plete in all its parts: the time-browned
mass of houses on the hill-top; the tower of Philip the Fair; over all,
the huge facade of Saint Maurice--an ogival wonder that for centuries
was the cathedral church of the Primates of Gaul.

After Marseille, Vienne makes as handsome pretensions to age as are made
by any town in France. The tradition of its founding lies hidden in the
mists of heroic legend, and is the more momentous because it is so
impressively vague. Over its very name the etymologists wrangle with
such violence that one is lost in amazement at their ill-tempered
erudition; and over its structure the archaeologists--though a bit more
civil to each other--are almost as violently at cross-purposes. The best
esteemed of those antiquary gentry--at least the one whom I esteem the
most, because I like the fine boldness of his claim--is the Dominican
chronicler Lavinius: who says flatly that Vienne was founded thirteen
centuries before the dawn of the Christian era by a contemporary of
Moses, one King Allobrox--a Keltic sovereign descended from Hercules in
a right line! That is a good beginning; and it has the merit of
embodying the one fact upon which all of the testy antiquaries are
agreed: that Vienne the Strong, as folk called it in those days, was a
flourishing town long before Lyons was built or Paris even thought of,
and an age or two before the Romans came over into Gaul.

When at last they did come, the Romans transformed the town into a great
city--the metropolis of the region lying between Geneva and Marseille;
and so adorned it with noble buildings--temples, forum, circus, theatre,
aqueducts, baths--and so enriched it with all manner of works of art,
that it came to be known as Vienne the Beautiful throughout the
civilized world. One temple, approximately perfect, has survived to us
from that time; and one statue--the famous Crouching Venus: and it seems
fair enough to accept Vienne's beauty as proved by these. Moreover,
painting and music were cultivated there, together with the other arts:
and from all that the historians have to tell us it would appear that
the Roman citizens of that city lived softly and well.

In the dark ages of Mediaeval Christianity most of the beauties of Vienne
vanished: being destroyed outright, or made over into buildings
pertaining to the new faith and the new times. A pathetic little
attempt, to be sure, was made by the Viennese to hold fast to their
comfortable Paganism-