Long before the French came into possession of the Comté de Nice and its capital there was a friendship, and a sort of union, between the two peoples. When the little state became a part of modern France, it became simply more French than it was before. This was the only change to be remarked until the era of its great prosperity as a winter resort, for the world’s idlers made it what it is,--the best-known winter station in all the world. Nice used to be called “Nizza la Bella,” but, since the arrival of the French (1860), and the English, and the Americans, and the Germans (the Russian grand dukes, be it recalled, have made Cannes their own), “Nizza la Bella” has become “Nice la Belle,” for it is beautiful in spite of its drawbacks for the lover of sylvan and unartificial charms. There is not in Africa a spot more African in appearance than the railway station at Nice; such at all events is the impression that it makes upon one when he views the enormous palms that surround the station. Up to this time the traveller from the north, by rail, has got some glimpses of the southland from the windows of his railway car; has seen some palms, perhaps, and other specimens of a subtropical flora; but, since the railway does not make its way through the palm avenues of Hyères or Cannes, the sudden apparition of Nice is as of something new. [Illustration] Many have sung the praises of “Nice la Belle” in prose and verse; in times past, Dupatay, Lalande, and Delille; and, in our own day, Alphonse Karr, Dumas père, De Banville, Mistral, Jacques Normand, Bourget, Nadaud, and a host of others too numerous to mention. Nice is a marvellous blend of the old and the new; the old quarter of the Niçois, with narrow streets of stairs, overhanging balconies, and all the accessories of the life of the Latins as they have been pictured for ages past; the new, with broad boulevards, straight tree-bordered avenues flanked with gay shops, hotels, kiosks, automobile cabs, and all the rest of what we have come unwisely to regard as the necessities of the age. The curtain of trees flanking these great modern thoroughfares is the only thing that saves them from becoming monotonous; as it is, they are as attractive as any of their kind in Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles. The Promenade des Anglais is the finest of these thoroughfares. With its yuccas, and its garden, and its sea-wall, and its fringe of white-crested, lapping waves, it is all very entrancing,--all except the inartistic thing of glass roofs and iron struts, known the world over as a pier, and which, in spite of its utility,--if it really is useful,--is an abomination. Artificiality is all very well in its place, but out of place it is as indigestible as the _nougat_ of Montélimar.