As Guizot well said:—
“For culture of mind, one thing is requisite, and that is quiet. When the social condition of the world is in convulsion, and all about is barbarity and misery, then study suffers, is neglected and declines. Taste for truth, the sentiment for what is beautiful, are plants as delicate as they are noble. For their cultivation a sweet atmosphere is necessary; they bow their heads and are blighted by storm. Study, literature, intellectual activity, could not battle against general discouragement, universal disaster; they must have a holdfast somewhere, attach themselves to popular convictions, or perish. The Christian religion furnished them with the means of living. By allying themselves to that, philosophy and literature were saved from the ruin that menaced them. One may say, without exaggeration, that the human mind, proscribed, storm-tossed, found its only possible refuge in churches and monasteries. It clung as a suppliant to the altars, and pleaded to be allowed to live under their shelter, and at their service, till better times should arrive, when they would expand in the open air.”
Lerins suffered repeatedly and frightfully from the Saracens. Again and again was it ravaged. In 725, Porcarius, the abbot, and five hundred monks, were butchered by the Moors.
LA NAPOULE
The interesting fortress, with its cloister and quadrangle in the centre, was erected by the monks as a place of refuge from the Moors and Algerine pirates.
But worse times were in store, when the Crown came to look on the great abbeys as fiefs, to be given in commendam to laymen, to bastards, to favourites, to harlots, who might enjoy the revenues and ignore the duties. Naturally enough, in such a condition of affairs, Lerins declined. It became a place to which younger sons were relegated, vicious monks were banished; it was resolved into a bastille for evildoers, and sank to so low an ebb that, as a scandal, the abbey was suppressed the year before the Revolution came, and swept all monastic institutions away.
To the west of the Île Ste. Marguerite, in the sea pours up a copious spring of fresh water. When the surface of the sea is calm, the upflow can be easily distinguished by the undulations. There are other such springs in the Gulf of Jouan, near Antibes, also at the mouth of the Var; near the shore at Portissol, west of S. Nazaire; another again near Bandol. In 1838, a M. Bazin tapped this latter when sinking a well at Cadière, and such an abundance of water poured forth that the well had to be abandoned. Off Cassis is a very considerable spring in the sea, so strong that it carries floating bodies for a couple of miles from its source. But the largest of all is in the Gulf of Spezzia, and is called La Polla. This has been enclosed by the Italian government, and vessels supply themselves with fresh water from it.
The rain which falls on the limestone causses, that form the terrace to the Maritime Alps, is at once absorbed, and descends through fissures to deep channels, where the accumulated water flows and breaks forth in what are locally called foux, often in large volume, and feed the rivers. Sometimes the streams drop into pot-holes; these are called embues. The Siagne has its source in the Place de la Caille, an ancient lake bed, but sinks, and comes forth 1,500 feet below in the foux of the Siagne. This river receives the Siagnole, which derives its water from a number of these springs that spout out of the rock. But in some cases the rain-water sinks to a level still lower, and then breaks forth in the sea itself.