tectural energy of Gascony was expended in replacing churches which
had been destroyed, and were again to be destroyed or injured. It would
be unfair to expect of this province the great magnificence which its
brave, cheerful, and extravagant little people believe it "once
possessed," or to look, amid such unrest, for the calm growth of any
architectural style. It is a country of few Cathedrals, of curious
churches built for war and prayer, and of such occasional outbursts of
magnificence as is seen in the Romanesque portal of Saint-Pierre of
Moissac and in the stately Gothic splendour of the Cathedrals at Condom
and at Bayonne. It is a country where Cathedrals are surrounded by the
most beautiful of landscapes, and where each has some legend or story of
the English, the League, of the Black Prince, or the Lion-hearted, of
Henry IV, still adored, or of Simon de Montfort, still execrated, where
the towns are truly historic and the mountains truly grand.

Provence.

I.

THE CATHEDRALS OF THE SEA.

[Sidenote: Marseilles.]

Perhaps a Phoenician settlement, certainly a Carthaginian mart, later a
Grecian city, and in the final years of the pagan era possessed by the
Romans, no city of France has had more diverse influences of antique
civilisation than Marseilles, none responded more proudly to its ancient
opportunities; and not only was it commercially wealthy and renowned,
but so rich in schools that it was called "another, a new Athens." It
was also the port of an adventurous people, who founded Nice, Antibes,
la Ciotat, and Agde, and explored a part of Africa and Northern Europe;
and at the fall of the Roman Empire it became, by very virtue of its
riches and safe harbour, the envy and the prey of a succession of
barbaric and "infidel" invaders. In the Middle Ages it had all the
vicissitudes of wars and sieges to which a great city could be
subjected. It had a Viscount, and from very early days, a Bishop; it was
at one time part of the Kingdom of Arles; and later it recognised the
suzerainty of the Counts of Provence. When these lords were warring or
crusading, it took advantage of their absence or their troubles and
governed itself through its Consuls; became a Provencal Republic after
the type of the Italian cities and other towns of the Mediterranean
country; treated with the Italian Republics on terms of perfect
equality; and although finally annexed to France by the wily Louis of
the Madonnas, its p