water of two springs in the neighbourhood of Uzès, to Nismes; it being
imagined to be of a quality superior to any which could be found at a
smaller distance. Perhaps also their elevation, by means of which the
water could be distributed readily all over the town, contributed to the
preference given to them. It is a noble work, consisting of two ranges
of large arches, and a third of small ones over them; the latter forming
the immediate support of the water-course; the utmost length is 870
feet; the height, from the water of the little stream below, 156 feet.
After spending about four hours of the next morning at the aqueduct, we
set off for Beaucaire, passing below the convent of Montfrin, whose
ruins are of great extent, and occupy a fine situation. The fair was
concluded, the people were packing up their merchandise, and every thing
was in confusion. We descended the river to Arles, but a thick fog
obscured the prospect, which we had the less cause to regret, since in
this part, the Rhone passes through a flat alluvial country, and has
little beauty to boast of. Arles stands on a gentle eminence. It is
surrounded by walls and towers, which, though useless for defence, form
sometimes admirable features in the landscape. It is a dirty
disagreeable place, containing however, Roman antiquities of
considerable importance; but the bad weather may perhaps have influenced
my opinion of the city. Arles, like many other French towns, lays claim
to a very remote antiquity, being, according to Lalauziere, (_Abrégé
Chronologique de l’Histoire d’Arles_), a capital city, and the seat of a
royal court, in the year of Rome 260, when the Phocæan colony founded
Marseille. In order, however, to conciliate the advocates for the
antiquity of the latter city, the author is willing to acknowledge a
prior establishment of Marseille, before that recorded in history, (B.
C. 539,) by two Phocæan chiefs, differing from the others only in name;
which does not seem to be much, since we know, that in topographical
histories, heroes have the attributes of pantonomism and ubiquity.
These, however, arrived in France only forty-six years before the
others. I must confess, I think this a very stingy allowance of Arles’s
antiquary, when he had many ages at his entire disposal. Arles having
been founded, according to the ‘Sçavant Anibert,’ seven hundred years
before Rome. Leaving these dreams, Arles appears to have been a city of
considerable importance, when the Cæsar Constantius fixed his residence
there in 292; and from this time to 312, or perhaps to 324, when
Constantine ultimately defeated Licinius, it was considered the capital
of the western part of the Roman world; and it is probably to this
period that we are to refer its principal monuments. The younger
Constantine was born there in 315; and in 316 the first Constantine
celebrated there the decennial games with great magnificence. Pownal
says, that it is not to the great Constantine that Arles is indebted,
but to Constantine the Third, a usurper in the reign of Honorius, who
was proclaimed in Britain in 407, and defeated and put to death in 411.
This man indeed made Arles for a short period his capital, but his reign
was too short and turbulent for the production of extensive monuments of
architecture. The amphitheatre is a larger building than that of Nismes,
but so encumbered with houses within and without, that it is impossible
to obtain a good view of it, and we must collect the parts as we see
them here and there, to form an opinion of the whole. We found one open
space, where we could walk on the tops of eight or ten of the upper row
of vaults. It is said at present to contain within its circuit a
thousand houses, but I would not vouch for the truth of this estimate.
Lalauziere attributes it to Tiberius Nero, quæstor under Julius Cæsar,
forty-six years before Christ.
The remains of a theatre, where a frieze ornamented with foliage is
found over an architrave enriched with triglyphs, announce a great
decline of art, and such as we can hardly suppose to have taken place
before Constantine. In the progress of the fine arts towards perfection,
it seems probable that the capital would take the lead. At least, in
modern Europe, the metropolis seems to afford the example to the
provinces; and in architecture, as in dress in the time of Steele and
Addison, we may sometimes find a fashion commencing in the country, when
it has had its day, and is already exploded in the city. Will this take
place at all times? I do not mean in every particular instance, but may
it be considered as a general rule, applicable to all periods? I incline
to the affirmative, and conclude, that the earliest corruptions, as well
as the earliest improvements, would take place in the chief towns: yet I
suspect, that even at Rome, we shall be unable to find a greater
absurdity than this at Arles, before the expiration of the third
century. In the court of a convent of Cordeliers, are two columns of
variegated marble without flutes, supposed also to belong to the
theatre. They are of the Corinthian order, and appear to stand in their
original position. The abacus of the capitals contains ovolos and
dentils, as if it were a reduction of the cornice; yet the foliage seems
to have been in good taste, and well carved, but it is much injured;
these and the bases are of white marble, and are supposed to have been
taken from the temple of Diana, and placed at the principal door of the
Scene. We find a number of fragments in the same spot, of similar
material; portions of shafts of columns of four different sizes, and as
many different cornices; and morsels of sculpture, which show themselves
to have belonged to very fine statues. In another place there are two
capitals, and a piece of an entablature, which, together with two
granite shafts on a larger scale than the parts they now support, are of
a purer style: these are said to have belonged to the ancient capitol,
but a capitol was a fortress, and for its own construction required no
columns, and hardly admitted them. These columns were perhaps, those of
a temple within the capital, or are we to suppose that the whole became
a sacred inclosure, as at Athens, and was ornamented with a propylæon.
Whatever it was, the edifice is believed to have been begun by the
second Constantine in 339, and finished by his brother Constantius about
353. The architecture contradicts the history, unless we suppose it to
have been composed of the spoils of more ancient buildings; which is the
more probable, since these granite columns are too large for their
capitals. If it formed part of a tetrastyle front, about one-third of
the frieze and architrave remain, and these have holes in them, which
doubtless supported letters of metal, and from these holes, and on that
supposition, M. Seguier, who decyphered the holes at Nismes, has
restored the whole inscription; a degree of supersagacity, which rather
weakens the credit of his former exploit. An obelisk, 47 feet high,
adorns the principal square of Arles, but it is not well mounted. The
pedestal has a fulsome dedication to Louis the Fourteenth, and another,
as fulsome, to Napoleon; but the latter was covered with a board, on
which was painted a third, to Louis the Eighteenth. The investigation of
the antiquities of Arles would be a fine subject for a skilful
antiquary, but the attention of the French is more directed to the
accurate examination of what is not in their own country, than to what
is. Even the political condition of Arles down to 1251, when the
Republic submitted itself to the counts of Provence, would form a
curious subject. We feel an interest in the history of a free and
independent state, where the mind and character are able to display
themselves; but with the loss of liberty, the events of a provincial
city lose all attraction for a stranger; and in all these states, which
were once free, but are now subject to arbitrary power, it is extremely
instructive to trace both the causes and consequences of the loss of
freedom.
Beside the buildings already mentioned, there are several Roman vaults,
the remains of baths; but all the parts of these that are known, are
occupied as cellars, and make no appearance above ground. There are also
in the neighbourhood, the fragments of an aqueduct, which collected the
water of different springs in the principality of Baux, and conducted
them to Arles, but I did not visit them.
What strikes a stranger the most at Arles, is the immense number of
sarcophagi, of which the best are now collected in an old church. The
sculpture shews that some are of Pagan, and some of Christian origin;
but all of the lower empire, and of poor workmanship. One of them
exhibits the fragment of a temple, where the supports seem to have been
alternately columns and caryatides; but it is much damaged, and I am not
quite sure that there were any columns. At the other end of the same
sarcophagus, is an ornament which resembles those in the portal of Nôtre
Dame at Dijon. On others, one might fancy it possible to trace the
origin, both of the pointed arch, and of what has been called the
trefoil ornament. One of them is ornamented with a range of Corinthian
columns, supporting alternately semicircular and triangular arches, if
they may be called so. I think, however, that we ought to consider both
as pediments, where the horizontal cornice has been omitted; especially
as they are ornamented with dentils. Another has a little point hanging
down in the middle of the arch, thus:
[Illustration: Illustration of arch]
A little out of the town is the old Roman burying ground, (_necropolis_)
where there are still numbers of sarcophagi, and of their coverings,
scattered about, but without sculpture; the former are uniformly
parallelopipedons, not smaller at the base than above. The latter are of
the usual form, like a hipped roof of very small elevation, with an
eighth part of a sphere at each angle, by way of finish; but I observed
one, with a quarter of a sphere also at each side. Just beyond the
necropolis, are the ruins of the convent of Minims, which at one time
seems to have contained a large collection of these sarcophagi. The
number must have been originally exceedingly great. Many have been
carried away for domestic purposes, to hold wine, oil, or water; to
serve for washing, or for the preparation of saltpetre.[22] Charles IX.
and Catherine of Medici being at Arles, gave _several_ to the duke of
Savoy, and to the Prince of Lorraine. The French monarch and his mother
attempted to carry eight columns of porphyry, and many beautiful
sarcophagi, to Paris; but the boat foundered at Pont St. Esprit, and
these spoils remain yet concealed in the Rhone. Cardinal Barberini
obtained permission of the town of Arles, and transported many of the
most beautiful into Italy. In 1635, the Marquis St. Chaumont received
thirteen, as a present from the municipality; three others were given in
1640 to Alphonso du Plessis, cardinal Archbishop of Lyon. Various other
princes and nobles have carried away sarcophagi from Arles; and as,
where it was in their power, they doubtless selected the best, one may
be justly surprised at the number, and interest of those that remain.
The church of this convent is evidently very ancient. It is attributed
to St. Virgil, Archbishop of Arles, in the seventh century, and it has
been ruined in the most picturesque manner.
[Illustration:
A. B. Clayton del. from Sketches by J. Woods. Edwards. Sculp.
MONUMENT AT S^T. REMI.]
At some distance is another convent, of which the ruins appear yet more
considerable; and both for form and situation, are of great value in the
landscape.
Arles is in an unwholesome situation. It rained almost all the time we
were there, with a suffocating south wind; I do not know whether it was
owing to this, or to the bad cookery at the Lion d’Or, (the Hotel du
Nord was full) that my health suffered, and I became very impatient to
get away. This was attended with some difficulty, as there is no post
road to the place. The soil is clayey, and the ways are almost
impassable in wet weather; it is true there are rocky limestone hills at
a little distance, but nobody thinks of mending the road with these
materials. At last we procured a cart, and placing a mattress in it,
proceeded at a foot pace to Tarrascon, and thence to St. Remi, where a
fine air and wholesome food soon restored me. We do not find our hosts
very complaisant or obliging in this part of France; they give us what
they please, when they please, and how they please; and if you don’t
like it, you may let it alone. However, since we cannot bend them to our
ways, we endeavour to accommodate ourselves to theirs, and do not
experience any essential inconvenience.
The monuments of St. Remi are about a mile from the modern town. They
occupy a delightful situation at the foot of some fine limestone rocks
of the principality of Baux, and the ground slopes from them into a
fertile plain, which the eye entirely commands. They consist of two
distinct objects, entirely unencumbered by any neighbouring building,
and with a few trees about them which afford some degree of shade. The
first is an arch, supposed to be of the same date with that of Orange,
and according to some French antiquaries, erected on the same occasion;
but there is no other authority for this than a supposed similarity in
the architecture. All the upper part is gone, and we have neither
capitals nor entablature. There has been but a single arch, and that
remains nearly entire, with the lower part of two columns on each side,
and their bases and pedestals. The bases are of the Roman, not of the
Greek, Attic; and though in other respects there is some similarity to
the arch at Orange, yet it is hardly enough to prove that they were
productions of the same period. The archivolt in both is in one face,
entirely filled with a sculpture of leaves and fruit; two gigantic
figures occupy the space between the columns on each side, and there are
slight indications of a victory on each spandril. These are all the
figures that remain.
At the distance of a few paces is a monument with this inscription,
SEXLMIVLIEICFPARENTIBVSSVEIS; but these names do not help us to the
date. The style of architecture, I should think posterior to that of the
arches. Millin thinks it later than the Antonines. It is composed of a
square plinth elevated on two steps, which supports a pedestal filled
with sculpture, representing equestrian combats; upon this rises a
square edifice, with a three-quarter column at each angle, or perhaps
rather more than three-fourths of the column are exposed. The architrave
has hardly any projection before the face of the work, so that the
columns stand out beyond it for half their diameter, and do not appear
to contribute materially to its support. This peculiarity was perhaps
the result of judgment, (good or bad) and not of ignorance or
carelessness, as it certainly preserves the pyramidal shape of the
monument, and the general form of the whole is very fine, though thus
singularly obtained. Above this division of the edifice is a circular
temple of six columns, with a conical, or perhaps rather funnel-shaped
roof, and in it are two statues, one male and the other female, _the
parents_ to whom the monument was erected.
We were fortunate enough to meet with a _cabriolet de poste_ at St.
Remi, and found cause enough to congratulate ourselves, that our
carriage was ‘_suspendu_.’ Places are sometimes found on our sea-shores,
where a bed of large rounded stones is fixed with some degree of
firmness in the sand. This was precisely the state of the first part of
our road. After having passed the long bridge of the Durance, a vast
destructive torrent, rather than a river, descending from the Alps, we
travelled for some leagues through a plain, sprinkled, not shaded, with
mulberry trees. The little bridges over the water-courses which
intersect and fertilize this plain, were hardly wider than the carriage,
and without any sort of fence; one of them, moreover, had a large hole
in it, and this was not the only place in the way where it appeared
impossible that we should escape an overturn, but we happily passed them
all without any accident.
We were later in the day than we ought to have been at Vaucluse, for the
rays of the sun had already entered the deep, and almost naked valley,
in which the spring rises; and being reflected from the rocks, rendered
the heat insupportable. The place in England most like Vaucluse, is
Malham Cove; but the rock at Vaucluse is much higher, and the river,
after issuing from its subterraneous reservoir, foams along its rocky
channel in a deep valley: this however shortly opens, and it assumes a
more tranquil character: a column has lately been erected in the middle
of the spring, to the memory of Petrarch and Laura.
From Vaucluse we returned to the high road at St. Andiol, where Mr.
Sharp found a place in the diligence to Marseille, and I remained in a
dirty, miserable inn, in order to resume my journey next morning to
Avignon.
I find from Millin that there were two or three Roman monuments within
the district I have been rambling over, which I did not see; a triumphal
arch at Carpentras, another at Cavaillon, and the Pont de Chamay,
consisting of a bridge, with a fine arch at each end. I am sorry to
leave the country without seeing them, but there are so many objects of
antiquity in these provinces, both of Roman times, and of almost every
succeeding age, that it would take many months to examine them all, and
I must leave them to the chance of a future opportunity.
Having now communicated to you my observations on the Roman architecture
in these provinces, I will endeavour to throw into something of a
connected form, those remarks on the edifices of a later date, which I
have hitherto refrained from particularizing, in order to be able to
give you a general view of the subject. If I were to arrange all the
ancient buildings which I have lately seen, according to their supposed
date, they would be in the following order:
Arch at Vienne }
Arch at Orange } Perhaps before our era.
Arch at St. Remi }
Maison Carrée at Nismes } In the first century.
Temple at Vienne }
Temple of the fountain at Nismes } In the second century.
Monument at St. Remi }
Entablature and capitals at Arles, said to be }
part of the Capitol } In the third century.
Columns supposed of the theatre at Arles. }
Theatre at Arles In the fourth century.
Portico of Nôtre Dame de Dom at Avignon In the sixth century.
Church of Nôtre Dame de Dom }
Church at Orange } In the seventh century.
Cathedral at Arles }
Some other small churches }
Cathedral at Nismes In the ninth century.
Front of ditto In the tenth century.
Cathedral at Valence }
Porch of the church of Tarrascon } In the eleventh century.
Porch of the church of St. Trophime at Arles }
These dates startle you, but if we still have many Roman buildings
remaining, why should we not find some of later dates? Europe was in so
disturbed a state during the period immediately following the fall of
the Roman power, that we do not readily conceive that the means, or the
will, should have been found, of erecting any considerable buildings;
but from 539 to 585, after its submission to the kings of France, who
made of Arles a sort of capital; and during the whole of the seventh
century, and beginning of the eighth, Provence seems to have enjoyed a
degree of tranquillity quite sufficient to account for the erection of
public buildings of some magnificence; and their intercourse with Greece
and Italy might have supplied artists. In 876, Arles became the capital
of a powerful kingdom, and if the ambition of its sovereigns drew them
away from their own subjects, the Counts of Provence, who were rich,
powerful, superstitious, and nearly independent, may be well supposed
capable of adorning their country with churches and monasteries. In
short, from 539 to 736, and again from 879 to 1131, history offers no
objection to the idea that magnificent edifices may have been raised in
this country. The twelfth century was an age of republics, but of very
turbulent ones.