I have omitted to notice the route to this place,
having formerly described the greater portion of it.
I remarked a considerable improvement in the different
towns we passed through: the people look cleaner,
and an air of business has replaced the stagnation
that used to prevail, except in Marseilles and Toulon,
which were always busy cities.
Nismes surpasses my expectations, although they had
been greatly excited, and amply repays the long detour
we have made to visit it.
When I look round on the objects of antiquity that
meet my eye on every side, and above all on the Amphitheatre
and Maison Carree, I am forced to admit that
Italy has nothing to equal the two last: for if
the Coliseum may be said to surpass the amphitheatre
in dimensions, the wonderful state of preservation
of the latter renders it more interesting; and the
Maison Carree, it must be allowed, stands without
a competitor. Well might the Abbe Barthelemy,
in his Voyage d’Anacharsis, call it the
masterpiece of ancient architecture and the despair
of modern!
The antiquities of Nismes have another advantage over
those of Italy: they are kept wholly free from
the disgusting entourage that impairs the effect
of the latter; and in examining them in the interior
or exterior, no risk is incurred of encountering aught
offensive to the olfactory nerves, or injurious to
the chaussure.
We devoted last evening to walking round the town,
and so cloudless was the sky, so genial the air, and
so striking the monuments of Roman splendour, that
I could have fancied myself again transported to Italy.
Our inn, the Hotel du Midi, is an excellent one; the
apartments good, and the cuisine soignee.
In this latter point the French hotels are far superior
to the Italian; but in civility and attention, the
hosts of Italy have the advantage.
We had no sooner dined than half-a-dozen persons,
laden with silk handkerchiefs and ribands, brocaded
with gold and silver, and silk stockings, and crapes,
all the manufacture of Nismes, came to display their
merchandise. The specimens were good, and the
prices moderate; so we bought some of each, much to
the satisfaction of the parties selling, and also
of the host, who seemed to take a more than common
interest in the sale, whether wholly from patriotic
feelings or not, I will not pretend to say.
The Maison Carree, of all the buildings of
antiquity I have yet seen, is the one which has most
successfully resisted the numerous assaults of time,
weather, Vandalism, and the not less barbarous attacks
of those into whose merciless hands it has afterwards
fallen. In the early part of the Christian ages
it was converted into a church, and dedicated to St.-Etienne
the Martyr; and in the eleventh century it was used
as the Hotel-de-Ville. It was then given to a
certain Pierre Boys, in exchange for a piece of ground
