then was, of not above twelve thousand
souls, with its wonderful situation, noble perspective and unparalleled
climate. Well might our travel-tost doctor exclaim, "When I stand on
the rampart and look around I can scarce help thinking myself
enchanted." It was truly a garden of Armida for a native of one of the
dampest corners of North Britain.

"Forty or fifty years ago, before the great transformation took place
on the French Riviera, when Nizza, Villafranca, and Mentone were
antique Italian towns, and when it was one of the eccentricities of
Lord Brougham, to like Cannes, all that sea-board was a delightful
land. Only a hundred years ago Arthur Young had trouble to get an old
woman and a donkey to carry his portmanteau from Cannes to Antibes. I
can myself remember Cannes in 1853, a small fishing village with a
quiet beach, and Mentone, a walled town with mediaeval gates and a
castle, a few humble villas and the old Posta to give supper to any
passing traveller. It was one of the loveliest bits of Italy, and the
road from Nizza to Genoa was one long procession for four days of
glorious scenery, historic remnants, Italian colour, and picturesque
ports. From the Esterelles to San Remo this has all been ruined by the
horde of northern barbarians who have made a sort of Trouville,
Brighton, or Biarritz, with American hotels and Parisian boulevards on
every headland and bay. First came the half underground railway, a long
tunnel with lucid intervals, which destroyed the road by blocking up
its finest views and making it practically useless. Then miles of
unsightly caravanserais high walls, pompous villas, and Parisian
grandes rues crushed out every trace of Italy, of history, and
pictorial charm." So writes Mr. Frederic Harrison of this delectable
coast, [In the Daily Chronicle, 15th March 1898.] as it was, at a
period within his own recollection--a period at which it is hardly
fanciful to suppose men living who might just have remembered Smollett,
as he was in his last days, when he returned to die on the Riviera di
Levante in the autumn of 1771. Travel had then still some of the
elements of romance. Rapidity has changed all that. The trouble is that
although we can transport our bodies so much more rapidly than Smollett
could, our understanding travels at the same old pace as before. And in
the meantime railway and tourist agencies have made of modern travel a
kind of mental postcard album, with grand hotels on one side