l flats of the Camargue,
the field of Caius Marius, where still run herds of half-wild horses,
descended from some ancient Roman stock; while beyond all glitters the
blue Mediterranean. The great almond orchards, each one sheet of rose-
colour in spring; the mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, the vineyards,
cover every foot of available upland soil: save where the rugged and arid
downs are sweet with a thousand odoriferous plants, from which the bees
extract the famous white honey of Narbonne. The native flowers and
shrubs, of a beauty and richness rather Eastern than European, have made
the "Flora Montpeliensis," and with it the names of Rondelet and his
disciples, famous among botanists; and the strange fish and shells upon
its shores afforded Rondelet materials for his immortal work upon the
"Animals of the Sea." The innumerable wild fowl of the Benches du Rhone;
the innumerable songsters and other birds of passage, many of them
unknown in these islands, and even in the north of France itself, which
haunt every copse of willow and aspen along the brook-sides; the gaudy
and curious insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and yet
bracing sunlight; all these have made the district of Montpellier a home
prepared by Nature for those who study and revere her.

Neither was Chancellor Fanchon misled by patriotism, when he said the
pleasant people who inhabit that district are fit for all the labours of
the intellect. They are a very mixed race, and, like most mixed races,
quick-witted, and handsome also. There is probably much Roman blood
among them, especially in the towns; for Languedoc, or Gallia
Narbonnensis, as it was called of old, was said to be more Roman than
Rome itself. The Roman remains are more perfect and more interesting--so
the late Dr. Whewell used to say--than any to be seen now in Italy; and
the old capital, Narbonne itself, was a complete museum of Roman
antiquities ere Francis I. destroyed it, in order to fortify the city
upon a modern system against the invading armies of Charles V. There
must be much Visigothic blood likewise in Languedoc: for the Visigothic
Kings held their courts there from the fifth century, until the time that
they were crushed by the invading Moors. Spanish blood, likewise, there
may be; for much of Languedoc was held in the early Middle Age by those
descendants of Eudes of Aquitaine who established themselves as kings of
Majorca and Arragon; and Languedoc did not