In these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is
exceedingly striking. Leaving London one speeds past the pleasant
Surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling
green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar
but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of Northern
France, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands,
with their strange southern growths, which lie behind Marseilles; and
all day as the train thunders along the Riviera, through olive gardens
and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled
and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering
on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment
from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened
by radiant sunshine. And on the second morning, issuing into the great
square before the station, you have your first sight of Rome.
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