“Smith’s Craze,” as I have said, closes in the view to our right.  To the left, beyond the torrent Paillon, is situated modern Nice, with its quays, leviathan hotels, and an almost interminable line of villas marking the celebrated Promenade des Anglais.  The background of the scene is filled up by a semicircle of well-wooded hills, verdant with vines, fig, orange, olive and pomegranate trees, and sparkling with white country-seats, convents, and campanili.  Towering over these hills appears another range, of rocky and bold outlines, and then another, of lofty mountains whose peaks lose themselves in clouds, and by their fantastic figures form as delightful an horizon as the eye can behold.  In the centre rises the conical peak of Monte Cao, an extinct volcano, exactly resembling Vesuvius in conformation, and only wanting a curl of smoke issuing from its crater to make the illusion perfect.  Alongside of Monte Cao is another extinct volcano, on which are seen the ruins of the ancient and deserted village of Chateauneuf, while between the two summits (thirty-five hundred feet high) are distinctly visible the peaks of some of the ever-snowy Alps.  The foreground of the picture is formed by the deep indigo waters of the Mediterranean, diversified by a hundred sunny sails, and overhead hangs the cloudless Italian sky.

Let us now put back to port and walk through the city, visiting first Old Nice, then the modern Pompeii, as Alphonse Karr pleasantly calls the new town.  Old Nice resembles Genoa on a small scale, and has very narrow streets of lofty (and in some cases really fine) houses, no end of churches, gloomy-looking convents, and one or two palaces.  In the narrow streets surrounding the cathedral—­a large and showy building, formerly a parish church—­is a market supplied with native fruits—­oranges, lemons, grapes, figs, and many varieties of melons and nuts.  The streets, which are in places so narrow that you can almost stretch your arms across them, are full of bright-looking shops, with all their varied goods displayed at the open, unglazed windows.  Here and there one comes across remains of ancient times of considerable interest.  Thus, in the Rue Droite is an old house, with a series of quaint little arches and a curious Gothic gateway, which was formerly part of the palace inhabited by Joanna II. of Naples.  Near the church of St. Jacques is another old residence, with an odd decoration on its front in the shape of colossal figures of Adam and Eve, executed in alto-rilievo, which have their feet on either side of the doorway and their heads above the fifth story.  The tree of knowledge, over-laden with its dangerous fruit, flourishes between the windows of what was once the saloon, and is now a manufactory of maccaroni.  In the Rue du Centre is the quondam palace of the Lascaris family, an old Italian mansion, with marble balconies, wide, majestic staircases adorned with Corinthian columns, and vast apartments frescoed by Carlone, a reputable Genoese painter of mythological subjects.  Carlone’s gods and goddesses look down no longer on the members of the House of Lascaris, who once ruled over Tenda, and were the lineal descendants of the imperial Byzantine house of Del Comneno, but on those of an amiable Nicois family, who most willingly show the old palace to any stranger who may choose to knock at their door.