Nothing outside of Spain is as gaunt, bare, cheerless, as their interiors. On the other hand, nothing in the world is as attractive, engaging, fascinating, as is the immediate environment of those very houses.

Outdoor life invades the village church itself. The pious worshiper there is not infrequently disturbed by little children at play, rushing boldly into the house of God (an open, not a shut, house, as are most Protestant churches) and scampering out again before either priest or verger can catch them. Vox populi is vox Dei here. There is one, there are not many voices, as with us. The town's one church is the church of all the people in the town. Again, the Provençal believes more than do most Frenchmen in the motto of France, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," not only in matters political, but also social and religious.

The Roman Catholic religion is, in some respects, excellently adapted to this belief. Churches may reek with bad incense, and offend the fastidious with taw. dry images, but they are certainly no rich men's exclusive clubs, as may be found nearer home. More than one leaf out of the Roman Catholic book might be taken

by Protestant pioneers. The latter must offer a religious service appealing to the senses as well as to the soul, if serious headway is to be made among the freerthinking but æsthetic French. Yet the Roman Church seems securer on the Riviera than elsewhere. Free-thinking has not gained ground here in the same proportion as in the manufacturing and socialistic districts further north.

With the exception of the seaside resorts, Riviera towns are mostly rockvillages, and look, I fancy, pretty much as they did in the days of the Greeks and Romans. In town-building, the early inhabitants crowned their hill-crests for two reasons: first, because they could be more easily defended; and then, so that they would not encroach upon the rich soil below the crags. Each town had and has its watch-tower, and a system of signals was understood by the various villagers as against the robber barons, just as another system of signals existed among the latter, by which, from their still more inaccessible eyries and castles, they communicated with one another. After centuries of conflict, this arraying of class against class finally and fittingly resulted

in the triumph of democracy. So emphatic was this triumph that to-day no part of France is more alive to the spirit of equal ity than is Provence. The peasant is quite as good as any lord. True, the tall towers still stand, the most prominent objects in Grasse, Auribeau, Mougins, Gourdon, and other towns, but they are now bell-towers for a more spiritual power. Their sonority fills the air, morning, noon, and night, no longer for the brutalities of war, but to call men to prayer, to bid them begin or cease from their peaceful labors.

The land is of moment to three classes -proprietors, farmers, and husbandmen. As to the first, proprietorship in France means something quite different from the existing status in any other European country, for in no other are four-fifths of the rural owners actual cultivators of the soil. The multiplicity of little farms in France surprises the foreigner. They have been, in this century, the country's economic salvation, and, if the large holders only knew it, their salvation also, for they have been so many arguments against envy, hatred, malice, and all un

charitableness. The French Revolution accomplished some good things, and not the least was the opportunity offered to farmers and husbandmen to be themselves proprietors. When farms are rented, the leases run three, six, or nine years, the proprietor paying all taxes. These taxes amount to about one-fifth of the farm's annual value, and the average of mortgages may be put down for another fifth. Riviera farms produce wheat, corn, oats, grapes, olives, oranges, mandarins, lemons, figs, almonds, apricots, plums, mulberries, peaches, pepper, flax, vegetables, salad-stuff, and flowers for the last named are raised here in genuine crops.

During the greater part of the year the wheat supply is quite insufficient for the people's needs, and at any time it is actually higher in price than is the price here of our Dakota product, which has had to pay transportation charges, national and local duties. Corn is ripe towards the end of June, but while the quality is not so bad, the fields themselves are weedy to a degree which would make an American farmer beside himself. The gathering of the grain crops is the principal summer

employment. As in Scriptural times, so now, the stranger may witness Riviera grain trodden out by oxen or horses on the stone pavement or esplanade in front of all the large barns.

Like the wheat supply, that of wine is only half sufficient for this population. The lack is not so serious, however, since France makes it good without calling on foreign countries. It may not be realized that her wine-culture means between four and five million acres devoted to the growth of the vine. While the Var and Vaucluse parts of Provence have many a

delicious oil. The berry is not so large as the Spanish, but is more delicate in flavor. The Greeks are said to have brought the olive-culture here, when they began building Agathopolis (Agay) and Antipolis (Antibes). There is nothing more restful than an olive orchard. The Mediterranean sunlight sifts in and settles serenely there. Seen through olive branches, Mentone, Eze, Cagnes, take on new picturesqueness. Out of the rich red soil underneath the trees are springing violets and narcissus and giroflés. In the near neighborhood there are white

and pink clouds: the almond and peach trees are in blossom. Beyond and above the cultivable flower-belt a still more venerable quiet reigns among the now terraced olives. Only the wild sweet alyssum and daisies flower there, their whiteness rather ghostlike because of a row of funereallooking cypresses, green-black against the orchard's gray-green. Still above and beyond, the olives themselves are checked by lack of shelter; instead, the Diaz-like cork-oaks and the white heather and the rose cystus are seen there.

The peasant, armed with his pruninghook, is already attacking his trees. The

harvest is over. It has lasted from the end of October to the first of February, and has given constant employment to men, women, and children, to young and old. One often notes hardy nonagenarians gathering the precious purple berries, alongside wee children engaged in the same task, neither seeming fit for any kind of labor. The olives are heaped in some cool spot and then put into bags and baskets which are sent to the mill. An ordinary tree will yield, say, thirty pounds of fruit and produce half as much oil. Like the Egyptian with his palm, so the Provençal uses every part of his olive. The oil-mill, with its horsehair presses (an unsavory place, it must be admitted), shows this. In addition to the value of the wood, fruit, and oil, out of the crushed stones a fuel is made, while the refuse is used later as manure for the trees. So the process goes on, year after year, olive to olive returning.

If there is thus a tradition of Greece, the still-worked potteries of Vallauris, the amphitheaters of Fréjus and Cimiez, the bridge of Clausonne, the monument at Turbie, and the traces of the Via Julia and the Via Aurelia right through Provence, remind of Rome. The peasants whose farms bordered those famous highways tilled the soil just as these modern peasants do, and hence Virgil becomes the most appropriate of reading matter as we stroll along Riviera roads. Here one lives the Georgics and the Bucolics. Their old pastoral scenes are here faithfully reproduced. If there is any one dis tinguishing mark of your Provençal peas ant, it is his reverence for tradition. He has a robust, honest satisfaction in doing just as his fathers did, and in letting the over-fed, over-conscious, over-civilized crowd at Nice and Cannes go its decadent way. The crops are the same as of yore, the tools the same-the plow and pruning-hook of the Bible are realized here. Like a Roman in his toga, so a touch of cold will bring out paterfamilias in his long striped cloak of homespun stuff. You may see its counterpart in Palestine to-day. But, whatever we may think about the women, the men are far from having the majestic carriage of the Arabs.

If olives and roads and potteries bring back classic times, palms and aloes and raced gardens speak of the Moorish

civilization which once flourished here. Out of steep hill and mountain-side those clever economists and landscape-gardeners quadrupled the production of the plain. Moorish manners still live in the danse moresque, which you may sometime see of a pleasant Sunday in a mountain village, but the more popular farandole comes from a yet earlier period.

The great golden drops against glossy foliage are so many evidences that this is an orange country. The fruit is far from rivaling our Florida or California product, but it is delightfully toothsome all the same. While it sells well, the blossoms sell better. The perfume-factories of Grasse use annually nearly six million pounds of flowers, mostly orange-blossoms, but also roses, violets, verbenas, jasmine, jonquils, cassia, and tuberoses. The benefit to employed as well as to employers may be noted in the fact that the savings bank is the finest building in the place, and that there is no grinding poverty at Grasse. The Grassois are famous for their candied fruits, their almond and olive oil, their soaps, and, above all, for their perfumery. Half a million dollars' worth of their products goes to the United States alone. In the factories, as in the supplying flower-fields (the latter covering over sixty thousand acres), men and women have an equal chance at employ

ment.

Most of the roses used in the perfumeries are like our damask variety. They are picked at dawn and stored, all dewdamp, in cellars. How satisfactory to the sight the rose-fields and terraces are, perchance against a hazy olive background, perchance in the foreground some picturesque wayside shrine, at which the girls will kneel before beginning their labors! The roses go well with another stretch of green-gray in front—a fringe of African aloes marking the roadside. Beyond, it may be, there stand sentinels of tall eucalyptus, or, better yet, solemn, dark-green parasol-pines. The nearer landscape is, likely enough, yellow with mimosa, and the further and higher yellow with furze. The scent of thyme and rosemary is borne down upon us. Still beyond, the porphyry hills are glowing every hour with sunset hues, yet in the distance there is always a moonlight effect from the snowy summits of the Maritime Alps.