E-text prepared by Robert Connal, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
By MARGUERITE GARDINER, THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON
1841.
I have omitted to notice the route to this place, having formerlydescribed the greater portion of it. I remarked a considerableimprovement in the different towns we passed through: the people lookcleaner, and an air of business has replaced the stagnation that usedto prevail, except in Marseilles and Toulon, which were always busycities.
Nismes surpasses my expectations, although they had been greatlyexcited, and amply repays the long détour we have made to visit it.
When I look round on the objects of antiquity that meet my eye on everyside, and above all on the Amphitheatre and Maison Carrée, I amforced to admit that Italy has nothing to equal the two last: for ifthe Coliseum may be said to surpass the amphitheatre in dimensions, thewonderful state of preservation of the latter renders it moreinteresting; and the Maison Carrée, it must be allowed, standswithout a competitor. Well might the Abbé Barthélemy, in his Voyaged'Anacharsis, call it the masterpiece of ancient architecture and thedespair of modern!
The antiquities of Nismes have another advantage over those of Italy:they are kept wholly free from the disgusting entourage that impairsthe effect of the latter; and in examining them in the interior orexterior, no risk is incurred of encountering aught offensive to theolfactory nerves, or injurious to the chaussure.
We devoted last evening to walking round the town, and so cloudless wasthe sky, so genial the air, and so striking the monuments of Romansplendour, that I could have fancied myself again transported to Italy.
Our inn, the Hôtel du Midi, is an excellent one; the apartments good,and the cuisine soignée. In this latter point the French hôtels arefar superior to the Italian; but in civility and attention, the hostsof Italy have the advantage.
We had no sooner dined than half-a-dozen persons, laden with silkhandkerchiefs and ribands, brocaded with gold and silver, and silkstockings, and crapes, all the manufacture of Nismes, came to displaytheir merchandise. The specimens were good, and the prices moderate; sowe bought some of each, much to the satisfaction of the partiesselling, and also of the host, who seemed to take a more than commoninterest in the sale, whether wholly from patriotic feelings or not, Iwill not pretend to say.
The Maison Carrée, of all the buildings of antiquity I have yet seen,is the one which has most successfully resisted the numerous assaultsof time, weather, Vandalism, and the not less barbarous attacks ofthose into whose merciless hands it has afterwards fallen. In the earlypart of the Christian ages it was converted into a church, anddedicated to St.-Étienne the Martyr; and in the eleventh century it wasused as the Hôtel-de-Ville. It was then given to a certain Pierre Boys,in exchange for a piece of ground to erect a new hôtel-de-ville; andhe, after having degraded it by using a portion of it as a party-wallto a mean dwelling he erected adjoining it, disposed of it to a *SieurBruyes, who, still more barbarous than Pierre Boys, converted it into astable. In 1670, it was purchased by the Augustin monks from thedescendants of Bruyes, and once more used as a church; and, in 1789, itwas taken from the Augustin mon