Part 9

Leon Renier, the learned lecturer of the College de France, says: "It is remarkable that the changes, the elaborations, the modifications of the architecture given by Rome to all countries under her domination were conceived in the provinces long before they were reproduced in Italy. Rome gave no longer; she received ... a transfusion of a new blood, more vital and more rich." In Languedoc, the greater number of monuments of this ancient architecture have been destroyed; and those of their outgrowth, the later Romanesque, were so repeatedly mutilated that the Cathedrals of this province present even a greater confusion of originalities, restorations, and additions than those of Provence. To a multitude of dates must be added corresponding differences in style. Each school of architecture naturally considered that it had somewhat of a monopoly of good taste and beauty, or at least that it was an improvement on the manner which preceded it; and it would have been too much to expect, in ages when anachronisms were unrecognised, that churches should have been restored in their consonant, original style. Architects of the Gothic period were unable to resist the temptation of continuing a Romanesque nave with a choir of their own school, and builders of the XVIII century went still further and added a showy Louis XV facade to a modest Romanesque Cathedral. Some churches, built in times of religious storm and stress, show the preoccupation of their patrons or the lack of talent of their constructors; others belong to Bishoprics that were much more lately constituted than the Sees of Provence, and in these cases the new prelate chose a church already begun or completed, and compromised with the demands of episcopal pomp by an addition, usually of different style. The numerous changes, political and religious, of the Mediaevalism of Languedoc, had such considerable and diverse influence on the architecture of the province that it is not possible, as in Provence, to trace an uninterrupted evolution of one style. The Languedocian is generally a later builder than the Provencal; he is bolder. Having the Romanesque and the Gothic as choice, he chose at will and seemingly at random. He had spontaneity, enthusiasm, verve; and when no accepted model pleased his taste, he re-created after his own liking. Languedoc has therefore a delightful quality that is wanting in Provence; and in her greater Cathedrals there is often an originality that is due to genius rather than to eccentricity. There is delicate Gothic at Carcassonne, lofty Gothic at Narbonne, Sainte-Cecile of Albi is fortified Gothic built in brick. The interior of Saint-Sernin of Toulouse is an apotheosis of the austere Romanesque, and Saint-Etienne of Agde is a gratifying type of the Maritime Church of the Midi.

This Cathedral of the Sea is a fitting example of a peculiar type of architecture which exists also in Provence,--a succession of fortress-churches that extend along the Mediterranean from Spain to Italy like the peaks of a mountain chain. Nothing can better illustrate the continuous warrings and raidings in the South of France than these strange churches, and their many fortified counterparts inland, in both Languedoc and Gascony. Castles and walled towns were not sufficient to protect the Southerner from invasions and incursions; his churches and Cathedrals, even to the XIV century, were strongholds, more suitable for men-at-arms than for priests, and seemingly dedicated to some war-god rather than to the gentle Virgin Mother and the Martyr-Saints under whose protection they nominally dwelt.

Although most interesting, the military church of the interior is seldom the Bishop's church. The maritime church on the contrary is nearly always a Cathedral, with strangely curious legends and episodes. The French coast of the Mediterranean was the scene of continuous pillage. Huns, Normans, Moors, Saracens, unknown pirates and free-booters of all nationalities found it very lucrative and convenient to descend on a sea-board town, and escape as they had come, easily, their boats loaded with booty. "As late as the XII century," writes Barr Ferree, "buccaneers gained a livelihood by preying on the peaceful and unoffending inhabitants of the villages and cities. The Cathedrals, as the most important buildings and the most conspicuous, were strongly fortified, both to protect their contents and to serve as strongholds for the citizens in case of need. In these churches, therefore, architecture assumed its most utilitarian form and buildings are real fortifications, with battlemented walls, strong and heavy towers, and small windows, and are provided with the other devices of Romanesque architecture of a purely military type."

"Time has dealt hardly with them. The kingly power, being entrenched in Paris, developed from the Isle de France. The wealth that once enriched the fertile lands of the South moved northwards, and the great commercial cities of the North became the most important centres of activity. Then the southern towns began to decline," and the buildings which remain to represent most perfectly the "Church-Fortress" are not those of Provence, which are "patched" and "restored," but those of Languedoc, Agde, and Maguelonne, and Elne of the near-by country of Rousillon.

Gascony, the last of the southern provinces and the farthest from Rome, had great prosperity under Imperial dominion. Many patricians emigrated there, roads were built, commerce flourished, and as in Provence and Languedoc, towns grew into large and well-established cities. Christianity made a comparatively early conquest of the province; and at the beginning of the IV century, eleven suffragan Bishoprics had been established under the Archbishopric of Eauze. Gascony has many old Cathedral cities, and has had many ancient Cathedrals; but after the fall of the Roman Empire in the V century, a series of wars began which destroyed not only the Christian architecture, but almost every trace of Roman wealth and culture. Little towers remain, supposed shrines of Mercury, protector of commerce and travel; pieces of statues are found; but the Temples, the Amphitheatres, the Forums, have disappeared, and even more completely, the rude Christian churches of that early period.

Although the province has no Mediterranean coast and could not be molested by the marauders of that busy sea, it lay directly upon the route of armies between France and Spain; and it is no "gasconading" to say that it was for centuries one of the greatest battle-fields of the South. Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, Normans,--Gascons against Carlovingians, North against South, all had burned, raided, and destroyed Gascony before the XI century. It is not surprising, then, that there are found fewer traces of antiquity here than in Provence and Languedoc. Even the few names of decimated cities which survived, designated towns on new sites. Eauze, formerly on the Gelise, lay long in ruins, and was finally re-built a kilometre inland. Lectoure and Auch had long since retired from the river Gers and taken refuge on the hills of their present situations, while other cities fell into complete ruin and forgetfulness.

The year 1000, which followed these events, was that of the predicted and expected end of the world. The extravagances of Christians at that time are well known, the gifts of all property that were made to the Church, the abandonment of worldly pursuits, the terrors of many, the anxiety of the calmest, the emotional excesses which led people to live in trees that they might be near to heaven when the "great trump" should sound,--"Mundi fine appropinquante." But the trumpet did not sound, and Raoul Glaber, a monk of the XI century, writes that all over Italy and the Gaul of his day there was great haste to restore and re-build churches, a general rivalry between towns and between countries, as to which could build most remarkably. "This activity," says Quicherat, "may show a desire to renew alliance with the Creator." It certainly proves that the generation of the year 1000 had fresh and new architectural ideas.

This was the period of recuperation and re-building for Gascony. The monks of the VIII, IX, and X centuries had devoted themselves with zeal and success to the cultivation of the soil. They had acquired fertile fields, and desiring peace, they had placed themselves in positions where their strength would defend them when their holy calling was not respected. These monasteries were places of refuge and soon gave their name and their protection to the towns and villages which began to cluster about them. Except the declining settlements of Roman days, Gascony had few towns in the X century; and many of her most important cities of to-day owe their foundation, their existence, and their prosperity to these Benedictine monasteries. Eauze regained its life after the establishment of a convent, and in the XI, XII, and XIII centuries, the Abbots of Citeaux, Bishops, and even lords of the laity, occupied themselves in the creation of new cities. Many of the towns of mediaeval creation possessed broad municipal and commercial privileges, they grew to the importance of "communes" and Bishoprics, and some even styled themselves "Republics."

Although these were times of much re-building, restoring, and carrying out of older plans of ecclesiastical architecture, the XI and XII centuries were none the less filled with innumerable private wars, and in 1167 began the bloody and persistent struggle with England. The city of Aire was at one time reduced to twelve inhabitants, and the horrors of the mediaeval siege were more than once repeated. In these wars, Cathedrals, as well as towns and their inhabitants, were scarred and wounded. Hardly had these dissensions ended in 1494, when the Wars of Religion commenced under Charles IX, and Gascony was again one of the most terrible fields of battle. Here the demoniac enthusiasm of both sides exceeded even the terrible exhibitions of Languedoc. The royal family of Navarre was openly Protestant and contributed more than any others to the military organisations of their Faith. Jeanne d'Albret, in 1566, wishing to repay intolerance with intolerance, forbade religious processions and church funerals in Navarre. The people rose, and the next year the Queen was forced to grant toleration to both religions. Later the King of France entered the field and sent an army against the Bearnaise Huguenots, Jeanne, in reprisal, called to her aid Montmorency; and with a thoroughness born of pious zeal and hatred, each army began to burn and kill. All monasteries, all churches, were looted by the Protestants; all cities taken by Montluc, head of the Catholics, were sacked. Tarbes was devastated by the one, Rabestans by the other, and the Cathedral of Pamiers was ruined. With the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in 1572, the struggle began again, and the League flourished in all its malign enthusiasm. "Such disorder as was introduced," says a writer of the period, "such pillage, has never been seen since war began. Officers, soldiers, followers, and volunteers were so overburdened with booty as to be incommoded thereby. And after this brigandage, the peasants hereabouts [Bigorre] abandoned their very farms from lack of cattle, and the greater number went into Spain."

During long centuries of such religious and political devastation the architectural energy of Gascony was expended in replacing churches which had been destroyed, and were again to be destroyed or injured. It would be unfair to expect of this province the great magnificence which its brave, cheerful, and extravagant little people believe it "once possessed," or to look, amid such unrest, for the calm growth of any architectural style. It is a country of few Cathedrals, of curious churches built for war and prayer, and of such occasional outbursts of magnificence as is seen in the Romanesque portal of Saint-Pierre of Moissac and in the stately Gothic splendour of the Cathedrals at Condom and at Bayonne. It is a country where Cathedrals are surrounded by the most beautiful of landscapes, and where each has some legend or story of the English, the League, of the Black Prince, or the Lion-hearted, of Henry IV, still adored, or of Simon de Montfort, still execrated, where the towns are truly historic and the mountains truly grand.

Provence.

THE CATHEDRALS OF THE SEA.

Perhaps a Phoenician settlement, certainly a Carthaginian mart, later a Grecian city, and in the final years of the pagan era possessed by the Romans, no city of France has had more diverse influences of antique civilisation than Marseilles, none responded more proudly to its ancient opportunities; and not only was it commercially wealthy and renowned, but so rich in schools that it was called "another, a new Athens." It was also the port of an adventurous people, who founded Nice, Antibes, la Ciotat, and Agde, and explored a part of Africa and Northern Europe; and at the fall of the Roman Empire it became, by very virtue of its riches and safe harbour, the envy and the prey of a succession of barbaric and "infidel" invaders. In the Middle Ages it had all the vicissitudes of wars and sieges to which a great city could be subjected. It had a Viscount, and from very early days, a Bishop; it was at one time part of the Kingdom of Arles; and later it recognised the suzerainty of the Counts of Provence. When these lords were warring or crusading, it took advantage of their absence or their troubles and governed itself through its Consuls; became a Provencal Republic after the type of the Italian cities and other towns of the Mediterranean country; treated with the Italian Republics on terms of perfect equality; and although finally annexed to France by the wily Louis of the Madonnas, its people were continually haunted by memories of their former independence, and not only struggled for municipal rights and liberties, but took sides for or against the most powerful monarchs of continental history as if they had been a resourceful country rather than a city. It succored the League, defied Henry IV and Richelieu; and treating Kings in trouble as cavalierly as declining Counts, Marseilles tried at the death of Henry III to secede from France and recover its autonomy under a Consul, Charles de Cazaulx. Promptly defeated, it still continued to think independently, and struggle, as best it might, for freedom of administration; and although from the time of Pompey to that of Louis XIV it has had an ineradicable tendency to stand against the government, it has survived the results of all its contumacies, its plagues, wars, and sieges, and the destructiveness of its phase of the Revolution, when it had a Terror of its own. Notwithstanding modern rivals in the Mediterranean, Marseilles is to-day one of the largest and most prosperous of French cities. Built in amphitheatre around the bay, it is beautiful in general view, its streets bustle with commercial activity, and its vast docks swarm with workmen. The storms of the past have gone over Marseilles as the storms of nature over its sea, have been as passionate, and have left as little trace. Instead of Temples, Forum, and Arena, there are the Palais de Longchamps, the Palais de Justice, and the Christian Arch of Triumph. Instead of the muddy and unhealthy alley-ways of Mediaevalism, there are broad streets and wide boulevards, and in spite of its antiquity Marseilles is a city of to-day, in monuments, aspect, spirit, and even in class distinction. "Here," writes Edmond About, "are only two categories of people, those who have made a fortune and those who are trying to make one, and the principal inhabitants are parvenus in the most honourable sense of the word."

People gather around the mail-coach as it makes its daily halt before the drawbridge.]

"In the most honourable sense of the word," the Cathedral of Marseilles is also typical of the city, "parvenue." Its first stone was placed by Prince Louis Napoleon in 1852, and as the modern has overgrown the classic and mediaeval greatness of Marseilles, so the new "Majeure" has eclipsed, if it has not yet entirely replaced, the old Cathedral; and except the stern Abbey-church of Saint-Victor, an almost solitary relic of true mediaeval greatness, it is the finest church of the city.

The new Cathedral and the old stand side by side; the one strong and whole, the other partly torn down, scarred and maimed as a veteran who has survived many wars. Even in its ruin, it is an interesting type of the maritime Provencal church, but so pitiably overshadowed by its successor that the charm of its situation is quite lost, and few will linger to study its three small naves, the defaced fresco of the dome, or even the little chapel of Saint-Lazare, all white marble and carving and small statues, scarcely more than a shallow niche in the wall, but daintily proportioned, and a charming creation of the Renaissance. Fewer still of those who pause to study what remains of the old "Majeure," will stay to reconstruct it as it used to be, and realise that it had its day of glory no less real than that of the new church which replaces it. In its stead, Saint-Martin's, and Saint-Cannat's sometimes called "the Preachers," have been temporarily used for the Bishop's services. But now that the greater church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been practically completed, it has assumed, once and for all, the greater rank, and a Cathedral of Marseilles still stands on its terrace in full view of the sea. Tradition has it that a Temple of Baal once stood on this site and later, a Temple to Diana; that Lazarus came in the I century, converted the pagan Marseillais and built a Christian Cathedral here. A more critical tradition says that Saint Victor first came as missionary, Bishop, and builder. All these vague memories of conversion, more or less accurate, all the legends of an humble and struggling Christianity, seem buried by this huge modern mass. It is not a church struggling and militant, but the Church Established and Triumphant. It is a vast building over four hundred and fifty feet long, preceded by two domed towers. Its transepts are surmounted at the crossing by a huge dome whose circumference is nearly two hundred feet, a smaller one over each transept arm, and others above the apsidal chapels. The exterior is built with alternate layers of green Florentine stone and the white stone of Fontvieille; and the style of the church, variously called French Romanesque, Byzantine, and Neo-Byzantine, is very oriental in its general effect.

An arcade between the two towers forms a porch, the entrance to the interior whose central nave stretches out in great spaciousness. The lateral naves, in contrast, are exceedingly narrow and have high galleries supported by large monolithic columns. These naves are prolonged into an ambulatory, each of whose chapels, in consonance with the Cathedral's colossal proportions, is as large as many a church. The building stone of the interior is grey and pink, with white marble used decoratively for capitals and bases; and these combinations of tints which would seem almost too delicate, too effeminate, for so large a building, are made rich and effective by their very mass, the gigantic sizes which the plan exacts. All that artistic conception could produce has been added to complete an interior that is entirely oriental in its luxury of ornamentation, half-oriental in style, and without that sober majesty which is an inherent characteristic of the most elaborate styles native to Western Christianity. Under the gilded dome is a rich baldaquined High Altar, and through the whole church there is a magnificence of mosaics, of mural paintings, and of stained glass that is sumptuous. Mosaics line the arches of the nave and the pendentives, and form the flooring; and in the midst of this richness of colour the grey pillars rise, one after the other in long, shadowy perspective, like the trees of a stately grove.

In planning this new Provencal Cathedral its architects did not attempt to reproduce, either exactly or in greater perfection, any maritime type which its situation on the Mediterranean might have suggested, nor were they inspired by any of the models of the native style; and perhaps, to the captious mind, its most serious defect is that its building has destroyed not only an actual portion of the old Majeure, but an historic interest which might well have been preserved by a wise restoration or an harmonious re-building. And yet, with the large Palace of the Archbishop on the Port de la Joliette near-by, the statue of a devoted and loving Bishop in the open square, and the majestic Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-Majeure itself, the episcopacy of Marseilles has all the outward and visible signs of strength and glory and power.

Toulon, although a foundation of the Romans, owes its rank to-day to Henry IV, to Richelieu, and to Louis XIV's busy architect, Vauban. It is the "Gibraltar of France," a bright, bustling, modern city. Sainte-Marie-Majeure, one of its oldest ecclesiastical names, is a title which belonged to churches of both the XI and XII centuries; but in the feats of architectural gymnastics to which their remains have been subjected, and in the wars and vicissitudes of Provence, these buildings have long since disappeared.

A few stones still exist of the XI century structure, void of form or architectural significance, and the ancient name of Sainte-Marie-Majeure now protects a Cathedral built in the most depressing style of the industrious Philistines of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It is not a Provencal nor a truly "maritime" church, it is not a fortress nor a defence, nor a work of any architectural beauty. It has blatancy, size, pretension,--a profusion of rich incongruities; and although religiously interesting from its chapels and shrines, it is architecturally obtrusive and monstrous.

The vagaries of the architects who began in 1634 to construct the present edifice, are well illustrated in the changes of plan to which they subjected this unfortunate church. The length became the breadth, the isolated chapel of the Virgin, part of the main building; the choir, another chapel; and the High Altar was removed from the eastern to the northern end, where a new choir had been built for its reception. This confusion of plan was carried out with logical confusion of style and detail. The facade has Corinthian columns of the XVII century; the nave is said to be "transition Gothic," the choir is decorated with mural paintings, and the High Altar, a work of Revoil, adds to the banalities of the XVII and XVIII centuries a rich incongruity of which the XIX has no reason to be proud. The whole interior is so full of naves of unequal length, and radiating chapels, of arches of differing forms, tastes, and styles, that it defies concise description and is unworthy of serious consideration. Provence has modest Cathedrals of small architectural significance, but except Sainte-Reparate of Nice, it has none so chaotic and commonplace as Sainte-Marie-Majeure of Toulon.

Frejus, which claims to be "the oldest city in France," was one of the numerous trading ports of the Phoenician, and later, during the period of her civic grandeur, an arsenal of the Roman navy. Her most interesting ruins are the Coliseum, the Theatre, the old Citadel, and the Aqueduct, suggestions of a really great city of the long-gone past. Frejus lost prestige with the decadence of the Empire, and after a destruction by the Saracens in the X century, Nature gave the blow which finally crushed her when the sea retreated a mile, and her old Roman light-house was left to overlook merely a long stretch of barren, sandy land. Owing to this stranded, inland position, she has escaped both the dignity of a modern sea-port and the prostitution of a Rivieran resort, and is a little dead city, the seat of an ancient Provencal "Cathedral of the Sea." This Cathedral is largely free from XVII and XVIII century disfigurements; and the pity is that having escaped this, a French church's imminent peril, it should have become so built around that the character of the exterior is almost lost. The facade is severely plain, an uninteresting re-building of 1823, but the carved wood of its portals is beautiful. The towers, as in other maritime Cathedrals of Provence, recall the perils and dangers of their days; and these towers of Frejus, although none the less practically defensive, have a more churchly appearance than those of Antibes, Grasse, and Vence. Over the vestibuled entrance rises the western tower. Its heavy, rectangular base is the support of a super-structure which was replaced in the XVI century by one more in keeping with conventional ecclesiastical models. Then the windows of the base, whose rounded arches are still traceable, were walled in; and the new octagonal stage with high windows of its own was completed by a tile-covered spire. The more interesting tower is that which surmounts the apse. This was the lookout, facing the sea, the really vital defence of the church. Its upper room was a storage place for arms and ammunition, and on the side which faces the city was open, with a broad, pointed arch. Above, the tower ends in machiolated battlements and presents a very strong and stern front seaward, perhaps no stronger, but more artistic and grim than towers of other Provencal Cathedrals.

The entrance of the church is curiously complicated. To the left is the little baptistery; directly before one, a narrow stairway which leads to the Cloister; and on the right, a low-arched vestibule which opens into the nave of the Cathedral. The interior of Saint-Etienne is dark and somewhat gloomy, but that is an inherent trait of a fortress-church, for every added inch of window-opening brought an ell of danger. The nave is unusually low and broad, and its buttressed piers are of immense weight, ending severely in a plain, moulded band. On these great piers rest the cross-vaults of the roof and the broad arches of the wall. The north aisle, disproportionately narrow, is a later addition. Behind the altar is a true Provencal apse, shallow and rectangular, and beyond its rounded roof opens the smaller half-dome. Architecturally, this is an interesting interior; but the traveller who has not time to spend in musings will fail to see it in its original intention;--cold, severely plain, heavy, with perhaps too many arch-lines, but sober and simple. A futile wooden wainscot now surrounds the church and breaks its wall space, liberal coats of whitewash conceal the building material, and taking from the church the severity of its stone, give it an appearance of poor deprecatory bareness.

Near the entrance of the Cathedral is its most ancient portion, the baptistery, formerly a building apart, but now an integral part of the church itself. It is perhaps the most interesting Christian monument in Frejus, a reminder of those early centuries when, in France as in Italy, the little baptistery was the popular form of Christian architectural expression. Here it has the very usual octagonal shape; the arches are upheld by grayish columns of granite with capitals of white marble, and in the centre stands the font. Between the columns are small recesses, alternately rectangular and semi-domed, and above all, is a modern dome and lantern. Structurally interesting, and reminiscent of the stately baptistery of Aix, the effect of this little chamber, like the church's interior, is marred by the whitewashes from whose industrious brushes nothing but the grayish columns have escaped. And here again, the traveller who would see the builders' work, free from the disfigurements of time, must pause and imagine.

Yet even imagination seems powerless before the desecration of the little Cloister. Charming it must have been to have entered its quiet walks, with their slender columns of white marble, to have seen the quaint old well in the little, sun-lit close. Now, between the slender columns, boards have been placed which shut out light and sun. The traveller sat down on an old wheel-barrow, waiting till he could see in the dim and misty light. All around him was forgetfulness of the Cloister's holy uses; signs of desecration and neglect. One end of the cloister-walk was a thoroughfare, where the wheel-barrow had worn its weary way; and even in the deserted corners there was the dust and dirt of a work-a-day world. The beautiful little capitals of the slender columns rose from among the boards, clipped and worn; above, he dimly saw the curious wooden ceiling which would seem to have taken the place of the usual stone vaulting; through chinks of the plank-wall he caught glimpses of a little close; and at length, having seen the most melancholy of "Cathedrals of the Sea," in its disguise of whitewash, decay, and misuse, he went his way.

That part of the southern coast of France called the Riviera seems now only to evoke visions of the most beautiful banality; of a life more artificial than the stage--which at least aims to present reality--transplanted to a scene of such incomparable loveliness that Nature herself adds a new and exquisite sumptuousness to the luxury of civilisation. The Riviera means a land of many follies and every vice;--each folly so delicious, each vice so regal, they seem to be sought and desired of all men. Where else can be seen in such careless magnificence Dukes of Russia with their polish of manner and their veiled insolence; Englishmen correct and blase; Americans a bit vociferous and truly amused; great ladies of all ages and manners; adventurers high and low; and the beautiful, sparkling women of no name, bravely dressed and barbarously jewelled? Such is the Riviera of to-day; the life imposed upon it by hordes of foreign idlers in a land whose warmth and luxuriance may have lent itself but too easily to the vicious and frivolous pleasures for which they have made it notorious, but a land which has no native history that is effeminate, nor any so unworthy as its exotic present. "The Riviera" may be Nice, Beaulieu, and their like, but the Provencal Mediterranean and its neighbouring territory have been the fatherland of warriors in real mail and of princes of real power, of the Emperor Pertinax of pagan times, of those who fought successfully against Mahmoud and Tergament, and of many Knights of Malta, long the "Forlorn Hope" of Christendom.

Discreetly hidden from vulgar eyes that delight in the architecture of the modern caravanserai, are the ruins of these older days--Amphitheatres, Fountains, Temples, and Aqueducts of the Romans; the Castles, Abbeys, and Cathedrals of mediaeval times. Here are the 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.