he says, "'the faculty' of Montpellier
had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of the sacred and the
profane. The theses which were sustained there began by an invocation to
God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these words:--'This
thesis will be sustained in the sacred Temple of Apollo.'"

But however extravagant Chancellor Fanchon's praises of his native city
may seem, they are really not exaggerated. The Narbonnaise, or
Languedoc, is perhaps the most charming district of charming France. In
the far north-east gleam the white Alps; in the far south-west the white
Pyrenees; and from the purple glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on
the northwest, the Herault slopes gently down towards the "Etangs," or
great salt-water lagoons, and the vast alluvial flats of the Camargue,
the field of Caius Marius, where still run herds of half-wild horses,
descended from some ancient Roman stock; while beyond all glitters the
blue Mediterranean. The great almond orchards, each one sheet of rose-
colour in spring; the mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, the vineyards,
cover every foot of available upland soil: save where the rugged and arid
downs are sweet with a thousand odoriferous plants, from which the bees
extract the famous white honey of Narbonne. The native flowers and
shrubs, of a beauty and richness rather Eastern than European, have made
the 'Flora Monspeliensis,' and with it the names of Rondelet and his
disciples, famous among botanists; and the strange fish and shells upon
its shores afforded Rondelet materials for his immortal work upon the
'Animals of the Sea.' The innumerable wild fowl of the "Bouches du
Rhone;" the innumerable songsters and other birds of passage, many of
them unknown in these islands, and even in the north of France itself,
which haunt every copse of willow and aspen along the brook sides; the
gaudy and curious insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and
yet bracing sunlight; all these have made the district of Montpellier a
home prepared by Nature for those who study and revere her.

Neither was Chancellor Fanchon misled by patriotism, when he said the
pleasant people who inhabit that district are fit for all the labours of
the intellect. They are a very mixed race, and like most mixed races,
quick-witted, and handsome also. There is probably much Roman blood
among them, especially in the towns; for Languedoc, or Gallia
Narbonnensis, as it was called of old,