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mastered are at once ugly and of the future," she asked, "the inexpressive. It is only by a habit of patience that we we arrive at what it is that the reporter means; and as the reporter is far more intimately familiar to the general reader than Shakespeare or the Bible, he puts into the heads of the people a love of common phrases and meaningless words which must ever be the despair of the student of "Significs."

Yet Lady Welby's devotion to the science of Meaning remained unshaken, She saw its difficulties and its dangers, and was still convinced that it and it alone could extricate us from the confusion of thought and word. She acknowledged that we had lost "the guiding clue of Nature," and she looked to the child to find the path which his elders have missed. "Why is the child the arbiter

discoverer of world - secrets? Because the parent inherits a primal tendency to revert to the fixed and rooted form, while the child is 'free-swimming,' it is the natural explorer. And for ages we, the parents, through the teachers, have been more and more successfully trying to train and educate our 'free-swimmers ' into fixed and rooted prisoners." So she advocated a liberty of growth, a freedom to attain the right expressiveness to which she attached so great an importance. That she died with her work unaccomplished matters little.

Very few of

her contemporaries had the talent of inspiration that was hers, and she confidently left to the young the task of handing on the torch of learning which she herself had trimmed and lit.

CIMIEZ AND QUEEN VICTORIA.

All that could be said about the statue, the ceremony, and the accompanying fêtes has been told by the daily newspapers; but we think that while they are fresh in mind, it should be of interest to readers of 'Maga' to know something of the environment in which Queen Victoria passed the last of her months of southern sunshine.

Looking from her balcony over the surrounding gardens, she saw at her feet the red roofs of beautiful Nice, and beyond them the blue waters of the Mediterranean; to her left the wooded slopes of the hill of Montboron, crowned by the picturesque seventeenth century fort of Mont Alban; and to her right the hills, wooded and dotted with villas, on the other side of which lies the valley of the Var.

CIMIEZ has been holding entente cordiale between the high festival in this passing two nations. month of April, celebrating the inauguration of the graceful statue of Queen Victoria which now looks down the length of the avenue of plane-trees leading to the heart of rich, busy, prosperous Nice, from the foot of the garden of the hotel in which our revered Sovereign passed the last of those early springtimes she loved to spend in the sunshine of the South. And incidentally France has been celebrating the cordial understanding with England which has done so much for the peace of the world,-a friendship the more remarkable that it is built upon the ruins of a long period of doubts, suspicions, and misunderstandings. That was a painful time for an Englishman residing at Cimiez when Boer victories, real or imaginary, were subjects of French rejoicing, and even the venerable figure of our aged Queen did not escape offensive caricature. Those days are ended; Frenchmen and Englishmen have learnt to know each other, and esteem each other's good qualities; and Cimiez and its sister Nice have now seen French and English bluejackets side by side guarding the foot of the statue, and have heard the French Premier and the British Ambassador unite in praising the memory of the Queen, and in wishing prosperity and long life to the

for

The position of Cimiez, some four hundred feet above the sea, on a plateau sloping gently southwards, and abruptly descending on the east to the valley of the river Paillon, marked it from early times as an important site military purposes and a perfect winter health resort. That in the earliest ages it was used as a military post is proved by the existence of the remains of Cyclopean walls on its eastern side, but their origin is wrapped in mist. By

some it is believed to have been a Trojan colony, and coins have been found here on which are figured the genius of Troy, with the word Ilion beneath. By Pliny and by Ptolemy, under the names Cemenelio or Cemeneleon, it is spoken of as the chief town of the Vediantii, a tribe who came from Greece, and are said to have obtained a concession of part of the Cemenean mountains between Monaco and the Var.

But it is not till Roman times that Cimiez has any real history, and then it looms large in Imperial annals. When the Emperor Augustus, at the beginning of the Christian era, formed the Maritime Alps into a Roman province, he carried on the great Roman road, known first as the Via Julia Augusta, and later as the Via Aurelia, from Vada Sabato through Turbia to the Var, and it passed through Cemenelum, which he made the capital of the Province. Perhaps the most interesting traces of this part of the famous military road are to be found, on the Italian side of the present frontier, in Lady Hanbury's beautiful gardens at La Mortola, and on the French side in the grand commemorative tower at La Turbie, and in the remains at Cimiez to which we shall shortly refer. With all of these Queen Victoria must have been familiar, for she spent the spring of 1882 at Sir Thomas Hanbury's lovely villa, and in other years, when driving on the Corniche road from Menton or from Nice, must have often passed close

by the Tower of Augustus at La Turbie.

Close alongside the site of the two hotels in which the Queen spent successively her last five springs on the Riviera stands the amphitheatre of Cemenelum, or all that is now left of it. It is oval in form, and from its dimensions, seventy yards in length and fifty-three yards in breadth, it is estimated that it was capable of seating not less than four thousand spectators. From this fact, reasoning by analogy, it is assumed that the population of the Roman city, in the third century of our era, the date assigned by classical antiquaries to the construction of the amphitheatre, cannot have been less than twenty thousand. And this estimate does not seem excessive for a town which we know was the seat of government of a Roman Præfect and the residence of a Pontifex Maximus, all the many officials of such an administration, and a permanent legion of troops.

It is held by antiquaries that the height from the floor of the arena to the feet of the lowest tier of spectators was not more than eight feet, and from this it is deduced that the amphitheatre was not intended for combats of wild beasts, but for gladiatorial contests and exhibitions of dancing, or of feats of strength and skill. There is a legend that during a visit to this arena in the latter part of the third century, the Empress Julia, watching a combat to

the death between a famous of its climate. But after the Greek retiarius and the cham- fall of the Western Empire pion of Cemenelum, stayed the they became part of the newly fight at the critical moment, created kingdom of Italy, and and only then discovered that their troubles began. At the the Roman champion was her end of the fifth century Nice own son, heir to the Imperial was sacked by the Burgundians, crown. And Julia was not but Cimiez, owing probably to the only empress who visited the natural strength of its posithe famous town. Tacitus tells tion and the strength of its how, two centuries earlier, the walls, escaped, though only for famous Poppaa, wife of the a time. Towards the close of Emperor Nero, made a trium- the sixth century the Lombards phant entry here after the came down with fire and sword. birth of her first child. Cimiez long resisted, and held out so obstinately, that when at last the infuriated Lombards forced an entry they massacred every living soul within the walls till sheer fatigue stayed their hands, pillaged every building, public or private, and finally destroyed the town by fire. And so this beautiful city, its palaces, its temples, its arena, its baths, were involved in one complete common ruin, never to be rebuilt as a separate city. The few inhabitants who escaped the massacre fled to Nice for refuge. Nice had its own troubles then, and for many a long year afterwards; but we are dealing only with Cimiez.

Nor is Cimiez without its share in the tales of the persecutions of the early Christians, and of their martyrdom under the rule of the Præfect Perennius and his successor Marcus Claudius; and it is related to the credit of the Empress Julia Cornelia Salonina that she persuaded her husband, the Emperor Gallienus, to put a stop to these persecutions, and to dismiss the last of the abovenamed Præfects. Chief among the martyrs of Cimiez stands forth St Pontius (Saint Pons), in honour of whom was founded the existing abbey of that name on an eminence where he is said to have met his death, below the plateau of Cimiez, and above the bank of the river Paillon.

For many centuries, under Roman rule and civilisation, Cimiez and the adjacent city of Nice enjoyed the blessings of peace. Cimiez became more and more the winter abode of rich Roman patricians attracted by the beauty of its surroundings and the unrivalled charms

Nearly thirteen centuries passed between this barbaric destruction of the old Roman civilised Cemenelum and Queen Victoria's first visit to the spot on which it had stood,-centuries during which almost every vestige of the old city disappeared under the ravag ing influence of time, and the still greater destruction wrought by the hands of men who saw in every remaining

wall and Roman pavement the hotel, separated from it nothing but useful material for building. Cimiez was now but a name, an appanage of Nice, together with which it passed under the hands of many rulers. In the fourteenth century it passed by treaty to the House of Savoy. After the French Revolution it was annexed to France. On Napoleon's fall it reverted to Savoy, and in 1860, by treaty between the third Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel, it again reverted to France, the change of rule and of nationality being ratified by a plebiscite.

only by a road, stood and happily still stand the large, beautiful, and highly cultivated gardens of the Villa Liserb, which was placed by its owners at the disposal of Princess Henry of Battenberg. At a side door immediately under the Queen's rooms the favourite donkey carriage was in waiting; a gate in the paling opposite admitted to the grounds of the Villa Liserb, and there, where admission was only granted by special favour to one or two favoured individuals, the Queen generally spent such of the morning hours as she could spare from her duties with her daughter and her grandchildren on the grassy lawns, or in the orange grove, or in the walks that led to the wild, wooded valley below. Masses of brilliant flowers gladdened the tired eyes; palms, olives, and cedars gave a grateful shade.

When Queen Victoria paid her first visit to Cimiez she took up her abode in a small hotel now known as the Pavillon Victoria, situated in a charming garden, with uninterrupted views to the city, the sea, and the surrounding hills. But a palatial hotel, now known as the Excelsior Hotel Regina, sprang up on the very edge of the plateau directly in front of the royal abode, and it was to this new hotel that her last visits to the south were paid. Even at this time Cimiez was a peaceful country suburb; there were a few villas standing in their own beautiful gardens; a mile north of the hotel were some zoological gardens; one large hotel stood half-way down the slope leading to Carabacel, the nearest district of Nice; but Under the with those exceptions there portico of the church are two was nothing to interfere with Italian inscriptions, thus transthe rural character of the lated by Mr Loveland, to whose place. charming book, 'The Romance Immediately to the west of of Nice,' we are deeply in

In the afternoon the Queen generally drove out in her landau, which, with an Indian attendant on the box beside the coachman, became a familiar object in the neighbourhood. It was thus that the Queen visited the Franciscan monastery, a spot of singular beauty and historic interest, which stands a few hundred yards to the east of the ruined amphitheatre.

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