Our Real Knowledge Is Still Limited To The
Country We Have Walked Over, And We Must Not Approach The Country
We Would Appreciate Faster Than A Man May Drive A Horse Or Propel
A Bicycle; Or We Shall Lose The All-Important Sense Of Artistic
Approach.
Even to cross the channel by time-table is fatal to
that romantic spirit (indispensable to the true magic of travel)
which a slow adjustment of the mind to a new social atmosphere
and a new historical environment alone can induce.
Ruskin, the
last exponent of the Grand Tour, said truly that the benefit of
travel varies inversely in proportion to its speed. The cheap
rapidity which has made our villes de plaisir and cotes d'azur
what they are, has made unwieldy boroughs of suburban villages,
and what the rail has done for a radius of a dozen miles, the
motor is rapidly doing for one of a score. So are we sped! But we
are to discuss not the psychology of travel, but the immediate
causes and circumstances of Smollett's arrival upon the territory
of Nice.
VI
Smollett did not interpret the ground-plan of the history of Nice
particularly well. Its colonisation from Massilia, its long
connection with Provence, its occupation by Saracens, its stormy
connection with the house of Anjou, and its close fidelity to the
house of Savoy made no appeal to his admiration. The most
important event in its recent history, no doubt, was the capture
of the city by the French under Catinat in 1706 (Louis XIV.
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