One of the most beautiful and unique features of Nice at the present day is the Castle Hill a mass of solid rearing rock, not unlike its namesake at Edinburgh in position, intervening between the Port and the eighteenth century town, to which latter I will in future allude as the Italian city. It is a wonderful place, that Castle Hill--wonderful alike by nature, art, and history, and I fear I must also add at the same time "uglification." In earlier days it bore on its summit or slopes the _château fort_ of the Counts of Provence with the old cathedral and archbishop's palace (now wholly destroyed), and the famous deep well, long ranked among the wonders of the world in the way of engineering. But military necessity knows no law; the cathedral gave place in the fifteenth century to the bastions of the Duke of Savoy's new-fangled castle; the castle itself in turn was mainly battered down in 1706 by the Duke of Berwick; and of all its antiquities none now remain save the Tour Bellanda, in its degraded condition of belvedere, and the scanty ground-plan of the mediæval buildings. Nevertheless, the Castle Hill is still one of the loveliest and greenest spots in Nice. A good carriage road ascends it to the top by leafy gradients, and leads to an open platform on the summit, now converted into charming gardens, rich with palms and aloes and cactuses and bright southern flowers. On one side, alas! a painfully artificial cataract, fed from the overflow of the waterworks, falls in stiff cascades among hand-built rockwork; but even that impertinent addition to the handicraft of nature can hardly offend the visitor for long among such glorious surroundings. For the view from the summit is one of the grandest in all France. The eye ranges right and left over a mingled panorama of sea and mountains, scarcely to be equaled anywhere round the lovely Mediterranean, save on the Ligurian coast and the neighborhood of Sorrento. Southward lies the blue expanse of water itself, bounded only in very clear and cloudless weather by the distant peaks of Corsica on the doubtful horizon. Westward, the coast-line includes the promontory of Antibes, basking low on the sea, the Iles Lérins near Cannes, the mouth of the Var, and the dim-jagged ridge of the purple Esterel. Eastward, the bluff headland of the Mont Boron, grim and brown, blocks the view towards Italy. Close below the spectator's feet the three distinct towns of Nice gather round the Port and the two banks of the Paillon, spreading their garden suburbs, draped in roses and lemon groves, high up the spurs of the neighboring mountains. But northward a tumultuous sea of Alps rises billow-like to the sky, the nearer peaks frowning bare and rocky, while the more distant domes gleam white with virgin snow. It is a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. One glances around entranced, and murmurs to oneself slowly, "It is good to be here." Below, the carriages are rolling like black