RAMBLES ABOUT lab RIVIERA.*

Haas non numero nisi serene might well be taken as a motto

by Mrs. Goading, for though she sometimes tells us of wind and rain and even fog, the hours she counts are all cloudless to her, and to her readers, for she writes with a cheerful spirit which warms us like a ray of the sunshine of Provence. Un- comfortable little incidents, such as a crowded " autobus," a tiring foodless walk, or even a mist-shrouded view, which can blacken the horizon of less amiable travellers, are each in turn powerless to ruffle her good temper, or cast a shadow on the enjoyment which she knows how to pass on to her readers, and it is indeed a real pleasure to revisit the Riviera so easily and in such good company. As we turn these pages, we wonder whether we shall come across descriptions of our favourite haunts, and as we read on we find that Mrs. Gostling has gener- ally seen a great deal that we have missed, but occasionally we can, not indeed without a certain feeling of pride, recall a view or an excursion that she has passed by unnoticed, or at any rate unrecorded in this book. For instance, there is a wonderful walk in the neighbourhood of Grasse of which she says nothing. A track leads from Pre-du-Lac to the little

Château du Rouret. It is cut like a terrace on the hillside facing the Gorge du Loup, and from it can be seen a mag-

nificent view of those splendid limestone cliffs, rising from a valley which is famous for the botanical interest of its flowers, even in this land of flowers. The afternoon is the best time for this walk, when the slanting sunshine illuminates the snowy mountains and the grey, bare rocks, and warms the fertile slopes into glowing colour, while dense shade enhances the mystery of the gorge, from which springs the Wolf's raging torrent. The present writer knows this place in early spring, when the little château is shut up, and the only other wayfarers are peasants and mules. There is nothing to mar the beauty and the solitude of the walk. In the gorge itself there are other tourists and the bustle of ordinary life, here our pleasure can be undisturbed :-

" Silver lights and darks undreamed of

Where I hush and bless myself with silence."

With Mrs. Gostling for our guide we lose not a moment of the fun of a holiday journey. She even likes the crossing, and so can enjoy her first cup of coffee as soon as she sets foot in France. To Northerners the South begins in a different place on each expedition, with the first sight of olive and orange trees.

In this book it begins soon after Vienne, but to the Meri- dional (we are thinking of Daudet's Numa Roumestan) Valence is the true entrance to the delectable country, where the sun is at the trouble to warm even our bones, and the friendly, expansive nature of the people we meet helps us to relax our strained and tired nerves, and recover the joie de vivre that we had lost in England.

Mrs. Gostling gives us but a glimpse of Avignon and Mar- seilles, and then takes us to Nice, from which she and her husband made many delightful excursions. As they had chosen Sep- tember for their visit, they saw the town without the gay crowd that fills it in the winter :—

" It is in autumn that you have the glory [of the Southern land] to yourself, and if you are by nature an anchorite, as I am, solitude is essential to complete happiness. It takes a certain amount of space to enjoy oneself in the delirious fashion demanded by the Riviera, and in autumn there is plenty of space. Then, too, every- one is so pleased to see you. The peasants (who always take us for a couple of wandering postcard photographers) have any amount of time to tell us about their lives, their families, their legends, the little stories that make each place so sweet and homelike. And the sunsets ! It is worth the whole journey to Cannes to see the mountains of the Moors lying like black velvet against the flaming dahlia of the western sky, and the ghostly islands floating upon the sea of glass. In fact, the Riviera in autumn is the loveliest land on earth, and there is scarcely anyone there but oneself to see it."

In the warm days of autumn, too, many places are more easily accessible than they are in colder weather. The charming little hotels we read of here are probably quite unheated, and so impossibly cold, in winter, while long excursions into the mountains would take us away from warmth and flowers, into a land of ice and snow. It is delightful, however, to read of places that we have longed to explore, but have given up as out of reach, on a winter or spring day. Castellane, with its

wonderful rock, and no less wonderful history, is a place full of interest, and the chapter devoted to it is one of the best in the book. Its distance from the coast and its fortress-like • Rambles about the Riviera. By Frances M. Gostling. With 42 Illustrations United States. Edited by Lindley Russell. London : G. P. Putnam's Sons, tom Photographs by Dr. W. ..ilyton Gostling. London ; Mills and Boon. Os.] PS. net.] mountains did not prevent the Saracens from attacking this remote township, which, however, was valiantly defended by its Lords, who " always kept a goodly supply of great stone balls " with which, like the Alpini of to-day, to defend the independence of their State. Napoleon passed this way on his journey from Elba, and here he borrowed a case of gold coins from the Prefect, and four fresh mules to enable him to cross the mountains to Digne :- " ' As my grandfather was following up the steep track,' mid Jean Baptiste [the barber of Castellane, and the sacristan of its churches], ' he saw the mule stumble, and the next moment the gold was pouring down the path in a stream. You can imagine the Emperor ! They collected what they could, but they were pressed for time, and many of the pieces had rolled out of sight. Even to-day the children will go hunting and turning over the stones to find Bonaparie's gold."

Mrs. Gostling knows well bow to gain the confidence of tho people to whom she talks, and the reader will here find plenty of that engaging wayside gossip which enlivens all the affairs of life in Provence, whether it be the ordering of a meal in a village café, a visit to the local objects of interest, or merely a haphazard encounter with an old man or woman at work in a garden. As the writer of this book has found out, the drawback to conversation with aged Proveneaux is not only their lack of the French tongue, but also their lack of teeth. However, with goodwill on both sides these difficulties can generally be surmounted, and a mutual understanding arrived at, in spite of many vagaries of pronunciation. Besides agree- able adventures in out-of-the-way places, we can also read of the well-known Riviera towns, each with its own special life and characteristic features, its legends and its history. Then we can visit Toulon, and learn something of this deeply inter- esting seaport, and the wonderful country that lies behind it. Montrieux-le-Jenne and its associations with Petrarch and his young brother, 011ioules, and many another delightful place, are waiting for us in these pages. The traveller who wishes for fine mountain scenery cannot do better than follow the " Route des Alpes," even if no farther than to Barcelonnette, and on to Digne, where the " mountains do not close in upon the town, but lie at a pleasant distance, inviting one to wander out across the meadows to explore the delicious valleys and gorges with which they are intersected." If the journey to Digne is made by train in one day, the contrast between the scenery there and on the coast is extraordinarily striking, for each, perfect as it is in its own way, impresses the beholder very differently.

Dr. Gostling's illustrations are excellent, and have been well reproduced. He has succeeded in fixing effects of brilliant sunshine without the help of the disfiguringly sharp lines of deep shadow which often spoil otherwise good photographs of the Riviera. He knows how to choose his models, and, more difficult still, how to group them and make them serve the purpose of the camera. Whether they be fishing-boats or peasants, churches or castles, or even sea and mountain, from them he composes well-balanced pictures, which are worth looking at carefully for their own sakes as much as for that of the places they recall to us.

At a time like this, when no one can travel in search of sun- shine with a light heart, and when very few people can take such a journey at all, recollections grow more and more precious, and we would thank Mrs. Gostling very sincerely for the pleasure her book has given us. Here are collected many delightful impressions, where we need have no fear that they will be dimmed by time, for this land she writes of is to us a country like that sung by Stevenson, where we hold

" every flower And every bramble dear."