side of the
rivulets they grow, like sister cataracts of flowers instead of spray.
At night fresh stars come out along the coast, beneath the stars
of heaven; for you can see the lamps of Ventimiglia and Mentone
and Monaco, and, far away, the lighthouses upon the promontories of
Antibes and the Estrelles. At dawn, a vision of Corsica grows from
the sea. The island lies eighty miles away, but one can trace the
dark strip of irregular peaks glowing amid the gold and purple of the
rising sun. If the air is clear and bright, the snows and overvaulting
clouds which crown its mountains shine all day, and glitter like an
apparition in the bright blue sky. 'Phantom fair,' half raised above
the sea, it stands, as unreal and transparent as the moon when seen in
April sunlight, yet not to be confounded with the shape of any cloud.
If Mentone speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo restores the
monastic past, we feel ourselves at Bordighera transported to the
East; and lying under its tall palms can fancy ourselves at Tyre or
Daphne, or in the gardens of a Moslem prince.

Note.--Dec. 1873. My old impressions are renewed and confirmed
by a third visit, after seven years, to this coast. For purely
idyllic loveliness, the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in
the South. A very few spots in Sicily, the road between
Castellammare and Amalfi, and the island of Corfu, are its
only rivals in this style of scenery. From Cannes to Sestri is
one continuous line of exquisitely modulated landscape beauty,
which can only be fully appreciated by travellers in carriage
or on foot.

* * * * *

_AJACCIO_

It generally happens that visitors to Ajaccio pass over from the
Cornice coast, leaving Nice at night, and waking about sunrise to find
themselves beneath the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference
between the scenery of the island and the shores which they have
left is very striking. Instead of the rocky mountains of the Cornice,
intolerably dry and barren at their summits, but covered at their base
with villages and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a
scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest mountain-tops are
covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are
as green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and
uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by
tracts of chestnut wood and scatte