Brittany

Terribly dangerous are these shifting sands. In attempting to cross them you need an experienced guide. The sea mounts very quickly, and mists overtake you unexpectedly. Many assailants of the rock have been swallowed in the treacherous sands.

Being on this great height reminded me of a legend I had heard of the sculptor Gautier, a man of genius, who was shut up in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel and carved stones to keep himself from going mad—you can see these in the abbey to this day. For some slight reason François I. threw the unfortunate sculptor into the black cachot of the Mount, and there he was left in solitude, to die by degrees. His hair became quite white, and hung long over his shoulders; his cheeks were haggard; he grew to look like a ghost. His youth could no longer fight against the despair overhanging him; his miseries were too great for him to bear; he became almost insane. One day, by a miracle, Mass was held, not in the little dark chapel under the crypts, but in the church on high, on the topmost pinnacle of the Mount. It was a Sunday, a fête-day. The sun shone, not feebly, as I saw it that day, but radiantly, the windows of the church glistening. It was blindingly beautiful. The joy of life surrounded him; the sweetness and freshness of the spring was in the air. The irony of men and things was too great for his poor sorrow-laden brain. He cleared the parapet, and was dashed to atoms below. Poor Gautier! It was his only chance of escape. One realized that as one looked up at those immense prison walls, black and frowning, sheer and unscaleable, every window grated and barred. What chance would a prisoner have? If it were possible for him to escape from the prison itself, there would be the town below to pass through. Only one narrow causeway joins the island to the mainland, and all round there is nothing but sea and sandy wastes.

I was disturbed in my reverie by a loud nasal voice shouting, 'Par ici, messieurs et dames, s'il vous plaît.' It was the guide, and willy-nilly we must go and make the rounds of the abbey among a crowd of other sightseers. An old blind woman on the abbey steps, evidently knowing that we were English by our tread, moistened her lips and drew in her breath in preparation for a begging whine as we approached. We passed through a huge red door of a glorious colour, up a noble flight of wide steps, with hundreds of feet of wall on either side, into a lofty chapel, falling to decay, and being renovated in parts. It was of a ghostly greenish stone, with fluted pillars of colossal height, ending in stained-glass windows and a vaulted roof, about which black-winged bats were flying. Room after room we passed through, the guide making endless and monotonous explanations and observations in a parrot-like voice, until we reached the cloister. This is the pearl of Mont St. Michel, the wonder of wonders. It is a huge square court. In the middle of the quadrangle it is open to the sky, and the sun shines through in a golden blaze. All round are cool dim walks roofed overhead by gray arches supported by small, graceful, rose-coloured pillars in pairs. This is continued round the whole length of the court. Let into the wall are long benches of stone, to which, in olden days, the monks came to meditate and pray. The ancient atmosphere has been well preserved; yet the building is so little touched by time, owing to the careful renovations of a clever architect, that one almost expects at any moment to see a brown-robed monk disturbed in his meditations.

From the quiet courtyard we are taken down into the very heart of the coliseum—into the mysterious cells where the damp of the rock penetrates the solid stone. How gloomy it was down in these crypts! Even the names of them made one tremble—'Galerie de l'Aquilon,' 'Petit Exil,' and 'Grand Exil.' You think of Du Bourg, tightly fettered hand and foot, being eaten alive by rats; of the Comte Grilles, condemned to die of starvation, being fed by a peasant, who bravely climbed to his window; of a hundred gruesome tales. There is the chapel where the last offices of the dead were performed—a cell in which the light struggled painfully through the narrow windows, feebly combating with the dark night of the chamber; and there is the narrow stairway, in the thickness of the wall, by which the bodies of the prisoners were taken.

We were shown the cachot and the oubliette where the living body of the prisoner was attacked by rats. That, however, was a simple torture compared with the strait-jacket and the iron cage. In the oubliette the miserable men could clasp helpless hands, curse or pray, as the case might be; but in the iron cage the death agony was prolonged.

Even now, although the poor souls took wings long ago, the cachot and the oubliette fill you with disgust. You feel stifled there. The atmosphere is vitiated. Even though centuries have passed since those terrible times, the walls seem to be still charged with iniquity, with all the sighs exhaled, with all the smothered cries, with all the tears, with all the curses of impatient sufferers, with all the prayers of saints.

It seems impossible to believe, down in the heart of this world of stone, in the impenetrable darkness, that the architect that designed this thick and cruel masonry constructed those airy belfries, those balustrades of lace, those graceful arches, those towers and minarets. It is as if he had wished to shut up the sorrow and the maniacal cries of the men who had lost their reason in a fair exterior, attracting the eyes of the world to that which was beautiful, and making it forget the misery beneath.

The name of Mme. Sévigné rings through the ages. Vitré is full of it. Inhabitants will point out, close to the ruined ramparts, the winter palace where the spirituelle Marquise received the Breton nobility and sometimes the Kings of Brittany. To the south they will show you the Château des Rochers, the princely country residence maintained by this famous woman. She was a Breton of the Bretons, building and planting, often working in the fields with her farm hands. She loved her Château des Rochers. It was a joy to leave the town and the gaieties of Court for the freshness of the fields and the woods. She especially liked to be there for the 'Triomphe du mois de Mai'—to hear the nightingale and the cuckoo saluting spring with song. With Lafontaine, she found inspiration in the fields; but, as she preserved a solid fund of Gaelic humour, she laughed also, and the country did not often make her melancholy. She felt the sadness of autumn in her woods; but she never became morose. She never wearied of her garden. She had always some new idea with regard to it—some new plan to lure her from a letter begun or a book opened. Before reading the memoirs of Mme. Sévigné it is almost impossible to realize this side of her nature. Who would have imagined that this woman of the salons, fêted in Paris, and known everywhere, would be always longing for her country home? It is only when you visit the famous Château des Rochers that you realize to the full that she was a lover of nature and country habits. Wandering through the old-world garden, you find individual touches which bring back the dainty Marquise vividly to mind. There are the venerable trees, under which you may wander and imagine yourself back in the time of Louis XIV. There are the deep and shady avenues planted by Mme. Sévigné, and beautiful to this day. The names come back to you as you walk—'La Solitaire,' 'L'Infini,' 'L'honneur de ma fille'—avenues in which madame sat to see the sun setting behind the trees. Very quiet is this garden, with its broad shady paths, its wide spaces of green, its huge cedars growing in the grass, and its stiff flower-beds. There is Mme. Sévigné's sundial, on which she inscribed with her own hand a Latin verse. There are the stiff rows of poplars, like Noah's Ark trees, symmetrical, interlacing one with the other, unnatural but dainty in design. There is her rose garden, a rounded and terraced walk planted with roses. There, too, are the sunny 'Place Madame,' the 'Place Coulanges,' and 'L'Écho,' where two people, standing on stones placed a certain distance apart, can hear the echo plainly. This garden, with its stiff little rows of trees, its sunny open squares surrounded by low walls, and its stone vases overgrown with flowers, brings back the past so vividly that one asks one's self whether indeed Mme. Sévigné is there no longer, and glances involuntarily down the avenues and the by-ways, half expecting to distinguish the rapid passage of a majestic skirt. What a splendid life this woman of the seventeenth century led! She knew well how to regulate mind and body. The routine of the day at Les Rochers was never varied, and was designed so perfectly that there was rarely a jar or a hitch. She rose at eight, and enjoyed the freshness of the woods until the hour for matins struck. After that there were the 'Good-mornings' to be said to everyone on her estate. She must pick flowers for the table, and read and work. When her son was no longer with her she read aloud to broaden the mind of his wife. At five o'clock her time became her own; and on fine days, a lacquey following, she wandered down the pleasant avenues, dreaming visions of the future, of God and of His providence, sometimes reading a book of devotions, sometimes a book of history. On days of storm, when the trees dripped and the slates fell from the roof,—on days so wet and gray and wild that you would not turn a dog out of doors—you would suppose the Marquise to become morbid and miserable. Not at all. She realized that she must kill time, and she did so by a hundred ingenious devices. She deplored the weather which kept her indoors, but fixed her thoughts on the morrow. Ladies and gentlemen often invaded her; all the nobility came to present their compliments. They assailed her from all sides. When she resisted them, and strove to shut herself away from the world, the Duke would come and carry her away in his carriage.

She always longed to return to her solitude—to her dear Rochers, where her good priest waited, at once her administrator, her man of affairs, her architect, and her friend. Her pride of property was great, and she was constantly beautifying and embellishing her country home. Each year saw some new change. On one occasion six years passed without her visiting Les Rochers. All her trees had become big and beautiful; some of them were forty or fifty feet high. Her joy when she beheld them gives one an insight into her youthfulness.

How young she was in some things! She often asked herself whence came this exuberance. She drew caricatures of the affectations of her neighbours, and the anxious inquiries of her friends as to her happiness during her voluntary exile amused her immensely. In a letter written to her daughter she said:

'I laugh sometimes at what they call "spending the winter in the woods." Mme. de C—— said to me the other day, "Leave your damp Rochers." I answered her, "Damp yourself—it is your country that is damp; but we are on a height." It is as though I said, Your damp Montmartre. These woods are at present penetrated by the sun whenever it shines. On the Place Madame when the sun is at its height, and at the end of the great avenue when the sun is setting, it is marvellous. When it rains there is a good room with my people here, who do not trouble me. I do what I want, and when there is no one here we are still better off, for we read with a pleasure which we prefer above everything.'

The prospect of spending a winter at Les Rochers did not frighten her in the least. She wrote to her daughter, saying, 'My purpose to spend the winter at Les Rochers frightens you. Alas! my daughter, it is the sweetest thing in the world.'

Mme. Sévigné was always thinking of her daughter, and of Provence, where she lived. Her heart went out to her daughter. Everything about Les Rochers helped her to remember her beloved child. Even the country itself seemed to bring back memories, for the nights of July were so perfumed with orange-blossoms that one might imagine one's self to be really in Provence. Mme. Sévigné wrote in a letter to one of her friends:

'I have established a home in the most beautiful place in the world, where no one keeps me company, because they would die of cold. The abbé goes backwards and forwards over his affairs. I am there thinking of Provence, for that thought never leaves me.'

The château in which this wonderful woman lived, whence started so many couriers to Provence, is an important building, gray, a little heavy with towers, with high turrets of slate and great windows. Resembling most houses built in the Louis XIV. style, it is rather sad in design. At the side is a chapel surmounted by a cross, a rotund hexagonal building constructed in 1671 by the Abbot of Coulanges. Inside it is gorgeous with old rose and gold. One can imagine the gentle Marquise kneeling here at her devotions.

Visitors are shown the bedroom of Mme. Sévigné, now transformed into a historical little sanctuary. The furniture consists of a large four-post bed, with a covering of gold and blue, embroidered, it is said, by the Countess of Grignan. Under a glass case have been treasured all the accessories of her toilet—an arsenal of feminine coquetry: brushes, powder-boxes, patch-boxes, autograph letters, account-books, her own ink-stand, books written in the clear, delicate, legible handwriting of the Marquise herself.

The walls are hung with pictures of the family and intimate friends, some of which are very remarkable. This room was called by Mme. Sévigné the 'green room.' It still has a dainty atmosphere. Here Mme. Sévigné passed a great part of her life. Under a large window is a marble table where she is supposed to have written those letters which one knows almost as well as the fables of Lafontaine. Mme. Sévigné coloured the somewhat cold though pure language of the seventeenth century, but not artificially. She animated it, conveyed warmth into it, by putting into her writings much that was feminine, never descending to the 'precious' or to be a blue-stocking. The books that she loved, and her correspondence, did not take up so much of her time that she had to overlook the details of her domain. Sometimes she had a little fracas with her cook; often she would be called away to listen to the complaints of Pilois, her gardener, a philosopher. She knew how to feel strongly among people who could feel only their own misfortunes and disgraces. She had a true and thoughtful soul. This one can tell by her letters from Les Rochers, which come to us in all their freshness, as if they had been written yesterday.

The Lines of Carnac are impressive. You visit them in the first place purely as a duty, as something which has to be seen; but you are amply repaid. On a flat plain of heather or gorse they lie, small and gray and ghost-like in the distance, but looming larger as you draw near. You come across several in a farmyard; but on scaling a small loosely-built stone wall you find yourself in the midst of them—lines of colossal stones planted point-downwards, some as high as twenty feet, and stretching away to the horizon, on a space of several miles, like a gigantic army of phantoms. Originally the Lines of Carnac were composed of six thousand stones; but to-day there remain only several hundreds. They have been destroyed bit by bit, and used by the peasants as fences along the fields and in the construction of houses.

We sat on a rock and gazed at these strange things, longing to know their origin. What enigmas they were, wrapped in mournful silence, solemn and still, sphinx-like! I endeavoured to become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. I examined the stones all over. I noticed that at the extremity of one line they were placed in a semicircle. This did not seem to lead me on the road to discovery. Of what avail is it to attempt to read the mystery of these silent Celtic giants? Historians and archæologists have sought in vain to find a solution to the problem. Some say that the stones planted in the fields are temples dedicated to the cult of the serpent; others maintain that this is a sort of cemetery, where the dead of Carnac and of Erderen were interred after a terrible battle. They are variously taken to be sacred monuments, symbols of divinity, funeral piles, trophies of victory, testimonies to the passing of a race, the remains of a Roman encampment. Innumerable are the surmises.

Afterwards I discovered that St. Cornely is in this country one of the most honoured saints. It is he that protects the beasts of the field. His pardon used to be much attended by peasants, who took with them their flocks of sheep and cows. St. Cornely had occasion to fly before a regiment of soldiers sent in pursuit by an idolatrous king. In the moment of his fear—for even saints experience fear—he went towards the sea, and soon saw that all retreat was cut off thereby. The oxen fell on their knees, their eyes full of dread. The situation was terrible. The saint appealed to Heaven, where lay his only hope, and, stretching his arm towards the soldiers, changed them suddenly into stone. Here, it is said, the soldiers of St. Cornely have remained ever since, fixed and rigid.

Brittany is essentially a romantic country. It is full of mysteries and legends and superstitions. Romance plays a great part in the life of the meanest peasant. Every stock and stone and wayside shrine in his beloved country is invested with poetical superstition and romance. A nurse that we children once had, nineteen years of age, possessed an enormous stock of legends, which she had been brought up to look upon as absolute truth. Some of the songs which she sang to the baby at bedtime in a low minor key were beautiful in composition—'Marie ta fille,' 'Le Biniou,' amongst others. The village schoolmaster, who was our tutor, during our long afternoon rambles would often make the woods ring as he sang ballads in his rich, full voice. The theme changed according to his humour. Now the song was a canticle, relating the legend of some saint, or a pious chronicle; at another time it was of love he sang, generally ending sadly. Then, there was the historical song, recounting some sombre, or touching, or stirring event, when the little man worked himself up to a high pitch of excitement, carrying us children open-mouthed to gory battlefields and the palaces of sumptuous Kings. One quite forgot the insignificant schoolmaster in the rush and swing of the music.

There are many Breton ballads. The lives of the people are reflected truthfully in these compositions, which have as their themes human weakness, or heartache, or happiness. The Breton bards are still a large class. In almost every village there is someone who composes and sings. Each one holds in his or her hand a small stick of white wood, carved with notches and strange signs, which help towards remembering the different verses. The Gauls called this stick, the use of which is very ancient, the alphabet of the bards.

Mendicity is protected in Brittany. One meets beggars at all the fairs, and often on the high-roads. They earn their living by songs and ballads. They attend family fêtes, and, above all, marriage ceremonies, composing songs in celebration. No Breton will refuse a bard the best of his hospitality. Bards are honoured guests. 'Dieu vous bénisse, gens de cette maison,' says one, announcing himself. He is installed in the ingle-nook, the cosiest corner of a Breton kitchen; and after having refreshed the inner man he rewards his host with song after song, often giving him the last ballad of his composition. When he takes his leave, a large bundle of food is slung over his shoulder. Unless you live for years in the same village, as I have done, sharing in the joys and sorrows of the people, you can gain very little knowledge of the tales and songs and legends. The Breton is reticent on the advent of the stranger: he fears ridicule.

Then, again, a child can always wriggle itself into the hearts and homes of people. Setting aside all racial prejudices and difficulties of language, a child will instal itself in a household, and become familiar with the little foibles of each inmate in a single day, whereas a grown-up person may strive in vain for years. I, as a child, had a Breton bonne, and used to spend most of my days at her home, a farm some distance from the village, playing on the cottage floor with her little brothers and sisters, helping to milk the cows, and poking the fat pigs. This, I think, Mother could scarcely have been aware of; for she had forbidden Marie to allow me to associate with dirty children, and these were certainly not too clean. One day I was playing at dolls with a village girl under the balcony of Mother's room. Suddenly, on looking up, I found her gazing at me reproachfully.

'O Mother,' I hastened to explain, pulling the child forward by the pinafore, 'she are clean.' We children were familiar with everyone in the village, even bosom friends with all, from stout Batiste, the butcher, to Lucia the little seamstress, and Leontine her sister, who lived by the bridge. If a child died we attended the funeral, all dressed in white, holding lighted tapers in our hands, and feeling important and impressive. If one was born, we graciously condescended to be present at the baptismal service and receive the boxes of dragées always presented to guests on such occasions. At all village processions we figured prominently.

When I returned to Brittany, at the age of ten, I found things very little changed. My friends were a trifle older; but they remembered me and welcomed me, receiving me into their midst as before. My sister and I took part in all the pardons of the surrounding villages. We learnt the quaint Breton dances, and would pace up and down the dusty roads in the full glare of the summer sun hour after hour, dressed in the beautiful costume of the country—black broadcloth skirts, white winged caps, and sabots. Often we would go with our bonne and our respective partners into some neighbouring débits de boissons and drink syrops in true Breton fashion. At one pardon we won the ruban d'honneur—a broad bright-blue ribbon with silver tassels worn across the shoulder, and presented to the best dancer.

The Breton gavotte is a strange dance of religious origin. The dancers hold hands in a long line, advancing and retiring rhythmically to long-drawn-out music. Underneath an awning sit the two professional biniou-players, blowing with all their might into their instruments and beating time with their feet to the measure. The sonneur de biniou is blind, and quite wrapped up in his art; he lives, as it were, in a world apart. The joueur de biniou, the principal figure, reminding one of a Highland piper, presses his elbow on the large leather air-bag, playing the air, with its many variations, clear and sweet, on the reed pipe.

Brittany is the land of pardons. During the summer these local festivities are taking place daily in one village or another. The pardon is a thing apart; it resembles neither the Flemish kermesse nor the Parisian foire. Unlike the foires of Paris, created for the gay world, for the men and women who delight in turning night into day, the pardon has inspiration from high sources: it is the fête of the soul. The people gather together from far and near, not only to amuse themselves, but also to pray. They pass long hours before the images of the saints; they make the tour of the 'Chemin de la Croix,' kneeling on the granite floor.

Still, it is a joyous festival. The air is filled with shouts and laughter. For example, in Quimper, at the Feast of the Assumption, the Place St. Corentin is crowded. People have come from the surrounding towns, all dressed in the characteristic costume of their vicinities. Pont-Aven, Pont L'Abbé, Concarmeau, Fouesnant, Quimperlé—all are represented. You see the tight lace wide-winged cap of the Douarnénez women, hats bound with coloured chenile of the men of Carhaix, white flannel coats bordered with black velvet of the peasants of Guéméné, the flowered waistcoats of Pleavé; the women of Quimper have pyramidical coifs of transparent lace, showing the pink or blue ribbon beneath, with two long floating ends.

The great square in front of the cathedral is a jumble of gold and silver, embroidery, ribbons, muslin, and lace—a joyous feast of colour in the sun. The crowd moves slowly, forming into groups by the porch and round the stalls, with much gossip. The square and the neighbouring streets are bordered by stalls trading in fabrics and faiences, gingerbread, sweets, lotteries, cider, and fancy-work of all kinds. Young men and girls stop in couples to buy mirrors or coloured pins, surmounted with gold, that jingle, to fasten in their caps or in their bodices. Others gather round the lotteries, and watch with anxious eyes the wheel with the rod of metal that clicks all the way round on its spokes, and stops at a certain number. 'C'est vingt-deux qui gagne!' cries the proprietor. A pretty little peasant woman has won. She hesitates, wavering between a ball of golden glass and a vase painted with attractive flowers. The peasants laugh loudly.

There are all kinds of attractions and festivities at the pardons—hurdy-gurdies, swing-boats, voyages to the moon, on which you get your full and terrible money's worth of bumps and alarms; for not only are you jerked up hill and down dale in a car, but also, when you reach the moon, you are whirled round and round at a tremendous rate and return backwards. There are side-shows in which are exhibited fat women, headless men, and bodiless girls, distorted thus by mirrors, the deception of which even we children saw through plainly. There are jugglers and snake-charmers. A cobra was fed on rabbits. We children haunted that tent at feeding-times, and used to watch with fascination the little dead bunnies disappearing, fur and all, afterwards noticing with glee the strange bumps they formed in the animal's smooth and shiny coils. How bloodthirsty children are at heart!

It is not always in large towns like Quimperlé that pardons are held. More often they are to be witnessed in the country, perhaps miles away from any town, whence the people flock on foot. There you see no grand cathedral, no magnificent basilicas and superb architecture, but some simple little gray church with moss-grown walls and trees growing thickly about it. The rustic charm of the pardons it is impossible to describe. Round you are immense woods and flowered prairies; in the woods the birds are singing; a mystic vapour of incense fills the air. Peasants gather round this modest house of prayer, which possesses nothing to attract the casual passer-by. The saints that they have come to venerate have no speciality: they heal all troubles, assuage all griefs: they are infallible and all-powerful. Inside the church it is very dim and dark. Not a single candle is alight on the altar; only the lamp of the sanctuary shines out with red gleam like an ever-seeing eye. In the gray darkness of the choir the silent priests cross themselves. They look like ghosts of the faithful. The bells ring out in noisy peals, filling the air with vibrations. Over the fields the people hurry—girls in their smartest clothes, accompanied by their gallants; children brought by their mothers in their beautiful new suits to attend service and to have their faces bathed in the fountain, which cures them of all diseases, and makes them beautiful for ever; old men come to contemplate the joy of the young people, to be peaceful, and to ask forgiveness before leaving this world and the short life over which their own particular saint has watched. The bells peal so loudly that one is afraid they will crack under the efforts of the ringers. Still the people swarm over the fields and into the church, until at last the little edifice is full, and men and women and children are compelled to kneel outside on the hard earth; but the doors are opened, and those outside follow the service with great attention.

The Saturday before the first Sunday in July is a fête-day in most towns. Pilgrims fill the towns, which are packed with stalls for the fair. There are sellers of cider and cakes, amulets, and rosaries. A statue of the Madonna surrounded by archangels against a background of blue is situated at the church door to receive the homage of faithful pilgrims. When night falls the door of the porch is flung open, and a long procession of girls, like an army of phantoms, advances, each penitent holding in her hand a lighted torch, slowly swinging her rosary and repeating a Latin prayer. The statue of the Virgin is solemnly carried out on the open square, where bonfires are lit and young folk dance to the accompaniment of the biniou.

In some places the dances are prolonged for three or four days. The Bretons like songs and dances and representations; they like the heavy pomp of pilgrimages; they believe in prayer, and never lose their respect for the Cross. They are a fine people, especially the men who live by the sea, sailors and fishermen—well-made, high-strung men, their faces bronzed and stained like sculptures out of old chestnut, with eyes of clear blue, full of the sadness of the sea. They have an air of robustness and vitality; but under their fierce exterior they hide a great sweetness of nature. They are kind hosts; they are frank, brave, and chaste. They have, it is true, a weakness: on fair days—market-days especially—they abuse the terrible and brutalizing vin du feu. Then, the Bretons are not a very clean people. The interiors of the cottages are dignified, with great beds made of dark chestnut and long, narrow tables, stretching the whole length of the rooms, polished and beeswaxed until you can see your face mirrored on the surface; but pigs will repose on the stone floor, which waves up and down with indentations and deep holes. The more well-to-do Bretons have their clothes washed only once in six months. The soiled linen is kept above in an attic protected from the rats by a rope with broken bottles strung on it, on which the rats, as they come to gnaw the clothes, commit involuntary suicide.

The poorer families have better habits. They wash their few possessions regularly and out of doors in large pools constructed for the purpose, where hundreds of women congregate, kneeling on the flagstones around the pond, beating their linen energetically on boards, with a flat wooden tool, to economize soap. This I consider a far cleaner method than that of our British cottagers, who wash their clothes in their one living-room, inhaling impure steam.

In spite of the winds and the tempests which desolate it, the Bretons love their country. They live in liberty; they are their own masters. The past holds profound and tenacious root in the hearts of these men of granite, and the attachment to old beliefs is strong. The people still believe in miracles, in sorcery, and in the evil eye. The land, rich with memories of many kinds,—with its menhirs, its old cathedrals, its pilgrimages, its pardons—sleeps peacefully in this century of innovations. In Brittany everything seems to have been designed long ago. Wherever one goes one comes across a strange and ancient Druidical monument, menhirs, and dolmens of fabulous antiquity, an exquisite legend, a ruined château, ancient stone crosses, calvaires, and carvings. It is a country full of signs and meanings. The poetical superstitions and legends have been left intact in their primitive simplicity. Nowhere do you see finer peasantry; nowhere more dignity and nobility in the features of the men and women who work in the fields; nowhere such quaint houses and costumes; hardly anywhere more magnificent scenery. You have verdant islands, ancient forests, villages nestling in the mountains, country as wild and beautiful as the moors of Scotland, fields and pasture-lands as highly cultivated as those of Lincolnshire.

Brittany is especially inspiring to the painter. You find villages in which the people still wear the national dress. Perhaps, however, the time is not far distant when new customs will arise and the old beliefs will be only a remembrance. Little by little the influence of modern times begins to show itself upon the language, the costume, and the poetic superstitions. The iron and undecorative hand of the twentieth century is closing down upon the country.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD