the sole reason why the streets were made so narrow. The old towns and even villages were crowded within walls; a girdle of bulwark surrounded them, they had no space for expansion except upwards.
What Mr. Hammerton says of French towns applies especially to those of Provence:—
"France has an immense advantage over England in the better harmony between her cities and towns, and the country where they are placed. In England it rarely happens that a town adds to the beauty of a landscape; in France it often does so. In England there are many towns that are quite absolutely and hideously destructive of landscape beauty; in France there are very few. The consequence is that in France a lover of landscape does not feel that dislike to human interference which he so easily acquires in England, and which in some of our best writers, who feel most intensely and acutely,
has become positive hatred and exasperation."
It was fear of the Moors and the pirates of the Mediterranean which drove the inhabitants of the seacoast to build their towns on the rocks, high uplifted, walled about and dominated by towers.
I will now give a hasty sketch of the early history of Provence—so far as goes to explain the nature of its population.
The earliest occupants of the seaboard named in history are the Ligurians. The Gulf of Lyons takes its name from them, in a contracted form. Who these Ligurians were, to what stock they belonged, is not known; but as there are megalithic monuments in the country, covered avenues at Castelet, near Arles, dolmens at Draguignan and Saint Vallier, a menhir at Cabasse, we may perhaps conclude with some probability
