the old city delightful to the
artistic eye by the bright mass of their vivid-colored raiment, the
flickering of their tapers, and the gigantic crucifixes of gold and
silver they carry in procession from church to church. Every morning
there is a market held on the Corso of fruits, vegetables and flowers.
Such magnificent baskets of camellias, japonicas and roses, such
nosegays of violets and orange-blossoms, can be seen, I fancy, nowhere
but at Nice. Here also the peasant-women sometimes bring immense pots of
Peruvian aloes for sale, whose snowy blossoms are scented like those of
the magnolia, and rise in gigantic pyramids of magnificent cup-shaped
flowers. They are plants to salute respectfully as you pass by
them, such is their size and dignity. In Holy Week women are to be seen
all over the old town selling plaited palm branches of a pale
straw-color, some of which are bedecked with little bows of ribbon or
stars of tinsel, used in the ceremonies of Palm Sunday. The
peasant-girls who come to market at Nice are rather handsome, but as
dark as Nubians, with almond-shaped eyes and long, coarse black hair,
which they wear plaited into tails bound round the head with broad
velvet ribbons, like a coronet. On the top of this headgear they sport a
wide-brimmed straw hat of peculiar shape, ornamented with little black
crosses made of narrow velvet. In Princess Marie Lichtenstein's _Holland
House_ there is a portrait of Lady Augusta Holland wearing one of these
Nice hats.

But it is time for us to cross the bridges and pay our respects to Nice
the "new." When I first visited Nice in 1856 at least two-thirds of this
part of the city were not in existence. There were no splendid
railway-stations then; only one or two, instead of twenty, monster
hotels; the Promenade des Anglais only extended about a mile along the
shore, instead of four; and there were but one quay and two bridges. Now
superb quays line the river on either side, and there are six bridges,
and Heaven only knows how many churches for the accommodation of all the
denominations imaginable and unimaginable, from Pere Lavigne's very
beautiful and very orthodox church, in which Monsignor Capel has
preached in Lent, down to Leon Pilate's, where collections are made for
the evangelical missions presided over by Mrs. Gould and W.C. Van Metre.
There is a Greek church of exceeding beauty, the altar-screen of which
was sent from Moscow as a present from the czar; and an Epi