Some of the criticism which has been lavished on San Remo is fair and natural enough. To any one who has been accustomed to the exquisite scenery around Cannes its background of olives seems tame and monotonous. People who are fond of the bustle and gaiety of Nizza or Mentone in their better days can hardly find much to amuse them in San Remo. It is certainly quiet, and its quiet verges upon dulness. A more serious drawback lies in the scarcity of promenades or level walks for weaker invalids. For people with good legs, or who are at home on a donkey, there are plenty of charming walks and rides up into the hills. But it is not everybody who is strong enough to walk uphill or who cares to mount a donkey. Visitors with sensitive noses may perhaps find reason for growls at the mode of cultivation which is characteristic of the olive groves. The town itself and the country around is, like the bulk of the Riviera, entirely without architectural or archæological interest. There is a fine castle within a long drive at Dolceacqua, and a picturesque church still untouched within a short one at Ceriana, but this is all. Beneficial as the reforms of Carlo Borromeo may have been to the religious life of the Cornice, they have been fatal to its architecture. On the other hand, any one with an artistic eye and a sketch-book may pass his time pleasantly enough at San Remo. The botanist may revel day after day in new "finds" among its valleys and hill-sides. The rural quiet of the place delivers one from the fashionable bustle of livelier watering-places, from the throng of gorgeous equipages that pour along the streets of Nice, or from picnics with a host of flunkeys uncorking the champagne.
The sunshine, the colour, the beauty of the little town, secure its future. The time must soon come when the whole coast of the Riviera will be lined with winter resorts; but we can hardly hope that any will surpass the happy blending of warmth and interest and repose which makes the charm of San Remo.
There is one marvellous tale which is hardly likely to be forgotten so long as men can look down from Notre Dame de la Garde on the sunny beauty of Marseilles. Even if the rest of Dumas' works sink into oblivion, the sight of Château d'If as it rises glowing from the blue waters of the Mediterranean will serve to recall the wonders of 'Monte Christo.' But the true claim of the book to remembrance lies not in its mere command over the wonderful but in the peculiar sense of wonder which it excites. It was the first literary attempt to raise the mere dead fact of money into the sphere of the imagination, and to reveal the dormant poetry of wealth. There has as yet been only a single age in the world's history when wealth has told with any force upon the imagination of men. Unpoetic as the Roman mind essentially was, the sudden burst upon it of the accumulated riches of the older world kindled in senators and proconsuls a sense of romance which, wild and extravagant as it seems, has in some of its qualities found no parallel since. The feast of Lucullus, the gluttony of Heliogabalus, the sudden upgrowth of vast amphitheatres, the waste of millions on the sport of a day, the encounters of navies in the mimic warfare of the Coliseum, are the freaks of gigantic children tossing about wildly the slowly-hoarded treasures of past generations; but they are freaks which for the first time revealed the strange possibilities which lay in the future of wealth.