THE MONUMENTS OF THE RHONE

I will not leave the Recovered Cities without a word upon that other shore which the Mohammedan raided but never held. For it is a corner of Europe where the public monuments of antiquity bear witness more than in any other place to the Roman foundations of Europe. I mean the triangle including either side of the lower Rhone between Avignon and the Delta, within which triangle lie the great Roman towns of Nîmes, Avignon and the most ancient town of Arles, and the great Roman viaduct over the Gard River which brought the water to Nîmes, and is one of the noblest structures in Europe. The particular character of this small district of the world, its strong, permanent impress of antiquity and its ‘carrying on’ (that is, its continuity almost unmixed with the disturbance of outer things), are due to several causes combined.

First, this district was fertile and sheltered. There is a ring of mountains east, north and west which make a wall for it. Next, it was the first expansion of Italy in her Roman experiment of Empire: the large accumulated capital and the strong social habits of Roman society at its height struck roots here as they did elsewhere outside Italy in the West; but, unlike Italy, the country was not ravaged by the perpetual marching and counter-marching of armies.

It had its share of wars at the end of the Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages, but much less than had Italy. On the other hand, it did not present that vast accumulation of movable wealth which the Italian towns did, from Rome downwards, so that there was less temptation for loot and destruction. Lastly, it was not so perpetually modelled and remodelled by the ceaseless travel and pilgrimage, administration, missionary effort and legal appeal, such as made all the great roads upon either side of the Apennines, over the passes of the Alps, a stream of men going back and forth for more than one thousand years. Here in this more or less sheltered corner, the old civilisation, based upon the olive and the vine and wheat, found all three, as in Italy. To the north, the olive was lacking. In Italy, perpetual war and perpetual travel confused the record. But here in the Rhone valley and to the east of it, antiquity could establish its memorial. That is why you are more in touch with the end of the Empire and its transformation during the Dark and the Middle Ages, at Arles, at Avignon, at Nîmes than you can be anywhere else in the world.

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Of this character Arles bears the deepest imprint. It was, I suppose, the earliest harbour of the Rhone, far away beyond history, before the silting up of the mouth had forbidden the use of the haven. To-day all that activity has transferred to distant Marseilles. But Arles seems to have been the original port, for here you have, in the last stratum, the barbaric implements of men who could not yet use metal, then, in succeeding layers, the proof of habitation by an increasing culture which never dies. Here you have the great theatre of the Imperial time, and the walls of the Dark Ages, and here you see the round Roman arch changed into the pointed, with the advent of the Middle Ages, and here you can follow the column very slowly transformed from its classic to its mediæval form.

Avignon makes a different appeal. Its greatness is late and political. Men certainly held that strong, isolated rock, which is now crowned by the modern pillar and statue of Our Lady and with the careful little garden at her feet, since first these lands were inhabited. It was an obvious stronghold, obviously supplied by the river; but what made Avignon the great example of the Middle Ages in stone was the transference thither of the seat of the Papacy under the armed force of the French, six hundred years ago; one of those violent, not permanent, experiments in imposing their power which the French love to attempt and have not ceased to play with since they were a nation. The transference of the Papacy to Avignon came just at the moment when the Papal court was widely extending its functions, and, therefore, its revenue, and you had packed into this little area within the city walls that yet stand (astonished at their restored neatness), more wealth than was to be found even in the City of London or in the Island of Paris or in St. James of Compostella. As I said of Salamanca, there are no more interesting places in the world than those in which wealth has been concentrated in the past, having since abandoned them. For there you may see the highest effort in stone of some past time, crystallised and made permanent, with no modern effort to disturb it. Of this concentration of money, which went on for a good long lifetime, the monument is the Palace of the Popes. Nothing can convey the effect of that mountain of masonry, save a physical presence under its cliffs of sawn free-stone.

We all know that the effect of height or distance is one not of scale but of proportion: that Beauvais, for instance, soars higher to the eye than the Eiffel tower and that Old St. Paul’s looked much longer than St. Peter’s; but nowhere will you find this effect of mass better than you will find it in the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, though I suppose the actual height is not greater than that of many office buildings of to-day, nor the ground plan larger than that of some average great railway station.

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At Nîmes, unlike Arles and still more unlike Avignon, the effect is one of antiquity, exactly preserved. There is there little effect of transition. The town is of modern times, with some additional dignity of the eighteenth century, but there stand embedded in it, sharply contrasting with all around, and challenging every lesser later thing, the scale and proportion of classical effort; the proportion, in that lovely little temple which they call the ‘Maison Carrée’; the scale, in the amphitheatre. I suppose all the remaining great amphitheatres of the Empire, seeing that they were built upon one plan, should by rights produce one effect upon the mind, or at any rate effects proportionate to the size of each: El Djem in the sands of Tunis, Verona, Pola, the Coliseum. But it is not so. Each has its own spirit—an illusion, no doubt, but very vivid, and this of Nîmes dominates the town more than does that of Verona or of Pola, and far more, also, than does the far larger Coliseum affect the immensity of the city of Rome.

But of all the monuments which antiquity has left to mark this particular countryside of Europe, the most impressive, the most permanently enormous in the memory of those who have seen it is the Pont du Gard. It was late in my life that I first came upon this giant thing, round the corner of the road in the gorge of that lonely valley, spanning the ravine from escarpment to escarpment above the trees. I have often heard of the effect it produced. I could not believe it; for, after all, it was but a specimen of the round arch, of the regular Roman courses: a simple process of building in tiers from side to side of a ravine. But when one sees the thing, all that is said of it comes true. Its isolation, its dignity, its weight, are all three awful. It looks as though it had been built long before all record by beings greater than ourselves, and were intended to stand long after the dissolution of our petty race. One can repose in it. I confess to a great reluctance to praise what has been praised too much; but so it is. A man, suffering from the unrest of our time, might do worse than camp out for three days, fishing and bathing under the shadow of the Pont du Gard.