There are trees and seats in the square, for it is a place for idleness where old women knit and young women sew, where children play and ancients ruminate. There are cannon in the square pointing towards innocent Cap d’Ail. They were presented to the reigning prince of the time by Louis XIV. They are quite innocuous, but serve to remind the careless that the place is a stronghold and to provide a plaything for small boys who—with the happy imagination of the young—regard these implements of war as horses (or more probably as donkeys), sit astride of them, strike them with whips and urge them to “get up.” The palace covers the whole of the northern extremity of the rock. It is disappointing in that it fails to realise the emotional past of the place, its dramatic and picturesque history, the dire assaults and bloody frays without its gates, the tragedies within its walls. It has been so mutilated in the past and so improved and modernised in the present that it has become inexpressive. The strong, rigid lines, the grim wrinkles, the determined frown have been so smoothed away that the face has become vacuous. The new clock tower and the rows of modern windows do not recall the stern halberdier who held the place against all odds, nor the bull-necked men in armour who yelled damnation to the Genoese. The battlements are more suited for the display of flowers than for a line of determined faces under steel caps glaring along the barrels of their muskets. As the official residence of a prince it is becoming and appropriate, but it is not that palace on a rock that bid defiance to the world for flaming centuries. Monaco has a great and a glorious history, but it is not written on the walls of the palace of to-day. By the generosity of the prince the palace is thrown open to visitors on certain days but it presents little that is of interest. It has been so ruthlessly treated in days gone by and subjected to such base uses that there is little left to recall the stirring days of the old Grimaldi. In, or about, 1842 the palace was completely restored, so that it assumes now all the characters of a modern structure. It is of little concern to know that the south wing was built in this century or the north wing in that, since the traces of age have been nearly all removed. A full account of the lines of the palace, both old and new, is given in M. Urbain Bosio’s excellent treatise “Le Vieux Monaco.”[32] Between the gate that leads from the Rampe and the gate of the palace itself is a curved wall, with machicolations of an unusual type. This wall (now much restored) is said to date from the fourteenth century and behind it was the hall for the main guard.