ARLES IN SPRING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 66

ARLES IN SPRING.

(Outlook.)

Aries is set in the wide p^lain of Provence, fertile in uop& but '•tenle m beauty. ludeed. this part of France seems to have caught something of the thin and bitter beauty of Italy, which he* so neai to it. To me. brown Italy suggests lemon*, okves, tucky tjOtit^. and acrid, racy wine ; but then she i.s .still m her angular thirteenth colLou;! Hem m rxeneuce. v>licie the wia-

ter nightmare is over, the waking trees have a feverish loveliness, the hot green and yellow of envy and jealousy, and the dark sere cypress recurs in the landscape monotonously as a muffled drum-beat, funereal and solemn. The sombre tone of the scenery is lightened only by the tender rose of the flowering almond in relief against the faint blue of the April sky, and the mocry golden buttercups under the gnarled boughs of peach and pear, that are frosted with silver blossom or flushed with celestial pink. Far to the south, the tossing, foamy azure of the Mediterranean takes refuge in many a bright litt'.e cieek beset with toweling rocks, and the sea gives splendour to the land ; but here there i& only a fruitgrowing, flat dcs-crt, shimmeiing with golddust in the Provencal sunshine, seamed with blinding roads as white as snow, and ciossed by long dim lines of slender poplars, fantastically straight, amber and chrysoprase in early spring. The hard, ringing name of Aries, fraught like Provence with steely romance, conjures up all the stony words, such as necropolis, arch, column, temple, and tomb. Indeed, the town itself is merely a funguslike growth of modern — modern compared with the first century — bucks and mortar round those stately old ruins that make up tlie whole severe beauty of the place. The true Aries lies like an entranced sleeper, multiple as Krishna, in the myriad troughlike tombs of the Alyscamps ; each silent waiting stone, grey with seciecy. seems to hold a little ghost of the town. The haunted mystery of the place is oppressive : one shiveif- in the sunshine: in Aries one is never alone. Even the tiny brown lizards are not quite at their ease as they wriet'le across the gleaming road to hide among the tombs or in the short green grass, and the swallows flit less merrily here than in the other towns. The eager spring itself is half abashed, fiery self-confidence dejerts it ; the trees bud diffidently, hanging their emerald gauzes like limp green lace on the battlemented shoulders of old grey Aries ; soon they grow dusty and dispirited in the blinding glare of the southern sun, which has something acid in its burning citron light. The restless, rapid Rhone, turbulently grey, flows impatiently past the drowsy ruins, as if eager to leave this poisonous calm and to rush down to the rough glittering sea and the coloured rocks without a history. No lovers of colour are quite happy here, for Aries is a Reverie in the key of grej'. Yet its old, pale sculptured stones are very beautiful ; they lie as wildly a-s if they had been tossed carelessly here and there by a giant playing marbles. Some of the ancient chapels that date back to the small centuries have broad harmonious effects, like the music of Handel ; their architecture is continental ; they were conceived as magnificently as was the elephant, since their massive outlines have a luxurious immensity and a singular lack of ornament. They are like the worn-out mantle of a queen, for theirs is that inherent dignity which gains nothing from . outward show, but is upheld by the tradition of a great past. Aries owns a curiously fascinating cathedral dedicated to St. Trophimus — a «.aint of whom, I confess with shame. I have never heard. But in the dim, dim ages, canonisation was doubtless as easy to obtain as a modern peerage ; indeed, any one with an unusually bad temper and a confirmed taste for vinegar was eligible for the halo. The porch is sculptured with grotesque images, and the heavy door, swinging slowly as the gate of Paradise, admits you to a cool vault-like interior, where sun rays pale into moon rays. The massive pillars that support the arched roof — curving in long, smooth undulations like immense waves, not pierced or fretted — are solemn with age. and a great sanctity lies upon the place like a sombre robe. The ruby, emerald, and ambei of the richcoloured windows intrude strangely upon the grey solitude of the stonework, which is otherwise unrelieved by a single alien tone This church has a grand air : a touch of pagan disdain dnn« its Christian humility.

The huge ruined amphitheatre looms as magnificent in tiny Ailes as the coliseum in Rome. Its ancient, lugged beauty has been marred by much restoring ; a false fringe of smooth stones now adorns its mas&ive front, and it'- grey wrinkled columns are enamelled with pale mortar. In place of awful <-uggestions of crumbling antiquity we get a round assurance of solidity. The world has nppaiently changed for the woise during the last 19 centuries or so. For in the arena, wheie tawny lions gnawed tough Christian"-, and gladiators fought manfully, bull-fitrht'. now take place every Sunday I would find a <-liadow of excu.-e for Faustina . but for Dolores and her fiieudf- a Maxim gun. There is surely nothing more cowardly* and revoltinglv brutal "than the bull-fight — considering all it entails. It i"- on a level with killing the wounded.