This wholesale bridging over of the lower end of the Paillon has united the French and Italian towns and abolished the well-marked boundary line which once cut them off so conspicuously from one another. The inevitable result has been that the Italian town too has undergone a considerable modernization along the sea-front, so that the Promenade des Anglais and the Promenade du Midi now practically merge into one continuous parade, and are lined along all their length with the same clipped palm-trees and the same magnificent white palatial buildings. When the old theater in the Italian town was burnt down in the famous and fatal conflagration some years since the municipality erected a new one on the same site in the most approved style of Parisian luxury. A little behind lie the Préfecture and the beautiful flower market, which no visitor to Nice should ever miss; for Nice is above all things, even more than Florence, a city of flowers. The sheltered quarter of the Ponchettes, lying close under the lee of the Castle Hill, has become of late, owing to these changes, a favorite resort for invalids, who find here protection from the cutting winds which sweep with full force down the bare and open valley of the Paillon over the French town. I am loth to quit that beloved sea-front, on the whole the most charming marine parade in Europe, with the Villefranche point and the pseudo-Gothic, pseudo-Oriental monstrosity of Smith's Folly on one side and the delicious bay towards Antibes on the other. But there are yet various aspects of Nice which remain to be described: the interior is almost as lovely in its way as the coast that fringes it. For this inner Nice, the Place Masséna, called (like the Place Garibaldi) after another distinguished native, forms the starting point and center. Here the trams from all quarters run together at last; hence the principal roads radiate in all directions. The Place Masséna is the center of business, as the Jardin Public and the Casino are the centers of pleasure. Also (_verbum sap._) it contains an excellent _pâtisserie_, where you can enjoy an ice or a little French pastry with less permanent harm to your constitution and morals than anywhere in Europe. Moreover, it forms the approach to the Avenue de la Gare, which divides with the Quays the honor of being the best shopping street in the most fashionable watering-place of the Mediterranean. If these delights thy soul may move, why, the Place Masséna is the exact spot to find them in.