Young und Okey - 1915 - Travels in France and Italy during the years 1787,

Travels in France and Italy/45
26th. The fair of Beaucaire fills the whole country with business
and motion; meet many carts loaded; and nine diligences going or coming.
Yesterday and to-day the hottest I ever experienced; we had none
like them in Spain—the flies much worse than the heat.—30 miles.
27th. The amphitheatre of Nismes is a prodigious work, which shows
how well the Romans had adapted these edifices to the abominable uses
to which they were erected. The convenience of a theatre that could hold
17,000 spectators without confusion; the magnitude; the massive and
substantial manner in which it is built without mortar, that has withstood
the attacks of the weather, and the worse depredations of the barbarians
in the various revolutions of sixteen centuries, all strike the attention
forcibly.
I viewed the Maison Quarré last night; again this morning, and twice
more in the day; it is beyond all comparison the most light, elegant, and
pleasing building I ever beheld. Without any magnitude to render it imposing;
without any extraordinary magnificence to surprise, it rivets
attention. There is a magic harmony in the proportions that charms the
eye. One can fix on no particular part of pre-eminent beauty; it is one
perfect whole of symmetry and grace. What an infatuation in modern
architects that can overlook the chaste and elegant simplicity of taste
manifest in such a work and yet rear such piles of laboured foppery and
heaviness as are to be met with in France. The temple of Diana, as it is
called, and the ancient baths, with their modern restoration, and the
promenade, form parts of the same scene, and are magnificent decorations
of the city. I was, in relation to the baths, in ill luck, for the water
was all drawn off in order to clean them and the canals.—The Roman
pavements are singularly beautiful, and in high preservation. My quarters
at Nismes were at the Louvre, a large, commodious, and excellent
inn, the house was almost as much a fair from morning to night as
Beaucaire itself could be. I dined and supped at the table d’hôte; the
cheapness of these tables suits my finances, and one sees something of
the manners of the people; we sat down from twenty to forty at every
meal, most motley companies of French, Italians, Spaniards, and Germans,
with a Greek and Armenian; and I was informed that there is
hardly a nation in Europe or Asia that have not merchants at this great
fair, chiefly for raw silk, of which many millions in value are sold in
four days: all the other commodities of the world are to be found there.
One circumstance I must remark on this numerous table d’hôte,
because it has struck me repeatedly, which is the taciturnity of the French.