THE RIVIERA, ANCIENT AND MODERN.* THE works of M. Charles
Lentheric, in their original French version, have been favourably known for many years to the cultivated minority of travellers and residents on the French Riviera. The volume, now brought within reach of the ever- widening circle of British tourists, appeared nearly twenty years ago under its French title, La Provence Maritime. To Dr. West—to whom the work of translating it was evidently a labour of love—must at once be accorded the high praise of having combined faithfulness to the original French with a vigorous and pure English rendering. Some exception, how- ever, may be fairly taken to the English title. For it is somewhat misleading to apply the heading Riviera to a work which deals only with the French Riviera, and stops short at the Italian frontier. Up to the year 1860, the date of the annexation of Nice and Savoy to France, the Riviera was considered to begin, instead of ending, at the Italian frontier, then formed by the River Var. It was divided into " Riviera di Ponente," from the Var to Genoa, and " Riviera di Levante," extending from Genoa to Pisa.
It would have been more correct to retain M. Lentheric's title, "Maritime Provence." The volume under review is, in fact, as stated by M. Lentheric in his preface to the French edition, a continuation of Lea Vales Mortes du Golfe de Lyon, by the same author, carrying on his investigation of the French shores of the Mediterranean from Marseilles, where the other volume left off. M. Lentheric being by profession " Ingenieur en Chef des Ponta et Chaussdes du Departement du Gard," possesses exceptional qualifications, and enjoys unusual opportunities of examining professionally the physical features of the south of France. But M. Lentheric ie a great deal more than a mere engineer. Himself a Provençal, he has thrown himself with the proverbial ardour of his countrymen into the pursuit of the history and archaeology of his native Provence.
Although figures, measurements, soundings of river and sea bottoms, and examination of the geological formations of the Mediterranean sea-board between Marseilles and Vintimiglie, form a large portion of M. Leutheric's pages, the unscientific reader is carried along without any sense of weariness over matter which might be dull if less skilfully treated. But M. Lentheric, having something of the poet and philosopher about him, contrives to give imaginative and human touches to the dead matter he is treating of, rendering his works eminently readable throughout. Take, for instance, his reference to the Mediterranean,—a passage so beautiful in the original French, that it reflects credit on the translator to have preserved something of its beauty in the English version : " The great sea alone continues, as it was in the first ages of the world. At one time its waters die in ripples on the beach ; at another, lashed into fury by the tempest, they beat upon the shore in mournful harmony with the woes of which they have been the unconscious witness, as they did when the world was young; but it knows no other change." Dealing as his work does, in the first instance, with the physical features and geology of the French Riviera, M. Lentheric has been well advised to supply a lavish amount of maps and plane, • The Rierera. Aneent and Modern. By Charles LenthErb. Traneln'od ty. CLar'ea West. M.D. London: T. Fister Unwin.
executed in a style beyond all praise. Of these there are no less than nine in the single crown-octavo volume under review.
When we come to the classical matter contained in The Riviera, Ancient and Modern, it is not difficult to see that M. Lentheric is not quite so much at home as in the demesne
of physics. But on to his Ecole Polytechnique training
he has grafted a very considerable amount of classical study, and generally acquits himself fairly also in this field.
It is perhaps not surprising that Greek appears to have more
attraction for M. Lentheric than Latin, as the Mediterranean Littoral, both east and west of Marseilles, of which our author is so enamoured, retains so much of its original Greek character. Had M. Lentheric's Riviera been originally pre- pared for English readers, he would have done well to reduce the disproportionate amount of space taken up in this volume by the protracted notices of places, like Tanroentum, on the coasts between Marseilles and Toulon. After devoting fifty pages to Tauroentum, M. Lentheric somewhat naïvely remarks a3. 122), " The tourist knows nothing of it, and there is no inducement to take him thither." In the chapter which follows that on Tanroentum, M. Lentheric seems to us to have gone unnecessarily out of his way to give us a life of Mahomet, as a preliminary to his account of the occupation of the Mountains of the Moors by the Saracens.
It is in his Roman history that M. Lentheric is most defective. We read, for instance, on p. 17 According to the testimony of Julius Cmsar (Bell. Gall. passim), the coast was occupied, at the time of his landing in Gaul, almost exclusively by semi-barbarous tribes, and civilisation had reached it only here and there, where the Phoenicians and the Ionian Greeks had established their trading ports."
Now, as a matter of fact, Julius Omar did not land in Gaul at all, as he invariably crossed and recrossed the Cottian or Graian Alps, between the Cisalpine and Transalpine Provinces, over both of which his proconsular jurisdiction ex- tended. In the next place, in the very first chapter of the " Bellnm Gallicum," Cmsar writes of "the civilisation and re- finement of our Province," the identical region referred to in the passage quoted above as generally uncivilised.
Neither is M. Lentheric entirely satisfactory in his special chapter on the Aurelian way, to the passage of which, along the Riviera, he constantly reverts. In fact, he contra- dicts himself on consecutive pages (pp. 2(i-27) in his account of the course of the famous " Via Aurelia " through the Esterel mountains. At the foot of p. 26, we read " that the Aurelian way wound as a Corniche road, round the steep cliffs of the Esterel, following as near as possible the same route as is taken at the present day by the Coastguard of the Customs." Halfway down p. 27, we are startled to find : "Hence it turned sharp round to the west, ascended the Col of the Sainte Baume at a height of 180 metres, passed by the side of the Hermitage, descended the valley." Thus M. Lentheric takes the road both round by the sea and over the Col into an interior valley of the Esterel. On p. 24, referring to the passage of the Aurelian way by La Turbie, we read :— " At that spot it was joined by a branch of the ancient Julian way, which crossed the valley of the Trebbia (Plaisintin), and whose course is shown by numerous milestones found in the territory of Nice." Here M. Lentheric is quite hopelessly vague where extreme precision is called for. As none of his admirable maps extend beyond the Italian frontier, we unfortunately get no light whatever thrown on M. Lentheric's view of the geographical position of the River Trebbia, in- definitely mentioned as if it were connected with the territory of Nice.
If by the Julian way, the Via Julia Augusta—the great road constructed by Augustus after his final subjugation of the Ligurian and Alpine tribes—is intended, M. Lentheric should have explained that the Via Julia Augusta was the true Roman name of the great highway between Spain and Rome, being identical with the road, which throughout its course the French miscall Via Aurelia. To this latter appellation, the coast-road from Rome through Tuscany to Luni (the Roman fortress of Luna), near Spezia, is only entitled. The Via Julia Augusta left the coast at Vada Sabata (Vado near Savona), crossed the Apennines to pass by Piacenza, Rimini, Arezzo, on this apparently erratic course to Rome. As PiaceLzi lies at the junction of the Po and the Trebbia, which is there crossed by the Via Julia Augusta, we get the explan- ation of M. Lentheric's confused reference to " the Plaisintin."
In a work that is generally so entertaining and instructive, it is a thankless task to have to point out defects, which but slightly detract from its value as a delightful companion to the ordinary Riviera traveller.
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