The calcareous hills round Grasse and to the north of Nice are more or less bare, though they were at one time well wooded; the reafforesting of these parts has, however, made of late great progress.  Nearer the sea vegetation is less rare, and there many a promontory excites the just admiration of the visitor by its growth of olives, orange and lemon trees, and odoriferous shrubs.  Who that has ever sojourned in this province can wonder that Goethe’s Mignon should have ardently desired a return to these sunny regions?

Visitors on these shores on the first day of this year found Goethe’s lines more poetical than true—­

  Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,
  And the groves are of laurel, and myrtle, and rose;

for they gathered round their fires and coughed and groaned in chorus, and entertained each other with accounts of their ailments.  But this was exceptional, and the climate of the Alpes Maritimes is on the whole as near perfection as anything earthly can be.  This, however, is not due to its latitude, but rather to its happy protection from the north by its Alps and to its being bathed on the south by the warm Mediterranean and the soft breezes of an eastern wind (which evidently there bears a different reputation to that which it does with us).  The mistral, or cold breeze from the hills, is indeed the only climatic enemy, if we except an occasional earthquake.

The town of Grasse itself is situated in the southern portion of the department, and enjoys its fair share of the advantages this situation affords.  It is about ten miles from Cannes (Lord Brougham’s creation), and, as the crow flies, twenty-five miles from Nice, though about forty miles by rail, for the line runs down to Cannes and thence along the shore to Nice.

Built on the side of a hill some 1,000 feet above the level of the sea, the town commands magnificent views over the surrounding country, especially in the direction of the sea, which is gloriously visible.  An abundant stream, the Foux, issuing from the rocks just above the town, is the all productive genius of the place; it feeds a hundred fountains and as many factories, and then gives life to the neighboring fields and gardens.

The population of Grasse is about 12,000, and the flora of its environs represents almost all the botany of Europe.  Among the splendid pasture lands, 7,000 feet above the sea, are fields of lavender, thyme, etc.  From 7,000 to 6,000 feet there are forests of pine and other gymnosperms.  From 6,000 to 4,000 feet firs and the beech are the most prominent trees.  Between 4,000 and 2,000 feet we find our familiar friends the oak, the chestnut, cereals, maize, potatoes.  Below this is the Mediterranean region.  Here orange, lemon, fig, and olive trees, the vine, mulberry, etc., flourish in the open as well as any number of exotics, palms, aloes, cactuses, castor oil plants, etc.  It is in this region that nature with lavish hand bestows her flowers, which, unlike their compeers in other lands, are not born to waste their fragrance on the desert air or to die “like the bubble on the fountain,” but rather (to paraphrase George Eliot’s lofty words) to die, and live again in fats and oils, made nobler by their presence.