The Riviera house-agent tells you: “Do not come here unless you are prepared to stay” (he might have added “and pay”), “for the Riviera renders all other lands uninhabitable after once you have fallen under its charm.” Amid all the gorgeousness of perhaps the most exquisite beauty-spot in all the world--that same little strip of coast between Hyères and Menton--is a colony of parasitic dwellers who are no part of the attractions of the place; but who unconsciously act as a loadstone which draws countless others of their countrymen, with their never absent diversions of golf, tennis, and croquet. One pursues these harmless sports amid a delightful setting, but why come here for that purpose? One cannot walk the _Boulevards_ and _Grandes Promenades_ all of the time, to be sure, but he might take that rest which he professedly comes for, or failing that, take a plunge into the giddy whirl of the life of the “Casino” or the “Cercle.” The result will be the same, and he will be just as tired when night comes and he has overfed himself with a _dîner Parisien_ at a great palace hotel where the only persons who do not “dress” are the waiters. This is certain,--the traveller and seeker after change and rest will not find it here any more than in Piccadilly or on Broadway, unless he leaves the element of big hotels far in the background, and lives simply in some little hovering suburb such as Cagnes is to Nice or Le Cannet to Cannes, or preferably goes farther afield. Only thus may one live the life of the author of the following lines: “There found he all for which he long did crave, Beauty and solitude and simple ways, Plain folk and primitive, made courteous by Traditions old, and a cerulean sky.” The rest is hubble, bubble, toil, and trouble of the same kind that one has in the hotels of San Francisco, London, or Amsterdam; everything cooked in the same pot and tasting of cottolene and beef extract. There is some truth in this,--for some people,--but the ties that bind are not taken into consideration, and, though the words are an echo of those uttered by Alphonse Karr when he first settled at St. Raphaël,--after having been driven from Étretat by the vulgar throng,--they will not fit every one’s ideas or pocket-books. Popularity has made a boulevard of the whole coast from St. Raphaël to San Remo, and indeed to Genoa, and there is no seclusion to be had, nor freedom from the “sirens” of automobiles, or the tin horns of trams and whistles of locomotives; unless one leaves the beaten track and settles in some background village, such as Les Maures or the Estérel, where the hum of life is but the drone of yesterday and Paris papers are three days old when they reach you. For all that the whole Riviera, and its gay life as well, is delightful, though it is as enervating and fatiguing as the week’s shopping and theatre-going in Paris with which American travellers usually wind up their tour of Europe.