way. She defies us
with her colors, her odors, and even with her music, for overhead "the
lark at heaven's gate sings," and the bees go buzzing home laden with
honey stolen from the wild honeysuckle, caper and myrtle which grow
abundantly around.

It was my fortune once to escort to this view the illustrious French
artist Paul Delaroche. His delight can be better imagined than
described. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "ceci c'est trop bien!" He assured me
that no painter could attempt it excepting perhaps Turner, and
vowed that although he had visited many lands he had never witnessed
anything to surpass it. Turner perhaps could have reproduced such a
scene, for he possessed the power of giving the general effects of
extended landscapes admirably, without entering too minutely into
their details. In the "Loreto necklace" and "Golden bough" he has
painted two marvelously varied views full of ranges of mountains,
rivers, lakes and classic buildings, without confusion, and with great
skill displayed in portraying various and vaporous distances.

But it is high time that we leave the fine arts and hasten on to
Monaco. Space, like time, is limited, and much as I should love to
conduct my readers all the long way on foot, to show them the monster
olive tree at Beaulieu, which is seven yards in circumference, and
reputed the largest of its species in the world, to pause a little
amidst the Roman ruins of La Tarbia and the Saracenic remains of Eza
and Roccabruna, I must hasten on to the capital of the Liliputian
dominions of his Serene Highness Prince Florestan II.

Let me entertain you with a very brief account of the history of this
singular little princedom. Monaco is one of the most ancient places in
Europe. Five hundred years before our Blessed Lord came to redeem the
world, Hecate of Melites wrote an account of the city, which he called
_Monoikos_ (the "isolated dwelling"), and declared it to be even then
so old a town that the people had lost all tradition of its origin,
except that some of their priests asserted Hercules to have founded it
after his feat of slaying Geryon and the brigands before he left Italy
for Spain. The Romans, in fact, called it _Portus Herculis Monceci_,
and for short "_Portus Monceci_." During the Middle Ages Hercules
was entirely cast aside, and the town was spoken of as Monaco. The
tradition of its original foundation is carefully preserved in the
civic coat-of-arms, which represents a gigantic monk wi