This fair is esteemed one of the three greatest on the Mediterranean, and perhaps, the chief of the three, but in the present year it has fallen short. It is said to have been established by Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, but the most ancient act, still existing, is of Louis XI. in 1463. The master of the first bark which arrives, salutes the town of Beaucaire with a musket or pistol, and receives a sheep, offered with much solemnity, as a premium for his expedition.
The castle at Beaucaire was destroyed in 1632, but I cannot tell you when it was built. Raymond V., Count of Thoulouse, held here a splendid court in 1172, rendered remarkable by the whimsical contest of extravagance and profusion maintained there. Raymond himself set the example by giving 100,000 sous to Raymond d’Agoust, who immediately distributed them among ten thousand knights, then present at the court. Bertrand Rambault ploughed the court, and neighbourhood of the castle, with twelve pair of oxen, and sowed 100,000 sous in the furrows. Guillaume Grosmantel had the food for his own table, and for three hundred knights’ followers, dressed by the flame of wax candles. Raymond de Venou, adding brutality to extravagance, burnt thirty of his most beautiful horses. The struggle of ostentation was clumsily maintained, and the parvenus of modern times cannot be reproached with any absurdities which will bear a comparison with these.
A bridge of boats across the Rhone connects the little town of Tarrascon with the opposite one of Beaucaire, and two sous are paid for crossing it; when I reached the other end, it was with the greatest difficulty that I could get permission to go on shore to see the church, as a special pass was necessary on visiting, or returning from the fair. The church at Tarrascon offers some curious parts, but is by no means beautiful: the entrance is by a large, semicircularly headed arch, with abundance of mouldings, a few of which have Norman ornaments; and one is enriched with an inverted ovolo: above the entrance is a range of alternate columns and pilasters supporting an architrave. There are also some remains of a castle, where in 1449 a tournament was held by Louis III. almost as singular as the former court at Beaucaire.
The following English card, stuck up in the salle-à-manger at Orange, had directed us to the ‘hotel of Luxembourg, in the Esplanade,’ at Nismes:
“Mr. David Londes acquaints the gentlemen travels that he has remplaced Mrs. Londes widow, his sister-in-law, in the said hotel. He has the honour to acquaint the gentlemen travelling, that they might find chambers elegantly fitted, and that nothing has been omitted for the comfort of travellers. The hotel being moreover placed in the finest situation in the town. The chambers are newly suited, the stables and the coach-house are vast and commodious.
“Mr. David Londes entertains the hope, that he will fill entirely the desires of the gentlemen travellers, and that he will augment the renown which this hotel has always enjoyed. It is proach bath houses and flying coach office. The travellers will find there a magazine of silk stockings, and all sorts of cloths.” Do you think the French advertisements we sometimes meet with in England appear as ridiculous to a Frenchman? After indulging a laugh at the notice, we went to the inn, and were very well contented. The antiquities of Nismes are the most celebrated of all those in the south of France, and of these, to an architect, the Maison Carrée is the most interesting. It is a temple, with six columns in front, and eleven on the sides, which is according to the rules of Vitruvius, but the side spaces are walled up. Technically speaking then, it is a hexastyle pseudoperipteral temple of the Corinthian order. It is in very good preservation, and the spacing and proportions of the columns are singularly pleasing. The bases are Greek Attic, but with some additional mouldings, which diminish its beauty; they are very incorrectly given in Clerisseau’s Antiquités de France. Nothing else is in the Greek taste, and it is evident that no very minute attention has been given to attain a perfect agreement of form and dimension in the corresponding parts. The cornice is heavier, and more loaded with ornaments than that of the arch at Orange, and I imagine the building to be posterior. The date of the Maison Carrée, is supposed to be determined by an inscription restored by M. Seguier, by means of the remaining holes in the frieze. C. Cæsari Augusti F. Cos. L. Cæsari Augusti F. Cos. designatis principibus juventutis. It is therefore of the time of Augustus, and we must consequently push back the date of the arch to an earlier period, from internal evidence.
Two projecting stones, moulded, and perforated with a square opening, on the sides of the doorway, have been supposed to be intended to support an external temporary door; but one does not understand the object of such a door inclosing the inner one and all its ornaments; and as no similar instance can be produced, we must, I believe, be content to leave their purpose unexplained.
The fragment by the fountain, usually called the temple of Diana, must be of still later erection. The order is composite; the earliest ascertained example of which is, I believe, the arch of Titus, at Rome. A number of fragments are collected in it, which mostly announce the period of the decline of the art; but there is one which is completely Greek, and which probably belonged to some more ancient edifice. The principal part of this ruin is what once was a large vaulted room, perhaps a covered court; but most of the vaulting has disappeared, and its present beauty depends, not so much on its architecture, as on the beautiful colour of the stone, on the morsels of antiquity collected there, and which form a sort of museum, and on the dark green of the fig-trees which hang loosely about the walls, and give an air of freshness and coolness even in a hot summer’s day. There are three recesses at the farther end, and a dark covered passage on each side, of which I do not comprehend the object, but I know no reason to suppose it to have been a temple.
The situation of this ruin is very pleasant, in the midst of a public garden, close by a copious spring of delightful water, which supplies the town. This garden is the finest thing of the sort I have ever seen. The columns and balustrades which adorn the fountain, and the basins made for the reception of its waters, extend all through it, and there are abundance of stone seats, vases, and statues. The character of art is no where lost, but it is a beautiful character of art, and the more so, because all the parts are consistent, and there is no appearance of pretence or affectation. Every thing is part of one design; whereas, in England, where we have such ornaments, they are too detached, and seem to have dropt from the clouds, rather than to belong to the scene. Even at the Tuilleries the distribution is by no means sufficiently apparent, they want more architecture to support them. The trees here are of a good size, and uncut, principally the linden.
Comfort is said to be a winter idea. On leaving the gardens I had a good elucidation of what it means in a warm climate. A boy was seated on the stone bank which confines the water in these basons, under the shade of the thick trees, and smoking a cigar, while the stream was gushing out over his feet: he seemed most perfectly contented with his situation.