square of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a classical
_palais de justice_ embellished with trees and parapets and occupied in
the centre with a group of allegorical statues such as one encounters
only in the cities of France, the chief of these being a colossal figure
by Pradier representing Nimes. An English, an American town which should
have such a monument, such a square as this would be a place of great
pretensions; but, like so many little _villes de province_ in the
country of which I write, Nimes is easily ornamental. What nobler
element can there be than the Roman baths at the foot of Mont Cavalier
and the delightful old garden that surrounds them? All that quarter of
Nimes has every reason to be proud of itself; it has been revealed to
the world at large by copious photography. A clear, abundant stream
gushes from the foot of a high hill (covered with trees and laid out in
paths), and is distributed into basins which sufficiently refer
themselves to the period that gave them birth--the period that has left
its stamp on that pompous Peyrou which we admired at Montpellier. Here
are the same terraces and steps and balustrades, and a system of
waterworks less impressive perhaps, but very ingenious and charming. The
whole place is a mixture of old Rome and of the French eighteenth
century; for the remains of the antique baths are in a measure
incorporated in the modern fountains. In a corner of this umbrageous
precinct stands a small Roman ruin, which is known as a temple of Diana,
but was more apparently a _nymphaeum_, and appears to have had a graceful
connection with the adjacent baths. I learn from Murray that this little
temple, of the period of Augustus, "was reduced to its present state of
ruin in 1577;" the moment at which the townspeople, threatened with a
siege by the troops of the Crown, partly demolished it lest it should
serve as a cover to the enemy. The remains are very fragmentary, but
they serve to show that the place was lovely. I spent half an hour in
it on a perfect Sunday morning (it is enclosed by a high _grille_,
carefully tended, and has a warden of its own), and with the help of my
imagination tried to reconstruct a little the aspect of things in the
Gallo-Roman days. I do wrong perhaps to say that I _tried_; from a
flight so deliberate I should have shrunk. But there was a certain
contagion of antiquity in the air; and among the ruins of baths and
temples, in the very spo