THE RETURN TO MARSEILLES.

What memories crowd on me as I step into the tug which is to take me and the rest of us, in a confused mass, stowed away amidst the luggage, to the Custom House at Marseilles, a fine, handsome building, apparently in the very heart of the town, with shipping of many nations all around; for has not Marseilles in our time come to be the headquarters of all those who, fearing the Bay of Biscay, have a mind to make their way along the historic shores, and on the blue waters of the Mediterranean? As I leave the Custom House, a friend says to me: ‘I have soon got out. You see, there is nothing lost by civility. I took my luggage to one of the officers, took off my hat to him, and he came directly and let me go through.’ I replied to the effect that I was more successful, as I had been out a quarter of an hour before my friend, and I never took off my hat, but simply held out my Gladstone, which confirms me in my original idea, which, I mention for the benefit of travellers, that the real secret of getting one’s examination over is simply to have nothing for the Custom House officer to search. The New Harbour, Marseilles. From Cassell’s ‘Cities of the World’ Not that I deprecate civility; the more I travel in France, the more I appreciate it. We English are a grand people—there are no better men on the face of the earth—but we might be a little more civil to one another.

And now I am in Marseilles, a clean, handsome, flourishing city, with an enormous population and an enormous trade; and naturally I think of the time—now more than a century ago—when the Marseillais set out for Paris. ‘The notablest of all the moving phenomena of that time,’ writes Carlyle, ‘is that of Barbaroux’s “six hundred Marseillais who know how to die.” A black-browed mass, full of grim fire,’ got together no one knows how—from the forÇats, say some. As they march through Lyons, the people shut their shops in fear. ‘The Thought which works voiceless in this black-browed mass, an inspired TyrtÆus, Colonel Rouget de Lille, has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the Marseillaise: luckiest musical-competition ever promulgated. The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot, and Devil.’

Marseilles is a far nobler city than it appears to the tourist as he rushes from the train to catch the steamer waiting to bear him far away. High above the city, on a precipitous rock, from which you have a grand view of the place, and the harbour, and the far-off Mediterranean, stands the old Cathedral of Marseilles—Notre Dame de la Garde—a noble Romanesque Marseilles building, with a gilt figure of the Virgin at the top, her arms extended as if to protect the city. You reach it either by a winding road or a hydraulic lift, for the use of which you pay a trifle. It was there the ancient inhabitants kept watch over sea and land. In time a chapel was erected on its site, which became a place of pilgrimage for mariners and fishermen. The present magnificent building was erected in 1864. If only for the view, the visitor is well repaid for his trouble. Hardly can you enjoy a more magnificent prospect, embracing the fair valley of the Rhone, the white houses of Marseilles stretching up the plain, the gray mountains of Spain in the far distance, the dazzling blue of the Gulf of Lyons, the dark towers of the fort, with the rocky, picturesque islands, with the ChÂteau d’If, whence, according to Dumas, Monte Cristo made his marvellous escape, beyond. In the city itself, on a hill, whence you have also a fine view, is a grand new cathedral of imposing form and structure. It was Sunday when I visited it; but there were not many people in it, though more in the heart of the city, where I tried to enter a church, it was so crowded that there really was no standing-room. But even in Marseilles you must be cautious when the east wind blows. It was there Dr. Punshon, the greatest Wesleyan orator of our time, caught the cold which laid the foundation of the illness that ultimately carried him off.

It has a very ancient history, this noble city of Marseilles. It owes its origin to a tribe of Ionian Greeks, who, about 600 b.c., there founded a town that ultimately became the head of a Roman province. In the contest between Pompey and CÆsar, the town wished to remain neutral, but CÆsar had need of gold, vessels, and harbours, and scrupled not for a moment to lay siege to it, which was maintained against him during the whole of his long and severe warfare with Afranius and Petreius in Spain, and was not taken till after the capture or dispersion of their legions. The treatment of the town was so merciless, that from thenceforward, by Strabo’s account, it only preserved vestiges of its former prosperity and wealth. However, Marseilles in time recovered from the blow, and chiefly by means of the book trade. It seems to have become a miniature Athens. France was especially distinguished by its aptitude and zeal for Roman learning. At Marseilles there was an institution for Greek education and literature, which was visited, even in preference to Athens, by men of the highest rank. A large institution of the same kind existed at Autun, and Tacitus calls that city the principal seat of Latin culture. With respect to the book trade of Lyons, we have the testimony of the younger Pliny, when he states that he learned, with some surprise, from a friend that his own discourses and writings were publicly sold there.

In the time of the Crusades Marseilles became a busy place. It is now wholly given up to trade, and flourishes accordingly. Since 1850 it has become the head packet-station on the Mediterranean, and more and more frequented by English passengers, who can stay at gorgeous hotels, or more economical ones, according to the state of their finances. If they only stop the day, they cannot do better than dine at the buffet attached to the railway-station, unless they wish to partake of the famous bouillabaisse of which Thackeray sung, and to which my friend—my lamented friend—George Augustus Sala, devoted many a learned paragraph in his ‘Table Talk’ in the Illustrated London News and elsewhere. Woe is me! I quite forgot all about it till just as I had to take the train to carry me away. I shall never cease to regret that forgetfulness on my part. It may be that I may live to repair it!

There was a time when this delicious delicacy could be had in Paris. Some of us can still remember Thackeray’s beautiful ballad:

‘A street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields;
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is,
The New Street of the Little Fields.

‘And here’s our wish, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable ease,
The which in youth I oft attended
To eat a bowl of bouillabaise.’

But Marseilles lives on other things than its bouillabaisse—a rich soup or stew of all sorts of fish—not to be flippantly eaten, not to be lightly forgotten. Some 2,000 vessels fill its capacious harbour. In its lofty bonded warehouses are stored away the merchandise of many climes, and its soap-works and sugar-refineries are on an extensive scale. In short, it is the Liverpool of France; but, alas for the pride of the Mersey, how much cleaner, brighter, grander! how much purer the smokeless atmosphere! how much lovelier the outlook over sea and land! It was there that in 1797 that great French statesman, M. Adolphe Thiers, was born. That acute judge of men and books, Abraham Hayward, who was at Paris before Thiers had risen, as he did at a later time, describes him, in 1844, as ‘a little, insignificant man, till he gets animated, but wonderfully clever.’

The one drawback to Marseilles, the only cloud in its blue sky, is the drink; and I am glad to find that there is a good man there, Pastor Lenoir, who has taken up temperance work, and has carried it on very successfully. Last year, for a novelty, in Marseilles he got up a temperance fÊte, which was a great success. During the last twenty years drinking has greatly increased, and the drink-shops as well. In 1876 there were in Marseilles 2,460 drink-shops; now there are 4,205—far too many, when we remember that the town has only 600 bakers’ shops and only 500 schools. As a consequence, Dr. Rey shows that insanity has greatly increased, and that in the hospital of St. Pierre the proportion of insane patients whose disease can be traced to alcohol has increased from 15 per cent. to 31 per cent. of the patients admitted. ‘The chief factor,’ he writes, ‘of these mental diseases is alcohol, and especially when to its intoxicating effects is added that of absinthe, and other vegetable substances which produce epilepsy and other similar evils.’ In this respect, Marseilles teaches us a lesson which it is well to remember at home.

In another way Marseilles is a lesson in favour of temperance work. In the district of Villette the drinking classes chiefly dwell. It is a narrow, dirty court, opening on a series of alleys; in the centre runs an open gutter—the only drainage of the place—while on either side are small one-storied houses, called cabanons, let for about eight shillings a month. They are let to the poorest of the poor, and abound with dirt and large families and drunkenness; the three in France, as in England, generally go hand in hand. The air is stifling, the odours insupportable; and when the sun pours down in the middle of summer, and the hot sirocco-like wind blows, the condition of matters is unbearable. As I write I see the people of Marseilles, in fear of the plague, will not permit travellers from the East, under any pretence whatever, to land there. They had much better look at home, and reform their own sanitary arrangements in such districts as Villette. It is there the good Protestant pastor, connected, I believe, with the McAll Mission in Paris, labours unweariedly with a band of fellow labourers as devoted as himself. I give the story of one of his rescued men, as an illustration of labour-life in the fair city of Marseilles:

‘Thibaut is a strong, muscular man, who worked as a docker, and could carry 140 kilos of wool on his shoulders from six o’clock to twelve o’clock without taking rest. He was an inveterate drunkard, and had on one occasion swallowed thirty-five glasses of absinthe, raw, in a day. For thirty years he had never set foot in a church, and his wife had died from the effects of his ill-treatment. Once, in a fit of drunkenness, he threw all that was left of furniture in their miserable home into the street, including the stove, which was alight, and on which their bit of dinner was cooking. He dragged his wife when ill from her bed by her hair, and threw her into the street. The day of her death he was found drunk in a public-house, and he followed the remains to the grave reeling. He lived in the famous “Grand Salon,” in a miserable hut of planks, the most filthy hovel imaginable. Thibaut was not over-scrupulous as to how he got the drink, without which he could not exist. There are many ways in which a docker can steal from the cargoes he discharges without being found out. For instance, there is a way of letting fall a case of wine or cognac, so as to break one bottle, the contents of which then can be quickly absorbed. Like most French workmen, he wore trousers very baggy at the top, and tied round the ankles. Such trousers can be made to hold about four pounds of tea or coffee, or such like, and many a time Thibaut has walked past the searchers at the dock-gates with his stock of groceries, and has never been detected.’

He was nearly falling a victim to his drunken habits more than once. They are now rejoicing over him at Marseilles, for he that was dead is now alive again. The lost one is found.

If the traveller has time to spare, let him by all means pay Arles a visit, where there is a fine Roman amphitheatre, or rather the remains of one. Very early Arles became distinguished in Church history—I was going to say Christian history; but, alas, at that time the bitter disputes and dissensions in the Church bore little traces of the teachings or the example of Christ. In a.d. 314, when, as Gibbon writes, Constantine was the protector, rather than the proselyte of Christianity, he referred the African controversy to the Council of Arles, in which the Bishops of York, of Treves, of Milan, and of Carthage, met as friends and brethren to debate, in their native tongue, on the common interests of the Latin or Western Church. One ancient writer says there were 600 bishops there, but this is probably an exaggerated account of their number. The subject, of course, was the nature of the Trinity, the discussions on which, inflamed with passion, had filled the Churches with fury, and sedition, and schism—a fury which excites the wonder of the modern less heated Christian Church.

It was at Arles, at a later period, Constantine repaired to celebrate in its palace, with intemperate luxury, a vain and ostentatious triumph—his military success against the Goths. It was at Arles, the seat at that time of government and commerce, a.d. 418, that the Emperor Honorius, in a solemn address, filled with the strongest assurances of that paternal affection which, as Gibbon writes, sovereigns so often express but rarely feel, convened an annual assembly consisting of the Pretorian Prefect of the Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular and six presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of sixty cities; and of an indefinite number of leading landed proprietors. They were empowered to interpret the laws of their sovereign, to expose the wishes and grievances of their constituents, to moderate the excessive or unequal weight of taxes, and to deliberate on every subject of local and national importance that would tend to the restoration of peace and prosperity to the seven provinces. It was a step in the right direction. It was a step that might have tended, if universally followed, at any rate, to retard the decay and decline of the Roman Empire. But the Emperor found that the people were not ready to accept the proffered boon. A fine of three, or even five, ounces of gold was imposed on the absent representatives. Honorius was in advance of his age—in politics as great a blunder as being behind it. It was not till centuries of oppression and misgovernment that the rights of man were practically won for France, and that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity became the watchwords of the people.

Arles was very early peopled by a colony from Central Italy, and very remarkable is the physique of its inhabitants. The late Lord Malmesbury, Lord Derby’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, writes: ‘The women are remarkably handsome, but entirely of the Etruscan type, with magnificent dark hair and eyes, good teeth, and fair complexions. They have beautiful round throats, set on fine shoulders and busts, but their legs are much too short for their general build.’ I am, of course, not a judge of such matters, and I prefer to copy from Lord Malmesbury, who, as a Foreign Minister and a frequent guest both at the Courts of England and France, and a high-born aristocrat as well, had opportunities for the pleasing study of woman far superior to any possessed by an ordinary scribe. He had a good opportunity of seeing the population, as it was a fÊte day when he favoured the city with his presence. He continues: ‘There were games in the square, such as climbing a greased pole for a leg of mutton placed at the top, which no one succeeded in winning. The women were all in costume, with black veils, worn like the mantilla. I noticed that the men were remarkably plain, sallow, under-sized and narrow-chested—in every way a remarkable contrast to the women.’ As indeed they are, or ought to be, all the world over.

In the neighbourhood is a hermit’s cell, very curiously contrived in the rock, where there was a secret way of escaping to the deeper recesses and hiding in case of danger. There was the stone bed of the hermit who is said to have been the first to introduce Christianity into the province. His name is held in high esteem and a church is dedicated to his memory. It was upon the plains adjoining that Charles Martel gained his final victory over the Saracens. The Roman amphitheatre in Arles is in a fine state of preservation, with towers added in the Middle Ages.

Soldiers have a mission hall to themselves in Marseilles, which is full of them, and to the hall many come for peace and light. The aggregate attendance is set down at nearly 6,000. The hall offers them a warm, comfortable room, well lighted, with books, games, newspapers, and other conveniences. A lady gives them elementary lessons in French, arithmetic, reading, and writing. When the soldiers sailed to Madagascar they took with them, in spite of the priests, 3,000 copies of the New Testament. The labours of the agents of the McAll Mission are numerous and persevering. Last year they held about 500 meetings for adults. They have five schools for children, besides two sewing schools for girls. There are three mothers’ meetings, with a fair attendance, and a mission choir does good work.

Of more recent formation, and perhaps less well known, is the Society of Christian Endeavour. It has given proof of its existence in various ways. It was the Endeavourers who organized four series of lectures, of three each, which were given in the halls of the Grand Chemin de Toulon and the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Friends were much encouraged to see each time a large and attentive audience; the lectures had been announced by means of handbills distributed in profusion throughout the district. The society takes charge also of the visitation of the sick, and the distribution of tracts in the suburbs, at the gates of the factories and workshops, etc. Some of the sisters have taken to heart the work among fallen women, and in one case, at least, they have been able to snatch one of these poor creatures from her life of sin, and place her in a neighbouring refuge. And so good work gets done, quietly and unobtrusively.

There were put in circulation last year through the Librairie EvangÉlique 12,000 almanacks, 4,500 Bibles and Testaments, 1,000 tracts, 1,000 books of various kinds, and 600 copies of the RelÉvement. Open Bibles and Testaments are constantly displayed also in the large shop-window, where the passers-by can stop and read at their leisure—a thing which a goodly number of them do not fail to do. Nor are the Italians, of whom there are many in the town, overlooked. But I pass on

‘To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
I turn, and France displays her bright domain;
Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleased with thyself whom all the world can please.’

And pleasant recollections come to us of Oliver Goldsmith, who, as he tells us, oft led

‘The sportive choir
With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire.’

The traveller who does as the writer did—leaves the train at Marseilles, and travels home slowly, will find as much pleasure in that little trip as in any part of his pilgrimage to the East.