ or drawing-room, for the company- a small room feeling like a well, where the miserable little wood-fire is lit a few minutes only before we rise from table of an evening, and evidently not meant to give the slightest particle of warmth ; as it is allowed to go out in half an hour, if one has the re- solution to sit starving before it so long. The table is thoroughly French, as they all are, though more than half the inmates are English ; and is nor bad nor good, the wine included (worth four sous the half bottle) at three francs and a half. One must eat of everything, like it or not, half cold as it is, or get no dinner at all. HYERES. 91 Thus, one begins with hot water as a soup, a bit of dry beef, next a herring or mackerel, a cutlet (each portion brought round, little more than a mouthful), then fried potatoes. Next (second course), perhaps a capon, a salad, a rice cake, an apple, a fig, cheese, and in this way one sits and fills, to dine is quite impossible. The French dine a la bonne heure, but us ! we unhappy devils driven by fate or our own restless spirits to be victimised on the Continent I by the bienveillance of the police and hotel keepers. But I forget myself, and I forget Hyeres, the delicious and rural Hyeres of the south of France, on the sunny shores of the blue Mediterranean, true, most true. The sun does shine more than in this sombre season with us under our murky canopy of smoke in London a little more than at Torquay; but I deny that it is so warm the cold is intense, every rivulet is frozen, one cannot face the wind. However, this is an unusually severe winter ; here all the oranges seen in the trees of the gardens beneath the town are frozen and spoiled, still they look pretty ; so do the poor palm trees on the little walk or place in the centre of the town, and here and there in the gardens ; it speaks of the east and of warmth ; so, too, the cactus, and a border of roses here before the hotel terrace, though frozen stiff. Hyeres is a good large town (nestled under its hill, sur- mounted by its pile of picturesque rocks, and ruins of a 92 THE SEA VIEW. chateau) of, it is said, nine or ten thousand souls. You see the sea and its islands, many miles in the distance south ; the shore is at least three miles off, beyond the plains ; which near the town is divided by stone walls and narrow wretched lanes, all mud and ruts ; and next into meadows, vineyards, pastures, and finally marsh. Indeed most of this plain is a swamp, so that at least during the winter there is no getting to the beach ex- cept by the raised bank of the little river which runs into the bay between the two salines (salt pans) or lagunes, where they make salt ; that to the right being the tongue of land running out to the Presque Isle. The sea- side itself, though pretty wild, with its cattle, sheep and goats, grazing in the border meadows, and a home- stead or two, is prettier than the intermediate space. Fishing boats come in to the little river's mouth, and a dozen or two of coasters may be generally seen at anchor near the eastern saline, or under sail in the bay. I should say at once (and they confess the fact), this extent of marsh below the town cannot be healthy, it spoils Hyeres. As to the islands seen in the horizon, nobody lives on them, beyond a few poor fishermen, &c. They lie some six or eight miles off the coast, and are not easily got at, even in summer excursions, of which they make a great display here in printed bills stuck up ; but contrive each promenade or excursion at as expensive THE TOWN. 93 a rate as possible, whether on horseback, en voiture, or by boat to seaward. The French themselves acknowledge that, as far as the town goes, no one thing is done to encourage the residence of strangers, either for health or pleasure. The streets on the hill-side are miserable, narrow alleys, ill-paved and dirty ; even the main street through the town is hardly passable beyond the "Place Royale." The little stream down the valley, brought by an aque- duct along the road, and supplying the gardens below and the washerwomen, is the only nice thing one sees as a public ornament and convenience. The houses are near- ly all old and solid, but without a single beauty or con- venience, except a few terraces facing the south, which their owners have run out from the backs of their first floors or roofs, by way of promenade for their invalid guests. This "terrace au midi" is always advertised as the one thing most attractive, nor can one be insensi- ble to the attraction most especially this cold weather. The sun is ever welcome its rays, though mid- winter, are still felt most pleasantly, with the orange trees full of their oranges looking beautiful, and a palm here and there. Here and there too the dark green of the cypress fir, and as usual the prodigality of stone walls, make a rich coup d'oeil from one's window. I speak of hills, but in fact all this part of France is mountainous, and very beautiful in the distance they are here, too, they 94 HOTEL AMUSEMENTS. come down to the shores, between distances of a few miles of plain, as it is here ; they block the way by diligences to the east ordinary travellers have to return to Toulon and thence to Draguinan (" Chef Lieu") to get at Cannes and Nice, by the high road, and common di- ligences starting daily. After two weeks' endurance, and affected cosmopolitan patience, in this the first month of this blessed year 1854, half frozen except when wrapped up in bed, I am getting rather tired of Hyeres. I confess, had my hands and feet not been so constantly benumbed, and my back be-iced, by the draughts through the wide open doors, I might have ex- tracted some amusement from some of the heterogeneous French individuals at the Hotel d'Europe, where I shifted, and where there was a kind of club, headed by a dried up demi-solde vieux ddcore colonelo. Formally introduced (paying for the same), here we sat between the smoke of two fires, the miserable fire of roots, and the fire of indefatigable pipes and cigars. Some played at cards, some billiards : at night the chief fun was putting sous on cards, as a lottery; the prizes consisting of phea- sants, snipe, ducks, teal, &c. These were the standing dishes not cooked, spread out on one of the tables. The mirth and merriment consisted in winning ; and burst out, though rarely, with surprising force. Another small room of this hotel was devoted to reading, when one could catch any papers or any fire ; both on the THE VICINITY. 95 most attenuated scale. As this was the only one in the town, an occasional Englishman came in to look at an old Galignani ; but it would be ungrateful to forget a little peppery French soi disant merchant, who kept me from being quite torpid ; he was in a constant hot argu- ment about everything with everybody ; he was particu- larly knowing about us Englis, our manners, and customs, and could say " ver well, sare," " I tank you ver mush ; " but he decided against our bif sticks as not at all equal to French ones, however, he thought better of our govern- ment and constitution. Never was there a more miserable town in so pretty a country. There are no roads anywhere, no walks, ex- cept in the mud down the lanes between stone walls, and rushing side rivulets, which divide the road, such as it is, with the deep ruts : they are never mended, or the least thing done in the town for cleanliness or even decency. There are, indeed, walks upwards to the Chateau and rock above the town, and paths lead about among the hills, scrambling along the rocks up and down ; but climbing in this way, though very pleasant, to see the views on every side infinitely varied at every step, soon tires ; and after once or twice enough. The place is anti-social. What the few English families may do, I know not ; they have it all to themselves if delightful. But were it only the marshy level which for three miles cuts off the sea from the place, I'll none of it; 96 DECK PASSENGERS. so, I get back to Toulon, preparatory to going further on, to Draguinan^ the prefecture of the department, quite out of the way among the hills; so as, round about, to get at Cannes and Nice, as I have said. Back to Toulon by half-past ten, and find no diligence starts till seven in the evening ; mean time I take a boat and pull out once more across the "petit rade " to look at the town and surrounding mountains for an hour ; my late boatman (Vincent) employed elsewhere, I take another equally intelligent. He says the Murion frigate flag guardo at the harbour's mouth, is not the veritable frigate which brought Napoleon back from Egypt. She was broken up, and this one takes her name. That the Marine Hospital, chapel, gardens, and defences at St. Mandrier, which I see outside near the western point of the outer harbour or roads, are very fine ; in fact, they occupy a large space, and are doubtless considerable. Once more on the sunny quay, I see and get into one of the little quaint steamers (such machines !) going off across the harbour to la Seym, a small town across the bay. The deck is filled by about thirty persons : the fare across four sous, not without music ; a little boy tunes up his fiddle, and sings us a romance, collects his sous, then sings a second; makes his bow and descends into the cabin to his friend a sort of cabin boy. Two men manage these boats ; with their small LA SEYNE. 97 feeble engine, they go about as fast as one might walk, perhaps five miles an hour the distance about four miles across ; the captain told me it took an hour and quarter to walk round by the road out of the town. The town of La Seyne is a great building place for their merchant ships and iron steamers ; there were six in the little square harbour, afloat and building, and three or four others on the stocks, of timber all fine vessels one for the Spaniards. This little passage steamer only remains half an hour. Later in the afternoon, I walked out of the Porte de France westward, round the new part of the dock- yard recently added, called the arsenal " Castigneau " (over the gate). It stretches about a mile along the bay to the west ; the plain west of the town is all marshy below the hills and mountains, from the defile where we come out on it by the high road at Les Olliouillesi there is an inlet or creek near the new wall western boundary of the dockyard on its banks I see they are carting earth, and forming detached mounds for forts. The workmen were coming out of the yard from work (four o'clock) in good round numbers. But it is time to take my place in the diligence so the day, though so tedious, is at length too short impressed with many ex- cellencies of this place, and a good many salient defects. To lose one's rest or sleep is nothing, but to see H 98 DKAGUINAN. nothing of the country, to me the only pleasure, as we creep along, is vexing enough. The fare to Draguinan is very moderate, seven francs, baggage included ; strictly, I believe, they could charge something, for my trunk is not so light. We walk, creep, half our way the least rise from a dead level brings a small trot to a creep. In short, the diligences imperiales always go on getting worse and worse, the farther off from Paris ; as to any assured time, it is a farce. We got to Draguinan this morning, 16th January, at eight o'clock, just thirteen hours; nearly a level road; for we avoid all hills, leaving them on either side. Were it worth while, they could easily make a railroad to the " chef -lieu " of this depart- ment of the Var. We drive into the yard of the Hotel de la Poste a villanous bad one, where we get a vile bason of cafe au lait, good bread and no butter and are told that we shall go on by the next diligence, due at ten, which comes another road direct from Marseilles. All the morning lost waiting ; at twelve nearly, it does really make its appearance. I walked about the town, which is prettily situated in its valley at the foot of picturesque hills a small, poor place, as a prefecture, but it is improving ; there is a battalion of infantry ; the band on parade strikes up as we leave the hotel. They have their Palais de Justice (assizes just begun), their gardens, Hotel de ville, theatre, jail, barracks, and all those public buildings indispensable in their chief towns ; plenty of running streams and fountains from the small FREJUS. 99 river which runs through this valley. But who ever hears of Draguinan I The French abuse it, as insuffer- ably dull, of course still, dull indeed are all their towns : this has perhaps fifteen thousand souls. The country round is very pretty though I am getting rather tired of olive trees the firs keep on the mountains; but I will not have this out of the way place abused no, only the Hotel de la Poste ; but not its pretty young landlady, whom I saw returning from morning mass, very smart and smiling. We are still little more than half way to Cannes, and go back as we came for two mortal leagues ! still not on the high road, the " route d' Italic," which we hit about three o'clock (and a very good road it is), and shortly pass through Frejus. They are planting their electric tele- graph posts ready for the wires. We were an hour and a half climbing, by very gentle ascents, zigzag, up the Estrelles mountains ; about half way down them a gendarme asks for our passports, and actually insists on seeing them at Frejus, left behind, we had been asked for them, but, more polite, the gendarme was con- tent with seeing one or two how vexatious this ab- surdity ! I always shirk it when I can; but this animal was a new broom, I conclude he was little the wiser, after delaying us ten minutes! Altogether, we did not drive into Cannes, along its level plain, till ten at night past all dining! past all remaining patience and yet was it charming to see with what good humour a young French- H 2 100 CANNES. man took it, with his pretty young wife, his newly-come little heiress, and their nurse and bonne ! This was a delightful family group both husband and wife wrapped up in their infant ! the respectful familiarity of their servants: altogether I bid them a "bon voyage," as I got down at another Hotel de la Poste, with regret ; their prospect of getting to Nice before three in the morning, excellent as the road is, very slender; and their little one and themselves, quite worn out by two nights' and days' want of rest, packed up in the " inter ieur " no trifle. I hug myself at the idea of having escaped a dread- fully severe winter at home, and in the north of France ; yet here all is cold and comfortless I have run away from good fires and carpets, to freeze on brick floors. Who is it that has written, almost poetically, of this little town of Cannes ; and the sun, and the sea, and the country round it ? But hungry, at ten o'clock at night one's patience and romance quite worn out driven to a great barrack of a Hotel de la Poste, all cold, comfortless carreau though indeed the ocean breeze is rather mild who, I say, but must have all his sunny, poetic ideas put to flight ? O, the miseries, the abominations of a French hotel ! If they grow rich by us, after years of close-fisted and very positive extortion, still they never, by any chance, get one single English idea ! not a single thing, down H6TEL DE LA POSTE. 101 to the smallest item, but remains virgin French or Italian, as perfect as in the middle ages, or a century or two ago. Here is a flagrant example ! this same Cannes. The landlord explains that they don't want fires, O no, it is only freezing! the sunny side of the house, which hardly has ever a sunny side, blocked out to the south by recent buildings our cash has erected! "No chimneys the sunny side," quoth he, " but behold," (after I have satisfied my hunger in a chilly room, on the bare carreau, on a bit of gibelotte de lievre which I hate, and not a vegetable, cold or hot,) "here," ushering me into the salle-a-manger t "here we have a fire, as you see!" the usual fire of these precious barracks of roots, heating the back of the fireplace, at which sat a solitary Scotchman, in a white neck-cloth perhaps in full dinner dress ! I forget to say this same civil landlord had previously asked me " if I had dined well!" (on the head and paw of a jugged hare, and plenty of bread !) O ! " merci" all this by the way not against the country round Cannes, its pretty sea face, and bay, its mountains in the distance, westward the Estrelies, capped by snow, and, adding to its beauty the peculiar beauty of this whole southern shore of France that is, rocky mountains, framing in various valleys and plains, fertile in olives, mulberries, figs, oranges, and grapes, striped with wheat few vege- tables or esculent plants, fewer gardens, and a rich H 3 102 ENGLISH RESIDENTS. abundance of stone walls all round their towns, roads and lanes. Half way here the cork trees begin, and though the olive, which everywhere forms the chief thing seen, is rather dull and monotonous, and not pretty as a tree, still here they are seen in great perfection, three times the size they are about Hyeres, Toulon, or Marseilles. Not only Lord Brougham, but several other rich Englishmen, smitten by the place, or by his lordship's propinquity, have, and are, building expensive villas here ; the best houses are generally occupied (as they are everywhere) by the resident English whose fortunes, spent here, operate all that one sees of recent improvements, and the better sort of new streets and new houses ; besides a new mole they have run out to shelter the west side of the harbour. The whole bay outside is horseshoe shaped abrupt mountains of the Estrelles chain west. Towards Nice the level plain, off which, sheltering the bay to the east, is seen the little Island of St. Margarite ; where 150 Arab prisoners (of Algiers) are still confined in a fort. From the ruin of an old castle on a rock over this mole, one sees the whole town and country. Lord Brougham's villa and the rest of the English houses westward, close in the suburbs their grounds, of no great extent, walled in a sort of large gardens, shaded by their fine olive trees; I see some few orange GARDENS. 103 trees, but no palms, nor any lawns. In fact, the summers of this clime burn every thing up lawns, like our green Axminster carpets, roses, geraniums, pinks, such as ours, in such beauty and infinite variety, impossible still, of course, they have roses (mostly Chinese), but nowhere does one see that constant and exquisite care or neatness in any thing only seen in dear old England. O, land of my fathers, how art thou abused ! not by me, who love thee but too well : thy sylvan shades, thy glens, thy fields, thy woods, thy thickets, lawns, and streams ; thy myths through the mists of fable ; thy sylvan shades, peopled by sha- dows of our godlike bard fairies in the train of thy loved Titania! There, there the soul melts and anon roused to anger at the lords of thy soil, at thy much cramped and abused energies ! Not so, sayest thou! where then are our gay sylvan scenes? where the garlanded May-pole, the manly Morris dance? where the games of adolescent youth? where the village dance on the village green? Yes, a flock of poor geese, tended by an ill-fed, ill-clothed little girl ! or, browsing, the skin-and-bone donkey of some ragged poacher " Our country's pride, when once destroyed, Can never be supplied ! " or idle, desperate youth, swiping in tobacco smoke at the H 4 104 ENGLISH NOBILITY, beershop, too lucky to be at last enlisted out of harm's way yes, better than the workhouse, or poaching, or rob- bing. Australia and the diggings are only for the easier few, not quite beggars, who save and turn to cash their little all, to pay their passage and leave at home the impossible refuse of the land to plague and puzzle the titled and rich few, who talk of morality and heaven ! Ye gods, how they can talk ! but they can see all this in the streets, at their gates, as they sit on their magistrate's bench to administer the law. Yes, there is plenty of law, such as it is ; it fills our jails well, and swells (as a sole revenge on aggressors) our town and country rates from which some few escape here, and all over the continent! Why not tax them for it? that would be the last and wisest of our thousand taxes good master chancellor of the exchequer ; cogitate a little on a good tax on these selfish exiles who fatten France ! I shall be well content to be included ; for I have serious thoughts of being looked down on any- where rather than at home why looked down on? why mortified, humiliated? Why? is it not intolerable to be despised, and banished our best, nay, our only tolerable circle! to be a nobody to find title or riches the only passport possible that a few hundreds a year and a small street keeps one for ever at a distance from every thing desirable. To see the same people prancing AT HOME AND ABROAD. 105 for ever in the park, at the opera, at court, all strictly exclusive ! " Whom not to know, Argues yourself unknown." And these are the best, the gentlest, the most noble of the land : but I, and all the " nobodies " of dear old England, had much better be German, French, or Chickasaw, to have the smallest chance of a decent reception. I, in my turn, despise a pains-taking, half fellowship to shake hands, perchance, abroad, and be cut at home ! or asked to dine with a difference ! that sort of condescension, if vouchsafed capriciously to a nobody, of all acquaintance the most intolerable, which tells you your common Delf must not float down the stream beside gilt porcelain. Well, the sun shines, broad shadows flit over this rich scene, land and sea. I bask in the sun, and " worship Nature, up to Nature's God ! " Round the roads and rocks there are many charming walks, both ways out of the town on the road to Grasse too, and to Le Canne, a village nestled under the hills to the north, clothed by firs, above the olive orchards and orange gardens : sheltered by these hills, the situation is even warmer than Cannes. The snow-capped mountains peeping above all in this direction, the spurs of the Alps. I see certain trees for the first time. The Caroba and 106 BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS. the cork tree, which is a variety of the Ilex. How wonderful, how bountiful the Almighty I Other trees barked die this perhaps the sole exception. Many of the olive trees are still full of olives, not ripe yet, or not gathered, though autumn is the season ; it is a tedious job, they beat them off the upper branches with long rods, industriously, patiently women pick them up. It is in vain looking for a book or a paper in any French country town ; they know nothing^ nor want to know ; even of themselves : now here, at Cannes, our old books tell one, if I could recollect, more of the pith of things than our new. I don't know why I am rather disappointed with this town; it was of course most likely to be exactly what all French towns are ; the site at any rate is charming its nice little harbour, its granite hills behind capped by firs, with the more distant ones up to Le Cannb. Then fine olive orchards, and a good many orange trees in gardens ; the fig and the vine in parterres for it loves a stony soil all this gives a richness to the scene round the town. Then the sea, and the abrupt mountains which close in the bay on the west, and the island on the east. The town itself, however, is miserable, except its one street, (the high road through it,) with its half-dozen greedy, uncom- fortable hotels. There is a pretty esplanade open to the beach in front, full of boats, and lots of solid granite THE ESPLANADE. 107 benches, where all the Cannes poor quiet world sun themselves, great and small; here the women hold their fish, and vegetable, and fruit market ; installed cobblers and small hucksters squat over their benches and baskets in rows. On the west side, on the quay proper, is a row of large houses under the old castle ; at the fur- ther end of which is the new mole or pier, of about two hundred yards long ; solidly and handsomely constructed, with its column lighthouse, just finishing, at the end of it ; here, and at the west quay, lie a dozen polaccas or coasters ; the bay outside is well sheltered too, except to the south-west ; I see them unloading glazed tiles and pottery of good shape, for common kitchen purposes, made between this and Antibes the tiles from Marseilles. The bells at the campanella, or slender tower of the church (much here is quite Italian) are ringing in various moods from morning till night for baptisms, deaths, and merry peals, I conclude, for marriages no, impossible but what are they thus day after day con- stantly keeping up this clatter for? O, a mere noisy custom, to add to the life of the town. I saunter out on the high road westward, to have an- other look at Lord Brougham's, and Mr. Leader's to the right, Wolfield's and Sim's to the left next the water ; a Nicard, a M. Favari, has a nice small pavilion and tower for sale, opposite Sim's, with half an acre of the hill side, and a right of path to the sea by the old fort 108 CASSIS. here (where the Douaniers have a station on the rock, over the sea) ; this is a very sweet spot, but he asks 36,000 frs. for it. A Mr. Ripert, who calls himself Lord Brougham's intimate friend, showed me an olive orchard close by, of perhaps an acre ; dog cheap, he says, at 8,000 frs. pretty well ! They all agree that land all about is rising, and has risen a hundred per cent, within these last seven or eight years; more now than ever, in consequence of the stability of government and the English building ; all of whom have made a good spec by their earlier bargains, and others, residents in the town ; but, after all, these prices are quite extravagant. He showed me his terraces near his house (to let) of cassis, the base, it seems, of most French perfumery ; a single large bush, he said, gave him yearly 25 frs., and generally this extraordinary plant, something like a very large currant or gooseberry bush, yields 5 and 6 frs. profit yearly it seems incredible, but may be true enough. All those who have built here, a mile and a half out of the town, have secured their strips down to the sea (across the road), five hundred yards off, and have walled it in ; generally the English have from one to three hun- dred yards frontage each. Mr. Wolfield is now building a second house, like a castle; finding his large house where he is, too near the sea; the constant surge disturbing them at night, on dit. But what a singular spectacle is CANNE. 109 here a little English colony of rich nobodies (all but one), sunning themselves in silence, and giving their wealth to invigorate the town's currency, aided by other English more or less birds of passage one finds this now all over France and Italy. Cannes is full of delightful walks, once out of the town to Canne, and here, west- ward; towards Antibes eastward. I walked up the valley to Canne yesterday very early, the morning delightful; nothing can be more varied and picturesque than these walks ; one sees the mountains, covered with snow, just peeping over the firs of the most distant hills, while the sun towards noon is almost too hot. Returning I overtook a handsome village belle, a simple, sensible creature, half peasant half demoiselle ; she spoke French well ; she had never been beyond her own little Canne, except to Cannes ; she was quite content at home, and little envied strange lords or rich strangers, who have settled here in fine houses so our discourse was quite philosophical and very common- place; but I believe, in her, perfectly sincere. "You see," said I, " all greatness is glad at last of a small room, and the sun in at his windows, and simple fare, and these rocks and firs to meditate on, and yonder sea shut out from the world the world of one of our many lord chancellors, retired on 4,0007. or 5000Z. a year." But, I fancy, not exactly this one and so, with a smile and 110 THE HOTELS. a bow, we parted as we entered the street. Some country woman (they all know each other, even from town to town) had stopped her to talk patois, which I can't at all make out; some of the words are Italian, some French, some Spanish, but the jumble is Greek to me. These hotels are enough to drive one away from a paradise, or drive one mad ; so I pay my bill and wait for the advent of the forenoon diligence from Marseilles. Instead of seven, it did not arrive till near twelve at noon, and in an evil moment of impatience I bespoke a voiture of M. Renard, who keeps the cafe and diligence bureau opposite ; and tells many fibs of the excellence of his voiture; and particularly insisted on by his good woman of a wife. I was too hasty in closing my bargain seven francs to St. Laurent, a small town on the french side of the Var I should first have had a look at the turn out such a rattletrap one rarely sees, even in France, and his little horse so lazy, it required incessant beating the whole way ; equally unpleasant with our snail's pace ; however, it was too late to refuse, so off we went. This M. Renard, pere, I found a most stupid creature, even more fool than knave : I asked him one or two questions as we went along, but I found it quite in vain. The day, however, was lovely, and the road and country : all the way by the sea-side. We see Antibes across the bay afar, and its light- JOURNEY TO ST. LAURENT. Ill house on its high headland. Within a mile and a half of it we pass a column erected where Napoleon, in 181-5, got on the high road along a narrow path from the beach where he landed ; not liking to trust the town, which is inclosed by fortifications, with a detached fort very conspicuous, just outside to the east. The road runs by its gates, and from this point Nice is seen at the extremity of another long sweep of the ocean and land to the east. Two miles short of St. Laurent (just beyond Cagne) the Antibes diligence over- took us, and I was too glad to get rid of my villanous vehicle, so shifted to it. We were soon at this frontier town on the French side of the Var, where a long wooden bridge crosses this torrent river, and again changed coaches for a Nice omnibus (a " correspondence "). Here comers and goers are delayed an hour for passports (a viser) and luggage, reciprocal on both sides ; with an absurd and most vex- atious pertinacity and formality how encouraging to travel ! Nice, it seems, is no longer a free port ; and so they rumple, open, and displace all your things, and seize on the smallest trifle, if new, or paying a duty. By the way, I ever find the free governments or liberals on the continent quite if not more vexatious about passports and searching than the absolute Sardinia is no better than Lombardy or Leghorn. The process too is enough 112 NICE. to break one's back, stooping over the clay floor of this precious custom-house at the Nice side. I had got a franc in ray hand, ready to reward the searcher, whom I had watched for some minutes manipulating every single thing, down to the bottom, of a patient brother and co- mate in exile, when it came to my turn that is, if he would not insist on unpacking all my things. No ; this must have been an immaculate new broom ; diving down, he would open a tin case, in spite of my smiles depre- catory and assurances ; so I repocketed my silver, and only bestowed on him my benediction. Well, all this has an end " time and the hour " ! It was, however, dark when we got to Nice, and I was anxious to arrive by daylight. We pass the long and rather ugly western suburbs (the whole distance from the Yar is about four miles), and enter the town by the newer side of the botanic garden, built of late years ; the body of the city being across the bridge over the river Palione, and in five minutes one is in the heart of it, in the square of the barracks. The Hotel York is the coach office, and thither I betook myself, just in time to sit down to dinner, which I thought all the better for a good large dish of mashed potatoes, which I perceived the French liked quite as well as us per- fidious Albions. Nice is on the shore of the ocean, exposed almost as much as Brighton, with a grey, rough, shingle beach, THE PALIONE. 113 where the surf plays incessant, more or less. The river Palione steals into it, hardly perceptible ; serpen- tining through the west suburb along its own broad, dry gravel-bed, like all mountain torrent-streams, only filling it when swelled by the snow melting, or au- tumnal rains. Washerwomen are everywhere now busy along its edges. Walking about the town, one would never suspect the small but excellent harbour on the east side ; cut off by the Chateau Hill, which bounds the old town, whose rocks come down perpendicular 300 feet at the end of the Corso and terrace walk, the road round their base being cut away just enough to pass round them to the port ; which has lately been improved by a solid, handsome pier, run out about two hundred yards at its mouth. This suburb communicates round the northern base of this singular rock, with the streets and squares in the northern part of the town ; and following on round its base, you find yourself once more on the quays of the Palione : much of this north side is, too, compara- tively new; the old town being between the river, and the terrace, and Corso; called, in marking the streets, " isola " or block number so-and-so, a custom in other Italian cities. Passing along the Poncietti, the carriage-road round the foot of the Chateau Rock to the port (all the i 114 THE PONC1ETTI. sea face, or southern aspects, have the finest houses, and where now, on both sides of the river, may be found most of the English residents here, and the largest hotels), on the harbour side, a carriage-road climbs this delightful rocky mound, which seems placed here on purpose to give one an exquisite view of the mountains round, the sea to Antibes, and the whole town at one's feet. I much enjoyed the ramble along its walks : once up, it is a charming promenade, among its firs, its rocks, and its small level plain on the summit, of about three hundred yards square; where there is a sergeant's guard, and two pieces of cannon are mounted facing the west. Subsequent to the middle ages this was the citadel, and commanded the town as of old, but was blown up early in this century when the French left it. There is a wildness about the whole very refreshing, after crowded streets and town life; and the walk up of a morning more conducive to health and appetite, than all the medical men put together : but this is only for the strong, who are not here in search of health. Nothing remains of this once " chateau" but a block or two of its giant walls toppled down from their elevations, and left where some jutting rock caught them in transitu, just as it should be. I hate castles and donjon keeps, except in ruins. Here and MOUNTAIN SCENERY. 115 there on the plain, indeed, one can trace parts of the substructure ; and, on the very highest point, there is still some little of the wall left, holding fast to the primitive rock; it forms a little square stand on the west side, like an arm chair, from which the eye plunges down on the roofs towards the river Palione. The mountains, which are chiefly to the east and north, form an amphitheatre, lowering as they come round towards Yar : these are the spurs of the Alps. The more distant and highest, the Col di Tende, &c. peeping over, are capped by snow, enhancing the charm of all mountain scenery. As we approach the great range, of course they grow higher, and so far Nice has something the advantage of the French towns already passed on this shore: otherwise the scenery here partakes very much of its features at Marseilles, Toulon, Hyeres, and Cannes; the country in the nearer suburbs, and the greener hills before they reach the rocks, hardly so rich or fine as in France; so it strikes me at first. Still I think the olives grow larger. I now and then see them here of great size, and bearing all the marks of very great age. They are said to reach from three to five hundred years ; and still vigorous, only the trunks hollow. There is one thing certainly in favour of Nice to our apprehensions, it is very clean compared with French towns, pretty free from those constant abominations, i 2 116 SIVORI. everywhere such a nuisance in France, and which the French themselves, from the bonne d'enfans up to the polite world, seem totally insensible of. Though Nice is so very near being a French town ; full of French and us English in search of health, " or a truant disposition, good my lord ! " yet is it like all Italian towns, far behind the go-a-head age we live in. The shops are poor things, so are their cafes, and the two reading rooms and libraries, said to be expressly for our accommodation, very indifferent indeed. A single copy of the Times and Galignani is eagerly snatched up, at Visconti's (corner of Corso at 5 fr. the month): all these places are only intent on selling us things out of their shops, at a dear rate, with much civility. I must, however, except the Circle; the club where strangers are politely admitted for a few days, or to subscribe. Little Sivori is here, and gives concerts at the York Hotel. The room was filled, he, of all the great violin players, puts one most in mind of his master and friend, Paganini; his tone as fine; winding up with the Car- nival de Venice, in a storm of applause. No wonder. Even those who can't bear a fiddle are in ecstasies. O ! little body with a mighty soul is this same fiddle in such hands ; how exquisite the tones, the modulation, the variety of effect ! how astonishing the rapidity of execution ! His one string (not that the other three DOCTORS AND DUPES. 117 are taken off or touched) solo and harmonics seem as perfect as his great Maestro's were. Some man sang French mawkish romances, and a lady helped the pro- gramma out ; but these interludes are all de trop, and only keep one waiting. I must leave this York Hotel ; my bed-room, north, is cold and damp as a well. I get an apartment on the Poncietti over the sea, where the rock is blasted away perpendicular, a row of houses under it : lodg- ings are dearer, if facing the sun, than in Paris. Yes, we come here after the sun, and in search of health, or, tired of everything, in search of variety; a variety we are soon tired of in turn. As to health, it is simply a mistake and a folly ; nobody recovers how should they ? Nice nor any other spot can work miracles. Still, hope, deceitful, beckons on ; and who would deny this last sad consolation to the dying ! So they are buried here, or hurry home once more to rest ; much less could ignoramuses enter into an argu- ment with a physician, or accuse him of not telling the truth ; they are here, as everywhere, labouring in their vocation to make money. If you go to a doctor, you must expect his story, his advice, and his medicine ; as he in turn expects his fee. There have been such things as a disinterested medical man : a goose of this order, in a most absurd sincerity, told an old lady who consulted him, that she i 3 118 THE SUBURBS. wanted nothing but exercise ; far from being grateful, she sent for a rival, and he lost a good patient. How things go on here with our poor consumptive invalids, I know not ; but clearly all medicine or consultations are, nine cases out of ten, utterly useless, if not absurd. Besides the Circle and the two libraries, there is a " Casino " beyond the west quay and botanic gardens, which, by the way, is a little plot laid out at the mouth of the river, and made green with trefoil or tares. These Casino subscription rooms face the beach. There is a carriage-drive along the shore to the west, called the English road, by the garden-walls of the villas, whose back fronts skirt the high road (the suburb street). These gardens look inviting with their olive and orange trees, their palmettos, and their roses and geraniums still in flower; particularly that of Count Orestis; from the little peep I had through his waterside gateway : torrent water- courses between the garden walls (now dry) open out to the sea. This same beach is very broad, of grey flatish pebbles, with no smooth-water sand-margin as with us, and. where the tides rise and fall ; here there is very little change of tide. This fact alone seems to deprive the Mediterranean of something of its ocean- grandeur, though indeed all along this coast how beauti- fully clear it is in its pellucid pale blue play among the rocks ! Many pretty coves and nooks below the perpen- dicular rocks here round to the harbour, invite one to strip, and plunge in. HOUSE BUILDING. 119 There is quite a new quarter springing up behind the harbour, running into the road, along the channel of the Palione : many fine streets and squares already built, others building; trenching on the orange-groves of suburban villas ; their owners finding more profit in selling building lots. I watch their walls rising, and their foundations, how solid, how honest, compared with the things which rise in our London, or any of our towns ! These foundations, a full yard or more in breadth ; the mortar excellent, while ours is little better than mud with rare exceptions in select houses. I am absolutely afraid of my own flimsy gable end wall ; and I am sure no district inspector ever once looked at it, as the act directs ! But, compared with the continent, I find everything among ourselves flimsy ! flash our whole world only live for show. What sincerity or what merit is there left among us, that is much cared for ? Gold, riches, outward appearance, childish ostentation, reaches even our villages, and flaunts it in a garden-chair and satins, beside the miserable poor at 85. and 95. per week. Even our clergy affect fashion, and allow their wives to act the rural fine lady ! Instead of at once applying a remedy to positive hideous evils, we amuse ourselves denouncing agression, and discussing High and Low Church ! I try to explain the pleasant training of our young men at Oxford and Cambridge for the sacred i 4 120 POLITICAL VENALITY. office of priest (sinking the riding about after foxes, and bagging game as a pastime!). But how explain such awful absurdities ! I am met by an incredulous stare. I take up the Times at Visconti's. Do I want any confirmation of our utter corruption and servility ? It is stamped there, in its admirable leading articles, on every possible subject, most on our ten thousand injus- tices, absurdities and jobs. The Times can write about it and about it, in an affected fearless candour things that no minister, no man, should suffer to go on so for a single day, or quit the helm. Yet, this very able Times is the organ of this or that very minister, and means that these dreadful things should go on ; and they do go on. "VVoe be to that man who dares lift his voice, and put his finger on the parti- cular plague spot ! Like the M. P. of the Travellers, he is instantly treated as an ass with that shri- velling scorn, which is death politically ; and these too apparently true mischiefs denied superciliously by a Court sinecurist. This high-bred pooh-poohing by a crea- ture of the Court, vouched for by the new Government organ so improbable! but things come to pass, and speak for themselves. Who is to prove an unconstitu- tional intermeddling? where the watchword which begirts the palace and the Castle and all office! is silence ! Most of our journals, pro and con, are in turn VILLAGERS. 121 bought and sold; and, as the organs of political truth, are utterly contemptible. I look with an anxious, inquiring eye on the particu- lar good of the various places I come to what do people get or enjoy here ? As to health, it is all non- sense ; as to society, why it is, as it may be, a matter of chance, to know pleasant people. Among the French or Italians, we are ever mere blundering children ; among ourselves, we had better be at Brighton or Torquay. Nice has a great many nice, nay, charming walks on all sides towards the immediate hills, and round the rocky shores to the east, once out of the dusty streets, and from among its narrow stone-walled lanes: to Villefranche, and when there, say in a carriage (it is but two miles off) or on horseback, to take boat over across its fine harbour to the other side, and then walk across its olive orchards to St. John's ; where, coming out on its cove, one finds oneself on the margin of the sea on the edge of the cliff, very much resembling our own dear Devonshire cliffs. All here is rural, shady, and puts one much in mind of home, " sweet home ! " There is, too, a rural innocence and simplicity about the villagers, very charming civil, kind. The " Ion jour? on meeting often the only pure French they can master greets one at every turn. I thought the women mostly handsome, too many of the young 122 VILLEFRANCHE. girls fair and pretty. The town of Villefranche, on its steep hill side, is remarkably clean ; many good houses. There is, too, a garrison and considerable fortress here. The harbour is magnificent, deep enough and capacious enough for any fleet, and safe from all winds, except, perhaps, the south-east, from whence gales are least likely to blow. At other times, alone, I range along the rocky path round the rugged shore, beyond the harbour, which, too, is excellent for all vessels not requiring more than thirteen feet water; indeed, the port of Nice, though small, is most secure, easy, and excellent, and quite large and deep enough, in its clear rocky waters, for ten times the commerce likely to be encouraged here ; since even very lately they have strangled its growing importance and usefulness. It is no longer a free port ! Its free- dom transferred to Genoa ; such as it is, in which nothing is free. From these eastern rocks, where one must scramble and jump for a footing here and there, keeping along the sea side, the whole sweeping shore of the grey beach along the front of the city, with its constant washer- women's table cloths spread of drying clothes on the hot pebbles, is seen and is unique. One fancies the beach at Brighton allowed to be spread in this way, not that it does any harm, even in the idea, for it rather agree- ably relieves the dull grey at the edge of tho blue wave. BEACH RAMBLES. 123 Nobody ever approaches ihisfagade (at the terrace side a few fishing boats are hauled up on the beach), except on the western part, towards the English shore drive by the Casino, beyond the small " Jardin des Plantes" this recent little square at the sea end, and the more modern ranges of fine houses on the western side of the Palione, only date some twenty years back. But I am musing, seated on some kindly rock just shut out from city, port, and all suburban villas, on this east and savage side. All here is grand and wild, as in time out of mind ! and oh, how infinitely beautiful, as the sea lashes among the nooks and caves far below my feet ! This, indeed, speaks of heaven, and of eternity I here I sum up my own little term of life drawing to a close. " A puny insect, shivering at a breeze," indeed ! and what are nations ! what their heroes, whose good deeds have been the better inflicting death and mischief on masses of us insects the brimstone of the bee-hive. Fresh swarms burnt out, killed ! busy, busy bees. I see by the "Times" that that extra busy bee, Lord B., has left his cell at Cannes, to buzz in that other larger hive, the upper house. Well, I may thank my stars if I can obscurely gather honey here innoxiously from little wild flowers, which peep out and greet me from their little moss cells in the time-worn crevices of these marbles. How gloriously fantastic the shape of these Worn rocks ! how beautifully and infinitely varied. 124 ON AETISTS. Every farther step is a study for the mind, for a painter, and to me it is astonishing we have so few " artists " (I hate the word) who think it worth while to study new forms and scenes, and vary their monotonous productions. They seem but to go on copying themselves and each other no matter how well it might be so much better. No people, however, are so fond of the word " artiste " as the French, so prone to dress them out as geniuses universal ; where in fact, they have hardly conquered the a, b, c, of their trade, and evidently haven't an idea be- yond their brush, their voice, or their fiddle-stick. Let them climb higher, and sit here awhile ; or, on our own granite bulwarks round the Land's End. How sad it is being sad to be by oneself, quite alone, hardly speaking for days together ! My spirits flag. Thus solitary, I have ample time to study external things here: how widely different would they appear to me, did I but know their people, and their language, the patois of these shores. Things -proper, down-right every-day things solid as stone walls, felt as the sunshine, or the rain, change their hue, like the chamelion, through the mind's mood. I go in and out of the " Circle" where an acquaintance has kindly put my name down, or at Visconti's, where one sees groups reading, with no more interest than groups of wax figures. How many of these men have nice homes here, pleasant society, all that makes life tolerable ! I have fled from it, to wander and observe ; M. DE LA MARTIN E. 125 and commune with my own melancholy mind. 'Tis well I can read things beyond the ephemeral interest of news- papers, with all their pretensions, ignorances, and very cleverness, to lie like truth, and mark their changes, like the flying clouds. I take up one of the last efforts of that prolific brain, M. de la Martine ; his " Graziella " is a railway volume, wherein he recounts his youthful loves at Naples, in a charming style; the prose of poetry, and the poetry of prose. His simple narrative harmonises exquisitely with the beauty of the scene. The bay, the island of Procida, an old fisherman's family in which he became one of themselves for many months, in his eighteenth year (about the year 1810, while Murat was king). What a dream is this life I As we all do, De la Martine, in the decline of life, at his chateau St. Point, amid his quiet Burgundian vineyards, near Macon, looks back with an aching heart on his youth on his once heartless ingra- titude. For, dress up the story as he may, it is but too plain on the face of it its internal evidence ; the whole truth more leaks out in the anguish of a few poetic stanzas at the end, than in the careful studied simplicity of the tale. In those lines where the naked truth bursts out in tears " Allez * ou va mon ame ! allez, 6 mes pensees ! Mon cceur est plein ; je veux pleurer ! " Yes, forty years too late ! I too am touched by the * Ses pensees. 126 premature death of the beautiful child of nature and the island. She who loved " not wisely but too well ; " and tears fill my eyes, even while I know that all the tender and most affecting part is but a poetic fiction ; ex- cept her death. I will go to the Margellina, cross to Procida in a fisherman's boat, try and find some trace of poor Graziella's little cell. Mayhap speak to some withered old woman among the Lazaroni, once the blithe and beauteous companion of his heroine, once one of the young girls of the fishing beach, in the suburbs towards Pausilipo, the playmates in 1810, of poor Gra- ziella. For there is no doubt it is true enough ; while young and poor and obscure, this poet and wild vision- ary statesman actually led the life of one of themselves among their fishermen of the bay of Naples. Admir- able school to enlarge and fortify the poetic soul of youth, and what a strange eventful life has his been ; but even from his own story he was cold and selfish at eighteen ; a poetic dandy at thirty ; indeed, at forty, when Lady Hester Stanhope sets him down as an affected fop, among the cedars of Lebanon, before, poor fellow I he lost his only child but how read unmoved his unaffected sor- rows in the Holy Land, where he lays in her grave this daughter snatched from him in her llth year! This touches the chord of my own tender regrets I O, this sinking of the heart, this bitterness of life to lose all that makes life sweet ! years pass on in this triste medley dream of life ! If susceptibility heightens the keenness THE CONVENT OF THE CIMIE. 127 of enjoyment, so too does it aggravate our inevitable miseries. Come, sweet oblivion next hope, heaven's best balm. One of the excursions here is up the nearer hills to the convent of the Cimie. I put on my walking shoes early, before the sun grows too hot (for already now, the 8th of February, it is very hot from 11 till 3), crossing the old bridge, and along the road of the right bank of the Palione, about three miles up the stream, where the mountains close in a more narrow defile, I reach the Abbey of