the deck of a yacht about a mile and a half distant from the shore.  Nice, we see, surrounds a steep and rugged rock which rises almost perpendicularly from the Mediterranean to the height of about six hundred feet, and is crested by the ruins of the ancient castle, and covered with terraced gardens forming a delicious promenade.  Groves of cypresses and sycamores hang on the declivities of this rock, which in places is rough with cactuses and aloes and with the Indian fig, whose bright orange flowers, when the sun’s rays fall on them, have a magic splendor of color.  A group of palm trees at the extremest elevation, standing out on a high crag, add not a little to the picturesque appearance of this singular urban hill.  On one side of this rock the rapid torrent Paillon, traversed by several handsome bridges, some of them adorned with statues, separates the “old” from the “new” town.  On the other is the port, filled with steamers and innumerable fishing-craft.  Beyond the port stretches the Boulevard de l’Imperatrice, inaugurated a few years since by the late empress of Russia, with its fine villas, notably the splendid Venetian Palace, an exact reproduction of the celebrated Moncenigo Palace at Venice, belonging to Viscount Vigier, whose wife was once a popular idol of the musical world of Paris and London—­Sophie Cruvelli—­and the extraordinary Moresque-looking castle of Mr. Smith, which is well called the Folie d’un Anglais—­the “craze of an Englishman.”  The latter stands on the end of a promontory, and with its lofty towers and domes closes in the view.  It is perhaps the most curious residence in the world, being built on a barren rock, and its apartments literally hewn out of the marble of which it is composed.  On the top of the hill is a long building, with two curious twin towers and a dome, built of red brick faced with white marble.  Here is situated the chief entrance.  You descend from the spacious entry-hall a long well staircase cut in the rock and lighted from above, until you reach a superb octagonal chamber of white marble ornamented with statues and Oriental divans covered with Persian silk.  This is the great saloon, and leading out of it are other fine chambers, all of them lined with polished marble and furnished with Eastern magnificence.  Externally, there is no trace of these chambers visible.  They are, as I have said, excavated, like Egyptian tombs, in the heart of the mountain.  The proprietor, an eccentric English bachelor, never inhabits this fantastic mansion, but lives in a second-rate hotel, spending thousands annually in adding embellishments to his astonishing castle, where, notwithstanding its magnificent suites of apartments, no human being has ever slept a night or eaten a meal.