, hotel
menus on the other, and a faint aroma of continental trains haunting,
between the leaves as it were. Our real knowledge is still limited to
the country we have walked over, and we must not approach the country
we would appreciate faster than a man may drive a horse or propel a
bicycle; or we shall lose the all-important sense of artistic approach.
Even to cross the channel by time-table is fatal to that romantic
spirit (indispensable to the true magic of travel) which a slow
adjustment of the mind to a new social atmosphere and a new historical
environment alone can induce. Ruskin, the last exponent of the Grand
Tour, said truly that the benefit of travel varies inversely in
proportion to its speed. The cheap rapidity which has made our villes
de plaisir and cotes d'azur what they are, has made unwieldy boroughs
of suburban villages, and what the rail has done for a radius of a
dozen miles, the motor is rapidly doing for one of a score. So are we
sped! But we are to discuss not the psychology of travel, but the
immediate causes and circumstances of Smollett's arrival upon the
territory of Nice.

VI

Smollett did not interpret the ground-plan of the history of Nice
particularly well. Its colonisation from Massilia, its long connection
with Provence, its occupation by Saracens, its stormy connection with
the house of Anjou, and its close fidelity to the house of Savoy made
no appeal to his admiration. The most important event in its recent
history, no doubt, was the capture of the city by the French under
Catinat in 1706 (Louis XIV. being especially exasperated against what
he regarded as the treachery of Victor Amadeus), and the razing to the
ground of its famous citadel. The city henceforth lost a good deal of
its civic dignity, and its morale was conspicuously impaired. In the
war of the Austrian succession an English fleet under Admiral Matthews
was told off to defend the territory of the Nicois against the
attentions of Toulon. This was the first close contact experienced
between England and Nice, but the impressions formed were mutually
favourable. The inhabitants were enthusiastic about the unaccustomed
English plan of paying in full for all supplies demanded. The British
officers were no less delighted with the climate of Nice, the fame of
which they carried to their northern homes. It was both directly and
indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a
sanatorium came to be put