General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1885 Original Publisher: Longmans, Green Subjects: Alpes-Maritimes (France) Maritime Alps (France and Italy) France History / Europe / France Travel / Europe / General Travel / Europe / France Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 55 CHAPTER IV. CORN, WINE, AND OIL. ‘ The sire of gods and men, with hard deciees, Forbids our plenty to be bought with case, And wills that mortal man, inured to toil, Should exercise, with pains, the grudging soil… . Nor is the profit small the peasant makes, Who smooths with harrows, or who pounds with rakes The stubborn clods. Nor Ceres from on high Regards his labours with a grudging eye: Nor his, who plougha across the furrowed ground, And on the back of Earth inflicts new wounds: For he, with frequent exercise, commands The unwilling soil, and tames the stubborn lands.1 I. Georyic (Dryden). ’ The field labourer of Northern countries may be but a hapless hind, hedging and ditching dolefully, or at best serving a steam-beast with oil and fire; but in the South there ia the poetry of agriculture still. Materially it may be an evil and a loss; but spiritually it is a gain – a certain peace and light lie on the people at their toil: the reaper with his hook, the plougher with his oxen, the girl who gleans among the trailing vines, the men who sing to get a blessing on the grapes – they have all a certain grace and dignity of the old classic ways left with them. They till the earth still with the simplicity of old, looking straight to the gods for recompense. It will not last, but it is here for a little while longer still.‘ – Ouida. Mirabeau said of the soil of Provence t…