a Chiusi, or an Orvieto.  Sea-life and rusticity strike a different note from that of those Apennine-girdled seats of dead civilisation, in which nations, arts, and religions have gone by and left but few traces,—­some wrecks of giant walls, some excavated tombs, some shrines, where monks still sing and pray above the relics of the founders of once world-shaking, now almost forgotten, orders.  Here at Mentone there is none of this; the idyllic is the true note, and Theocritus is still alive.

We do not often scale these altitudes, but keep along the terraced glades by the side of olive-shaded streams.  The violets, instead of peeping shyly from hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy walls among maidenhair and spleen-worts.  They are very sweet, and the sound of trickling water seems to mingle with their fragrance in a most delicious harmony.  Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the sense of which is pure and perfect peace.  The country-people are kind, letting us pass everywhere, so that we make our way along their aqueducts and through their gardens, under laden lemon-boughs, the pale fruit dangling at our ears, and swinging showers of scented dew upon us as we pass.  Far better, however, than lemon or orange trees, are the olives.  Some of these are immensely old, numbering, it is said, five centuries, so that Petrarch may almost have rested beneath their shade on his way to Avignon.  These veterans are cavernous with age:  gnarled, split, and twisted trunks, throwing out arms that break into a hundred branches; every branch distinct, and feathered with innumerable sparks and spikelets of white, wavy, greenish light.  These are the leaves, and the stems are grey with lichens.  The sky and sea—­two blues, one full of sunlight and the other purple—­set these fountains of perennial brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli.  At a distance the same olives look hoary and soft—­a veil of woven light or luminous haze.  When the wind blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a sea of silver.  But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles wind among the snowy drift of allium.  The narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones burn like fire, with interchange of blue and lilac buds, white arums, orchises, and pink gladiolus.  Wandering there, and seeing the pale flowers, stars white and pink and odorous, we dream of Olivet, or the grave Garden of the Agony, and the trees seem always whispering of sacred things.  How people can blaspheme against the olives, and call them imitations of the willow, or complain that they are shabby shrubs, I do not know.[6]