Chapter 28

After this I was free to look about me at Nimes,
and I did so with such attention as the place appeared
to require. At the risk of seeming too easily and too
frequently disappointed, I will say that it required
rather less than I had been prepared to give. It is a
town of three or four fine features, rather than a town
with, as I may say, a general figure. In general,
Nimes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman re-
mains, which are of the first order. The new French
fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses
are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside
my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which
had the oddest air of having been intended for
Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church
looked out on a square completely French, - a 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 monu-
ment, 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 ornament 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 ad-
mired at Montpellier. Here are the same terraces and
steps and balustrades, and a system of water-works
less impressive, perhaps, but very ingenious and charm-
ing. 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 con-
nection 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