s first object was to give security to its inmates against the
marauders who surrounded them. Externally its appearance is purely
military; the great tower rises from its trench cut deep in the rock, a
portcullis protects the gate, the walls are pierced with loopholes and
crowned with battlements. But within, the arrangements, so far as it is
possible to trace them in the present ruined state of the building, seem
to have been purely monastic. The interior of the tower is occupied by a
double-arched cloister, with arcades of exquisite first-pointed work,
through which one looks down into the little court below. The visitor
passes from this into the ruins of the abbot's chapel, to which the
relics were transferred for security from the church of St. Honorat,
and which was surrounded by the cells, the refectory, and the domestic
buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the
twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey
buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but
we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a
combination of military and monastic architecture in the castle itself.

Something of the feudal spirit which such a residence would be likely to
produce appears in the abbot's relations with the little town of Cannes,
which formed a part of his extensive lordship on the mainland. Its
fishers were harassed by heavy tolls on their fishery, and the rights of
first purchase in the market and forced labour were rigorously exacted
by the monastic officers. It is curious to compare, as one's boat floats
back across the waters of the bay, the fortunes of these serfs and of
their lords.

SKETCHES IN SUNSHINE.

II.

CARNIVAL ON THE CORNICE.

Carnival in an ordinary little Italian town seems, no doubt, commonplace
enough to those who have seen its glories in Rome--the crowded Corso,
the rush of the maddened horses, the firefly twinklings of the
Maccoletti. A single evening of simple fun, a few peasants laughing in
the sunshine, a few children scrambling for bonbons, form an almost
ridiculous contrast to the gorgeous outburst of revelry and colour that
ushers in Lent at the capital. But there are some people after all who
still find a charm in the simple and the commonplace, and to whom the
everyday life of Italy is infinitely pleasanter than the stately
ceremonial of Rome. At any rate the stranger who has fled from Nor