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BRETONS AND BRITONS.

LIKE in origin, for they share the blood of the earliest recorded inhabitants of our land; alike in ancient tongue, for the "Vraie Bretagne Brettonnante," as Froissart calls it, is allied to our Welsh and Cornish; alike in name to the present day, these distant cousins live upon the same sea, but almost in another world. Perhaps no Europeans are more unlike each other than they. They differ more widely than plain French and English, for the Breton exhibits in caricature those habits and customs which mark the contrast most strongly between our neighbours and ourselves. He is far more bigoted, dirty, and ignorant than the average of his countrymen.

During a recent visit to Brittany I noted down on a sheet of paper some of those peculiarities which always strike John Bull most; and now, on looking over my list, I find it so long that I am tempted to serve it up in such a shape as may give information to

some, and perhaps recall a few pleasant whiffs of continental recollections to those who are acquainted with France. Of course, in using the materials which are before me, some will be found indeed, I see already that they are -common to the whole country. Perhaps not many are really peculiar to Brittany, but they struck me being exaggerated in that province. For instance, I think that the Breton breakfast-cups are heavier and have thicker lips than those anywhere else—a sip from one is a mouthful; their dinner-plates are colder and congeal the gravy quicker than others; their carriages are dustier and more tinkered; their mixture of meats is more surprising to an English stomach than any in Gaul. The other day we had for breakfast, at a good inn, these principal viands-tripe, raw artichokes, and cider. Not that there were no other dishes the meal was abundant and good; but these were more distinctly and unhesitatingly consumed, along with slices from huge coarse country loaves-no petit pain, or crisp white rolls, so sweet and common in Paris. Yet we were in a good hotel, at a town which contains several thousand inhabitants, and is much visited in the summer. It is a striking place, with rain-worn granite walls and towers

which redden in the sunset over rows of green young trees; dark little gateways which look quite impassable to the lumbering diligence, with its three straggling white horses abreast, and luggage like a load of hay; quaint old houses which have been peeping round corners and nodding their heads at one another across the street any time these last three hundred years; houses with projecting first-floors standing on stone pillars; streets, narrow, tortuous, interlacing, paved up to the walls with cruel stones, and each with a trickling black drain in the middle, where the ducks rummage; shops which nobody seems to enter, with small windows of bad glass-blue cotton, wood, and tobacco being the commonest merchandise; old women (and you can have no idea of the unpleasantness which may be associated with one till you visit France), little creeping mummies, who beg with voices of unalterable misery; dark, shaven priests in shovel-hats, cassocks, and black bands, who glide about with thumbed, gilt-edged books under their arms; gorgeous gendarmes, with quantities of white rigging about their coats, who saunter down the middle of the street, in perpetual contrast with the squalor around them; little bevies of nuns, with their hands folded, baskets

on their arms, and a low gust of small talk as they patter by; bullet-headed children, with tight nightcaps tied under their chins; men in straw hats and blue blouses lounging at the café doors; and some small-faced soldiers in red trousers, sitting on a low wall under the shade.

Not that we saw many soldiers in Brittany. But there was, what struck me often, a great scarcity of youths; the male population consisted of old or middle-aged men and boys. Some lads of eighteen or nineteen years of age, whom I noticed as exceptions, were lame, badly cross-eyed, or crippled in some way. The youth of the place was with the army. This gap in the ages of the populace became more evident as I observed and reflected. There is hardly an able-bodied man in France who is not, at one time or another, connected with the camp.

I have said that almost every street has its central drain. This made the ordinary stenches numerous and powerful. But one day, when I walked down to the river-bank, and happened to pass the spot where their united contributions flowed into the stream, I met with an odour which, for pungent liveliness and original piquancy of flavour, excelled any I have ever

smelt, and yet there was a woman with a beautifully clean white cap on, sitting alive and ruddy on a doorstep in the very thick of the stench.

By the way, these Breton caps are considered curious. The women generally wear sabots (or wooden shoes) not over-clean, but their head-dresses are scrupulously spotless. As to shape, they are so varied that they really seem to have no idea in common. Perhaps, though, I can convey a better notion of these finials by comparing them to dinner napkins, starched, and folded on the head according to the wearer's fancy, but always with great flaps or wings; these last being sometimes turned up or back, sometimes cast loose and left to float on either side, like the banks of oars depicted in ancient galleys.

Strange

There are no street lamps in as it may seem, the town is not lit with gas or oil. There is no pretence made of lighting it. If you want to see your way you must take a lantern or wait for the moon-nay, better still, for the sun. Other towns in these parts have, it is true, some lamps hung with cord in the middle of the streets at rare intervals, but is left at night as dark as an old coalmine, or London in the time of the Saxons.