Esprit; but perhaps depending rather on the fancy of the architect than
on the style of the time, and therefore not very interesting. The date
is probably the fifteenth century. In one of these is a vault, said to
have the property of preserving the human body, but like so many other
things, most of the objects thus preserved were destroyed in the fury of
the revolution, when the French populace gave full play to the desire to
injure and destroy, which seems so natural in an ignorant multitude.
One, the body of a female, was, as I was informed, still entire, and I
went to see it; arms, legs, and mutilated trunks, were pulled out from a
hole, one after another, to gratify my curiosity, and at last the
desired object. It was exceedingly light, of a dingy buff colour,
somewhat shrivelled, but in other respects very perfect.
We engaged a voiture from Pont St. Esprit to Orange, and travelled the
whole way in a mizzling rain, which continued all the evening and the
next morning. My companion finds the climate of the south of France much
like that of Ireland, and I cannot contradict him; but I suppose that
such summers are very rare.
Orange is a little city of about 8,000 inhabitants, but it is said to
have had 15,000 under the government of its own princes. It was added in
1713, by the treaty of Utrecht, to the crown of France. The situation is
at the foot of an insulated hill, round which a fine plain extends to a
considerable distance; beyond are hills, mountains, rocks, and valleys,
all of which are seen to great advantage from the summit of this
eminence. The inns are in the suburbs, the high road passing on the
outside of the town; and this is absolutely necessary, as the widest
part of the widest street does not exceed twelve or thirteen feet, and
few are more than nine or ten. Here we first saw an order which we have
since met with in several other places, that no carts are permitted to
enter the city. The inhabitants tell us, that the situation of the town
is cold, and subject to violent blasts of wind from the Alps; but we
observed pomegranates in full bloom in the hedges. The general aspect of
the vegetation is very different from that of England and the north of
France.
There are few places, even in Italy, which can vie with this part of
France, in the number and beauty of Roman antiquities. At Orange, our
first object was the celebrated Arch of Triumph, one of the most
interesting in existence for the beauty of its proportions, as well as
for the singularity of its disposition, which differs widely from those
remaining at Rome; but it has never been even tolerably well published.
There are holes in the architrave on the north side, by means of which
the metal letters have been fixed, but the inscription itself is
wanting, and the monument has baffled all attempts of the French
antiquaries to determine its date, or the object of its erection. At
Orange it is attributed to Marius, or rather to Domitius Ahenobarbus,
under whom they suppose Marius to have served a campaign in Gaul: but
the chief evidence of this is the name ‘Mario,’ sculptured on one of the
shields among the trophies. There are many other names, similarly
placed, which seem to be in the nominative case, as Udillus, Sacrovir,
and it therefore seems probable, that those, whose case is not
determined by the termination, should be in the nominative also, as
Beve, Ratui, Varene, and this Mario, which has given rise to the opinion
of the occasion of the building. The letters S. R. E. occur in several
places. We have no good reason to believe that stone triumphal arches
were in use before the time of the emperors, and the profusion of
ornament on the mouldings announces a style of art posterior to the
Augustan age. Another hypothesis gives it to Marius and Catulus, on
their defeat of the Cimbri, somewhere in this neighbourhood; a third to
Julius Cæsar, on his conquest of Marseille. The Baron de Bastie contends
that it is of the time of Augustus; and Maffei, that it was constructed
in the reign of Hadrian. The result is, that we know nothing at all
about it.
In the Corinthian capitals, as executed by the Romans, the angles of the
abacus are always cut off. Among the Greeks the acute point was,
sometimes at least, preserved. The capitals of this arch are too much
damaged to admit of absolute certainty, but I am pretty confident that
the Greek manner was adopted. Again, the Attic base, among the Romans,
has a deep scotia, and the fillet above it is nearly under the fillet of
the apophysis; the Greeks used a wide and shallow scotia, and made the
projection of the fillet nearly as great as that of the torus above.
[Illustration: Illustration of column bases]
The bases here are decidedly Greek, and the foliage of the capitals is
also somewhat Greek in character. These circumstances have not before
been noticed, and indeed it is only lately that we have become
sufficiently acquainted with the remains of architecture in Greece, to
be aware of the differences which distinguished the two styles; the
finding them here is curious, and seems to point out some connexion
between the building and the Greek colony of Marseille. The composition
of this edifice is very good, and the architect has contrived to give it
something of a pyramidal form, which suits admirably with its character,
as a monumental building. The French architects complain of it as
top-heavy, and compared with the Roman triumphal arches, the opening is
small in proportion to the whole edifice; but the character is
different. In the Roman, the arch itself is the principal object, and
the architecture and sculpture merely adorn a chosen point in the course
of a triumphal procession. Here it is a fine pyramidal mass, erected to
commemorate some important event, in which the openings must be such as
not to destroy the apparent firmness and solidity. Nothing could be
taken away without injuring the effect, and if any thing could be added,
it could only be some additional sculpture at the top, which probably
once existed. The mouldings are overloaded with ornaments, and the
corona is small and channelled, as if to indicate dentils; an abuse
which I should not have supposed to exist prior to the time of Hadrian.
The best external evidence we have, would perhaps, assign this arch, and
two others at Carpentras and Cavaillon, to Domitius Ahenobarbus; but the
proofs are very slight, and the internal evidence is strongly against so
early a period.
This building was converted into a fortress in the thirteenth century,
by Raymond de Baux, Prince of Orange, and he appears to have damaged it
considerably, but he probably preserved it from total destruction. At
present it is quite out of the town, and perfectly insulated.
Besides the arch, here is a large theatre, of which the scene wall, now
standing, is about 300 feet long, and 100 feet high; or, more exactly,
according to M. de Gasparin, ‘_Histoire de la ville d’Orange_,’ 336 feet
in length, and 114 in height; the seats were in the slope of a hill, as
in the Greek theatres. Nothing is known as to its date, and the
workmanship is rude and gives no help; the lower part is occupied with
shops, and part of the ruin is the town prison, but the building well
deserves an accurate examination. The outside presents a range of
arches, now mostly occupied by little shops, and ornamented with a sort
of Doric pilaster and an entablature. Over this is a plain face of wall
with holes in it, and some projecting stones, which suggest the idea of
an advancing roof and colonnade in front of the present arches. Higher
up is another range of arches, low and without pilasters: nevertheless a
small capital is shown over each pier, and there is a second continued
entablature about the same size as that below. In the wall above these,
we have, first a row of blocks to receive the base of the posts of the
velum, then a very simple cornice, of considerable projection, in which
there are no perforations over the three blocks nearest to the angles of
the building; over the six following blocks this cornice is perforated,
but in the remainder there are no holes till we arrive at the same
distance from the opposite end; higher up is a second range of blocks,
all of which are perforated. The upper cornice has no perforations or
channels, and it is probable that the posts escaped it by a slight
inclination outwards, as it has but a small projection.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE ELEVATION.
INSIDE ELEVATION.
PLAN.
J. Hawksworth, Sculp.
THEATRE AT ORANGE.
_London. Published by J & A Arch. Cornhill. March 1^{st}. 1828._]
The inside has been ornamented with columns and entablatures of white
marble, of which very few vestiges remain. The whole back wall of the
stage is clearly shown. It has one large doorway, corresponding with the
central opening on the outside, and a very small one on each side of the
larger, and no other opening; but there are two very whimsical recesses,
of which the drawing will give you a better idea than any description;
above, is a large niche in the centre, and on the sides, and on the
return are recesses, supposed to have received mosaics, but I think,
without sufficient reason. These return walls have no openings at any
height. There are, in the back wall, some grooves issuing immediately
above the second cornice, and below there are irregular recesses, which
one may suppose made to receive beams, either of wood or stone, and it
has thence been concluded that there was a roof over the stage. It is
however, difficult to imagine a roof extending above 200 feet, and
having a projection of 38 feet without any supports in front. The Sedili
are very much injured, and greatly incumbered with houses, which were to
have been removed had the reign of Napoleon continued.
They pretend at Orange to show the remains of a circus, and to point out
the site of an amphitheatre, but the vestiges are somewhat obscure. The
inhabitants must have been much devoted to amusements. No remains of any
temple are visible, and hardly any fragments are scattered about, which
could have belonged to other public buildings. We find, indeed, two or
three pieces of mosaic pavement, but much inferior in number, size, and
beauty, to those at Vienne.
I shall leave my Gothic till another opportunity, when I hope to be able
to give you some idea of a very peculiar style of early architecture
which prevailed in this country. After the rainy weather at Orange we
had some very fine days. The wet gave me cold, and during the fine
weather I made myself ill by exposing myself too much to the sun, while
making my notes upon the theatre. By way of relaxation, I determined to
go and see the great fair at Beaucaire, but on examining some voitures,
which were proceeding in that direction, I found them so small that I
could not sit upright. What a misfortune to be tall in a country where
every body else is short! My head was too dizzy to write or draw, I
therefore walked to Avignon, and found the heat much less oppressive
when using moderate exercise, than when standing still. The road is
shaded in some parts, but others are quite exposed to the sun. The near
landscape consists of gentle hills, with meadows and cornlands, mixed
with mulberry trees and vineyards, and, in the latter part of the way,
with olive grounds. There is, generally, plenty of water, and one or two
beautiful clear streams descend from the mountains, to join a little
river which enters the Rhone above Avignon. The mulberry is of the white
sort; the fruit small, sweet, and mawkish; something in taste like the
yew-berry, but without its viscidity. In the back-ground, on the left,
are rugged mountains, and one very high one (Mont Ventou), on the top of
which was a little patch of snow. Avignon makes a fine appearance at a
distance, exhibiting a great extent of walls and towers, but intending
to return thither and survey it more at leisure, I hastened forward to
the fair. I was told that the packet-boat would set off for Beaucaire
between five and six in the morning. An old fellow came to call me at
twenty minutes before five, but though I was on the quay by five, the
barge was gone; I hired a little boat and followed. The Rhone is still
beautiful, though a wider valley and lower hills render the scenery less
striking than it is higher up. The language here is considerably
different from the French, and is designated by the word _patois_, which
seems a general term for all provincial dialects differing considerably
from the language of the capital. My boatman told me that the _canaille_
(query, who or where is this canaille) had killed his _pèro_, his
_mèra_, and his _frèro_, meaning all the while to speak French, and not
his own provincial tongue. In the verbs they usually pronounce all the
letters, and mostly omit the pronouns; ‘_avez du mao?_’ said a little
girl to me, when I accidentally had a handkerchief round my hand: and
Beaucaire is with them a word of three syllables, all the vowels of the
latter part of the word being distinctly pronounced. Even at Lyon, the e
mute is often heard as a syllable, and they assure me here that the
Parisians speak very bad French, and are hardly intelligible any where
but in Paris.
Beaucaire is a small town seated at the foot of a rock, which is crowned
by the ruins of an old castle. This is a very picturesque object, both
in itself and in its situation. A small plain, shaded with avenues of
trees, extends from the town and the rock to the Rhone. The streets seem
to contain nothing but shops and warehouses, except a few inns and
coffee-houses. Cloths were extended over them to keep out the sun, and
as they are very narrow, not much wider than those of Orange, this
object is easily accomplished. Square pieces of cloth, with the names
and occupations of the traders, are hung upon ropes extended across the
streets, but so close together, that in some parts, it is difficult to
read any of them. The plain, from the foot of the castle rock to the
Rhone, was filled with booths of all sorts and sizes. In one of these I
found one of my old travelling companions from Dijon to Lyon, and his
shop was so much cooler than my room in the town, under the covering of
the streets, that I usually made it my resting place. The bad weather
has injured the vines, and this has been extremely unfavourable to the
fair, as the people of the country have no means of making purchases.
Towards evening the amusements commence, and one of the earliest, which
was an amusement to me, though a trade to him, was the exhibition of a
quack named Charini. He assured us that he did not exercise his
profession from any desire of obtaining money, for he had a clear rental
of 25,000 livres, which put him quite above any wish of that sort, but
for the love he bore to the good people of France, and the hope of
future renown. He makes no profit of his medicines, but merely seeks to
repay his expenses; a request, not only reasonable, but absolutely
necessary; for he had already distributed in the course of this year,
sixty thousand bottles at Montpellier, and ninety thousand at Marseille,
each of which cost him thirty sous, and it would consume the fortune of
a prince to support such an extended scale of beneficence. He rode about
in a sort of sociable, drawn by four horses, with his preparations
disposed before him, and was attended by eight musicians on horseback, a
degree of style which I think you can hardly boast of in England.
This fair is esteemed one of the three greatest on the Mediterranean,
and perhaps, the chief of the three, but in the present year it has
fallen short. It is said to have been established by Raymond VI., count
of Toulouse, but the most ancient act, still existing, is of Louis XI.
in 1463. The master of the first bark which arrives, salutes the town of
Beaucaire with a musket or pistol, and receives a sheep, offered with
much solemnity, as a premium for his expedition.
The castle at Beaucaire was destroyed in 1632, but I cannot tell you
when it was built. Raymond V., Count of Thoulouse, held here a splendid
court in 1172, rendered remarkable by the whimsical contest of
extravagance and profusion maintained there. Raymond himself set the
example by giving 100,000 sous to Raymond d’Agoust, who immediately
distributed them among ten thousand knights, then present at the court.
Bertrand Rambault ploughed the court, and neighbourhood of the castle,
with twelve pair of oxen, and sowed 100,000 sous in the furrows.
Guillaume Grosmantel had the food for his own table, and for three
hundred knights’ followers, dressed by the flame of wax candles. Raymond
de Venou, adding brutality to extravagance, burnt thirty of his most
beautiful horses. The struggle of ostentation was clumsily maintained,
and the _parvenus_ of modern times cannot be reproached with any
absurdities which will bear a comparison with these.
A bridge of boats across the Rhone connects the little town of Tarrascon
with the opposite one of Beaucaire, and two sous are paid for crossing
it; when I reached the other end, it was with the greatest difficulty
that I could get permission to go on shore to see the church, as a
special pass was necessary on visiting, or returning from the fair. The
church at Tarrascon offers some curious parts, but is by no means
beautiful: the entrance is by a large, semicircularly headed arch, with
abundance of mouldings, a few of which have Norman ornaments; and one is
enriched with an inverted ovolo: above the entrance is a range of
alternate columns and pilasters supporting an architrave. There are also
some remains of a castle, where in 1449 a tournament was held by Louis
III. almost as singular as the former court at Beaucaire.
The following English card, stuck up in the salle-à-manger at Orange,
had directed us to the ‘hotel of Luxembourg, in the Esplanade,’ at
Nismes:
“Mr. David Londes acquaints the gentlemen travels that he has remplaced
Mrs. Londes widow, his sister-in-law, in the said hotel. He has the
honour to acquaint the gentlemen travelling, that they might find
chambers elegantly fitted, and that nothing has been omitted for the
comfort of travellers. The hotel being moreover placed in the finest
situation in the town. The chambers are newly suited, the stables and
the coach-house are vast and commodious.
“Mr. David Londes entertains the hope, that he will fill entirely the
desires of the gentlemen travellers, and that he will augment the renown
which this hotel has always enjoyed. It is proach bath houses and flying
coach office. The travellers will find there a magazine of silk
stockings, and all sorts of cloths.” Do you think the French
advertisements we sometimes meet with in England appear as ridiculous to
a Frenchman? After indulging a laugh at the notice, we went to the inn,
and were very well contented. The antiquities of Nismes are the most
celebrated of all those in the south of France, and of these, to an
architect, the Maison Carrée is the most interesting. It is a temple,
with six columns in front, and eleven on the sides, which is according
to the rules of Vitruvius, but the side spaces are walled up.
Technically speaking then, it is a hexastyle pseudoperipteral temple of
the Corinthian order. It is in very good preservation, and the spacing
and proportions of the columns are singularly pleasing. The bases are
Greek Attic, but with some additional mouldings, which diminish its
beauty; they are very incorrectly given in Clerisseau’s _Antiquités de
France_. Nothing else is in the Greek taste, and it is evident that no
very minute attention has been given to attain a perfect agreement of
form and dimension in the corresponding parts. The cornice is heavier,
and more loaded with ornaments than that of the arch at Orange, and I
imagine the building to be posterior. The date of the Maison Carrée, is
supposed to be determined by an inscription restored by M. Seguier, by
means of the remaining holes in the frieze. _C. Cæsari Augusti F. Cos.
L. Cæsari Augusti F. Cos. designatis principibus juventutis._ It is
therefore of the time of Augustus, and we must consequently push back
the date of the arch to an earlier period, from internal evidence.
Two projecting stones, moulded, and perforated with a square opening, on
the sides of the doorway, have been supposed to be intended to support
an external temporary door; but one does not understand the object of
such a door inclosing the inner one and all its ornaments; and as no
similar instance can be produced, we must, I believe, be content to
leave their purpose unexplained.
The fragment by the fountain, usually called the temple of Diana, must
be of still later erection. The order is composite; the earliest
ascertained example of which is, I believe, the arch of Titus, at Rome.
A number of fragments are collected in it, which mostly announce the
period of the decline of the art; but there is one which is completely
Greek, and which probably belonged to some more ancient edifice. The
principal part of this ruin is what once was a large vaulted room,
perhaps a covered court; but most of the vaulting has disappeared, and
its present beauty depends, not so much on its architecture, as on the
beautiful colour of the stone, on the morsels of antiquity collected
there, and which form a sort of museum, and on the dark green of the
fig-trees which hang loosely about the walls, and give an air of
freshness and coolness even in a hot summer’s day. There are three
recesses at the farther end, and a dark covered passage on each side, of
which I do not comprehend the object, but I know no reason to suppose it
to have been a temple.
The situation of this ruin is very pleasant, in the midst of a public
garden, close by a copious spring of delightful water, which supplies
the town. This garden is the finest thing of the sort I have ever seen.
The columns and balustrades which adorn the fountain, and the basins
made for the reception of its waters, extend all through it, and there
are abundance of stone seats, vases, and statues. The character of art
is no where lost, but it is a beautiful character of art, and the more
so, because all the parts are consistent, and there is no appearance of
pretence or affectation. Every thing is part of one design; whereas, in
England, where we have such ornaments, they are too detached, and seem
to have dropt from the clouds, rather than to belong to the scene. Even
at the Tuilleries the distribution is by no means sufficiently apparent,
they want more architecture to support them. The trees here are of a
good size, and uncut, principally the linden.
Comfort is said to be a winter idea. On leaving the gardens I had a good
elucidation of what it means in a warm climate. A boy was seated on the
stone bank which confines the water in these basons, under the shade of
the thick trees, and smoking a cigar, while the stream was gushing out
over his feet: he seemed most perfectly contented with his situation.
The amphitheatre is a great building, completely cleared out, so that it
is seen to the utmost perfection, and the degree of ruin is such as to
disclose the internal structure, and yet to exhibit all the external
forms. The parts, as is generally the case in buildings of this sort,
are but rudely finished. It was built, according to Menard (_Histoire
des Antiquités de la ville de Nismes_) by the liberalities of the
Emperor Antoninus Pius, consequently between the years 138 and 161.
One of the Roman gateways of the city is still standing, but it is not
an antiquity of much consequence. A ruin called the Tour Magne stands on
a hill just out of Nismes; its destination is unknown, but it probably
was a magnificent sepulchre; the base appears to have been a polygon,
perhaps an octagon,[21] but with unequal sides: the upper part was
clearly octagonal, but smaller, and ornamented with pilasters; within,
it is an irregular oval. At present there is little to be seen but a
towering mass of rubble. I found the people at Nismes unwilling to speak
about their late sufferings, and still in a state of extreme
apprehension.
LETTER XI.
SOUTH OF FRANCE.
_Geneva, 18th August, 1816._
WE left Nismes on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, for the Pont du
Gard. The latter part of the way has some picturesque points of view,
adorned by the ruins of old castles perched on rugged rocks; but it is
deficient in wood, and in water; though we passed two or three abundant
springs, and at each spring a village. We crossed the valley of the
Gardon, by means of a bridge built against the ancient aqueduct; and
found close by it a very decent country inn, with civil and obliging
people, where we slept.