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from the north. There was quitean English colony at 
Bordighera, and many benefits to the Italian people have sprung 
from the English occupation. Well, indeed, was it that 
wherever Britain’s power was felt, mankind should feel her 
mercy too. Visiting the Italian Riviera, one feels he is in Bible 
lands, amid scenery and surroundings familiar to every reader of 
Scripture. The preciousness of water, the women at work in the 
fields, the men sitting under their own vine and their own fig 
tree—as in the days of Solomon, the babes in ‘“ swaddling 
clothes,” the shepherd walking in front of his flock—that flock 
always consisting of sheep and goats, the wells similar to those 
found to-day in Palestine, the trees of lignaloes, the tall palms, 
the almond trees with their delicate white blossom, the olives— 
more numerous than on the Mount of Olives itself—the men 
shaking and beating the olive trees in the way commanded in the 
book of Deuteronomy, the skins of goats used as bottles, the blue 
and scarlet anemones, the lilies of the field in the ‘‘Sermon 
on the Mount:” the contemplation of these and other things of 
like nature, seems to transport the visitor on the wings of 
imagination to ‘ those holy fields over whose acres walked those 
blessed feet which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed, for 
our advantage, on the bitter cross.” Nothing in the world could 
exceed the beauty of the sunsets—the cloud forming the firma- 
mental blue resting on the blue line of a foamless sea, the water 
in the bay the delicate colour of a dove’s wing, the hill beyond the 
bay, and the higher hills further away, folding about their 
dimpled shoulders mantles of royal purple. _ Then behind a little 
promontory the sun, after appearing for a little time as a 
burning bastion fringed with fire, sets in the torquoise sea. Then 
to the left a beam of light shoots across the sea, to the right there 
is a lane of light athwart the land, and the hills to the west of the 
bay of Mentone become illuminated,—what five minutes before 
was dull and dark is now one unclouded blaze of living light. 
Then the eye glances to the north, where the mountains live in 
holy families, where the snow on the topmost hill glitters in the 
last rays of the sunlight—rose flushed lights bathing the cold 
crowns of Alpine snows. The afterglow is magnificent, far 
exceeding in glory even the refulgent sunsets of Claude. 
Noticeable, too, is the absence of grass and the absence of 
birds. There are multitudes of beggars. The machinery and 
implements are of a most antiquated kind. Women carry baskets 
on the head. The baby is invariably carried by the man. The 
Italian peasant—the navvy of the continent, who has pierced the 
tunnels of the Alps and built the harbour of Marseilles—is 
greatly to be admired for his patience, his steadiness, and his 
untiring industry. Yet he has lived on half rations for two 
centuries. 
