to be heard by the whole crowd, for there were many bathers, and the edge of the water was alive.

"Nu-m-ber two!" she cried, pronouncing the numeral short and sharp. "Not there! You must look sharp, or lose your turn. Number three! likewise out of the way. Num-ber four!"

An elegant lady, with a servant following her, and a long train of muslin, too, responded to the summons, and squeezed herself into the machine, which she must have filled when she got in.

"Num-ber five!"

"Here you are,” says I, and entered the next tent to my grand lady's.

When I stepped out, in a short suit of mauve check, I saw Madame also emerge, seriously thinned. I never felt more odd and incongruous in my life. There were knots of well-dressed, fashionable people, through whom I had to pass before I reached the water. was like escaping from a fire at night-only it was broad day-but the oddest thing was that nobody noticed me.

It

The scene in the water was most absurd. Whole families were bathing together in a circle, hand in hand. Where I went in, Mr.

and Mrs. Briggs, just their figures, and all the little Briggses, were crowing and splashing in a shallow. Now and then, you could see friends meet, and acquaintances bow; a young lady who thus met some partner at the last ball, making a fashionable sweep in the water. Sometimes a party of young men would come down together, full run, and dash in like mermen who had been confined in the town, tumbling head over heels, and otherwise throwing themselves into the arms of the sea.

It

The tide advanced so much while I was in the water that the machines were all drawn off the beach on to the paved road beneath the walls of the town before I came out. was a spring-tide, which rises very high here. The result, however, was most grotesque when the dripping bathers emerged, and in several cases could not find their machines again for some time, wandering about in the crowd, sticky and cross. Mine was high and dry on the pavement. It was something like bathing in the Thames, and coming out to dress inside a cab in the Strand. However, I was more fortunate than several, for my wife had followed the machine, and showed me where it was.

Supplementary Foot-baths.

377

The inconvenience of grit, from walking across the sand, is, as I said, removed by a little tub of water-hot or cold-for which

last you pay a sou, or halfpenny, extra. I do not know, however, what Robinson Crusoe would have said to the beach, when he was so much astonished at the print of one naked foot. The place was dimpled with toe-holes.

When I had recovered from the novelty of the thing from seeing ladies of all builds, from Mrs. Gamp to Ophelia, paddling down in scanty Bloomers, without shoes or stockings—when I felt that these gentlemen in check shorts were neither acrobats nor clowns, but sober, steady men of business who bathed on principle (for the liveliest and more sportsmanlike of swimmers went to some distance where they could enjoy themselves without encumbrance), I decided in favour of the French fashion over the English. There is nothing indecorous or inconvenient in it. The system is well arranged. The ladies' dresses must be much more comfortable than the shifts of freize which they wear in our watering-places, and they are more completely dresses.

Much care is used to prevent accidents; there is generally a boat some short distance

378

Dressing in Machines.

off where the water begins to deepen. Everybody is served in turn, and the greatest pains are taken by the attendants to make the bathers comfortable. By dressing in machines which are drawn up, the disagreeable access to them by plank is avoided, and the toilette is never spoilt by a wave bursting the door open and floating out your shoes. This dressing on shore, too, enables servants to come and assist their mistresses more easily.

The machines are comfortable and roomy; there is a hanging-place for your watch, a pincushion, and looking-glass, beside abundance of pegs; moreover, being of canvas, you do not knock the skin off your knuckles when flourishing about with the towel.

You may depend upon it that much, as I confess, Mr. and Mrs. Mayor astonished me when I first went down to the beach at St. Malo-the French method of sea-bathing, as practised in public, is far preferable to that which is common in England.

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