Many of these
parts are wanting in the Colosseum, whose sublimity of size, however, can
afford to dispense with detail. The seats at Nimes, like those at Verona,
have been largely renewed; not that this mattered much, as I lounged on
the cool surface of one of them, and admired the mighty concavity of the
place and the elliptical sky-line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the
rim of the monstrous cup--a cup that had been filled with horrors, and yet
I made my reflections; I said to myself that tho a Roman arena is one of
the most impressive of the works of man, it has a touch of that same
stupidity which I ventured to discover in the Pont du Gard. It is brutal;
it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite.
The Arenes at Nimes were arranged for a bull-fight--a form of recreation
that, as I was informed, is much dans les habitudes Nimoises and very
common throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it
is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a
characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a
circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves.
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