larger number, if not the
most interesting, of those curious churches of the sea, which protected
the French townsman of the Mediterranean coast from the rapacity of
sea-rovers and pirates, and many more orthodox enemies of the Middle Ages.

From the great beauty of its situation, the small city of Antibes is
at once a type of the old regime and of the new. Lying on the sea,
with a background of snow-capped mountains, it has not entirely
escaped the fate of Nice; neither has it yet lost all its old
Provencal characteristics. It is a pathetic compromise between the
quaint reality of the old and the blatancy of the new. The little
parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank
over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely
younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with
its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring
restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and
Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double
archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the
unfortunate XVIII century, the older exterior is monotonous, and the
interior, an unpleasing confusion of forms.

[Illustration: "THE MILITARY OMEN--THE TOWER." ANTIBES.]

The real interest of the little Cathedral is its ancient military
strength, neither very grand nor very imposing, but very real to the
enemy who hundreds of years ago hurled himself against the hard, plain
stones. From this view-point, the mannered facade and the inharmonious
interior matter but little. Toward the foe, whose sail might have arisen
on the horizon at any moment, the protecting church presented the heavy
rounded walls and safely narrowed windows of its three apses, and behind
them the military omen of the severe, rectangular tower. High in every
one of its four sides, seaward and landward, was a window, from which
many a watcher must have looked and strained anxious eyes. This is the
significance of the little sea-side Cathedral, this the story its tower
suggests. And now when the sea is sailed by peaceful ships, and the
Cathedral only a place of pious worship, the tower with its gaping
windows is the only salient reminder of the ancient dignity of the
church; the reminder to an indifferent generation of the days when
Antibes fulfilled to Christians the promise of her old, pagan name,
Antipolis, "sentinel" of the perilous sea.

[Sidenote: Nice.]