In a few things the French are a little behind. They have established no uniform national time. The railways keep Paris time, which may be learned from a clock exhibited at every station; but provincial towns have all their own time, and that is somewhat distracting. At Nice, the hotel and post-office clocks shew both Paris and local time. At Mentone, time is in a chaotic condition. Some few years ago, according to a floating tradition, an English clergyman in the town who was punctilious about time, possessed a watch which was reckoned so great an authority that people thankfully set their pendules by it. Since this public-spirited individual quitted the place, time has become disorganised, and as no one can tell the hour precisely, you may happen to be too soon or too late at church or at any appointed place of meeting. No doubt a horologer who deals in jewellery and mosaics has a clock swinging in his window inviting the confidence of passengers, and over the entrance of the _Eglise Evangélique_ there is a clock of respectable appearance, but I never put much faith in their indications. The want of a good well-accredited town clock is only one of many wants in Mentone, of which something severe could be said. Let us, however, be gentle and considerate. It is easy saying ‘they’ should do this, and ‘they’ should do that, but where are ‘they’ to get the money to do all these fine things? Any one who has been at the helm of civic affairs knows that scarcely a day passes without the receipt of letters patriotically pointing out great public works which should be undertaken for the good of mankind, but never giving the slightest hint where the money is to come from to execute them. It is an unfortunate thing that everywhere money is in such urgent requisition, yet so it is. Mentone is in the position of needing a good deal, in which respect it resembles a man of small capital newly set up in business with great possibilities of prosperity. We have seen something of its history. It is an old, very old town, and should by this time have attained a decent maturity. But think of what it has come through—held down, starved, taxed, cudgelled, and brutalised by that ‘noble Genoese’ family which so long maintained sway over it; think of the difficulty it had to get rid of these rulers; how sore were its trials until it was taken in hand by the great and gallant nation with which its fate is now associated; and how short a time has elapsed since it found itself famous as a winter resort, with obligations imposed on it which it had no means adequately to discharge. A consequence of this unforeseen celebrity was that land suddenly rose to ten or twenty times its former value. Capitalists, local and cosmopolitan, made a rush to build villas, hotels, pensions, and houses with shops, without any concerted plan. With the old town clustering on a height like a bee-hive, nothing could be done. The new edifices spread