atre. But for these fine Roman
remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town,
without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned, is several miles
distant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things
that this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era,
for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and
theatre, a place of some importance--should have given its name to the
heirs-apparent of the throne of Holland and been borne by a king of
England who had sovereign rights over it. During the Middle Ages it
formed part of an independent principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the
marriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the family
of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that it was made over to
France by the treaty of Utrecht. The arch of triumph, which stands a
little way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an imposing vestige
of the Romans. If it had greater purity of style one might say of it
that it belonged to the same family of monuments as the Maison Carree at
Nimes. It has three passages--the middle much higher than the
others--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the passages are richly
sculptured, and the whole structure is covered with friezes and military
trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it is broken and
defaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, though its workmanship is
praised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Its
general mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkably
perfect; but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity of
restoration. It is not, on the whole, of absorbing interest. It has a
charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright yellow
colour, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and on
that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded by
its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and a
low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, very
sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks of
the memory. I can take down the modest composition and place it before
me as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fair
French road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; the
disgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; the
solitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing along
t