as made it possible for me to have it open all night. To the present day I cannot sleep to my liking in a closed chamber; and before now, on the top of the Righi, have had my bed clothes blown off my bed, and snow deposited where they should have been.

But quo musa tendis? I was talking about my travels in Brittany.

I do not think my book was a bad coup d'essai. I remember old John Murray coming out to me into the front office in Albemarle Street, where I was on some business of my mother's, with a broad good-natured smile on his face, and putting into my hands the Times of that morning, with a favourable notice of the book, saying as he did so, "There, so you have waked this morning to find yourself famous!" And, what was more to the purpose, my publisher was content with the result, as was evidenced by his offering me similar terms for another book of the same description—of which, more anon.

As my volumes on Brittany, published in 1840, are little likely to come under the eye of any reader at the present day, and as the passage I am about to quote indicates accurately enough the main point of difference between what the traveller at that day saw and what the traveller of the present day may see, I think I may be pardoned for giving it.

"We had observed that at Broons a style of coiffure which was new to us prevailed; and my companion wished to add a sketch of it to his fast-increasing collection of Breton costumes. With this view, he had begun making love to the maid a little, to induce her to do so much violence to her maiden modesty, as to sit to him for a few minutes, when a far better opportunity of achieving his object presented itself.

"The landlady's daughter, a very pretty little girl about fourteen years old, was going to be confirmed, and had just come down stairs to her mother, who was sitting knitting in the salle à manger, for inspection and approval before she started. Of course, upon such an occasion, the art of the blanchisseuse was taxed to the utmost. Lace was not spared; and the most recherché coiffure was adopted, that the rigorous immutability of village modes would permit.

"It would seem that the fickleness of fashion exercises in constant local variations that mutability which is utterly denied to it in Brittany with regard to time. Every district, almost every commune has its own peculiar 'mode' (for both sexes) which changes not from generation to generation. As the mothers dress, so do their daughters, so did their grandmothers, and so will their grand-daughters." [But I reckoned when writing thus without the railroad and its consequences.] "If a woman of one parish marries, or takes service, or for any other cause resides in another, she still retains the mode of her native village; and thus carries about her a mark, which is to those, among whom she is a sojourner, a well-recognised indication of the place whence she comes, and to herself a cherished souvenir of the home which she never ceases to consider her own country.

"But though the form of the dress is invariable, and every inhabitant of the commune, from the wealthy farmer's wife to the poorest cottager who earns her black bread by labour in the fields, would as soon think of adopting male attire as of innovating on the immemorial mode du pays, yet the quality of the materials allows scope for wealth and female coquetry to show themselves. Thus the invariable mode de Broons, with its trifling difference in form, which in the eye of the inhabitants made it as different as light from darkness from the mode de St. Jouan,' was equally observable in the coarse linen coiffe of the maid, and the richly-laced and beautifully 'got up' head-dress of the daughter of the house.

"A very slight observation of human nature under a few only of its various phases may suffice to show that the instinct which prompts a woman to adorn her person to the best possible advantage is not the hot-house growth of cities, but a genuine wild flower of nature. No high-born beauty ever more repeatedly or anxiously consulted her wax-lit psyché on every faultless point of hair, face, neck, feet, and figure, before descending to the carriage for her first ball, than did our young Bretonne again and again recur to the mirror, which occupied the pier between the two windows of the salle à manger, before sallying forth on the great occasion of her confirmation.

"The dear object of girlish ambition was the same to both; but the simplicity of the little paysanne showed itself in the utter absence of any wish to conceal her anxiety upon the subject. Though delighted with our compliments on her appearance, our presence by no means prevented her from springing upon a chair every other minute to obtain fuller view of the tout ensemble of her figure. Again and again the modest kerchief was arranged and rearranged to show a hair's breadth more or a hair's breadth less of her brown but round and taper throat. Repeatedly, before it could be finally adjusted to her satisfaction, was the delicate fabric of her coiffure moved with cautious care and dainty touch a leetle backwarder or a leetle forwarder over her sun-browned brow.

"Many were the pokings and pinchings of frock and apron, the smoothings down before and twitchings down behind of the not less anxious mother. Often did she retreat to examine more correctly the general effect of the coup d'oeil, and as often return to rectify some injudicious pin or remodel some rebellious fold. When all was at length completed, and the well-pleased parent had received from the servants, called in for the express purpose, the expected tribute of admiration, the little beauty took L'Imitation de la Vierge in her hand, and tripped across to a convent of Soeurs Grises on the other side of the way to receive their last instructions and admonitions respecting her behaviour when she should be presented to the bishop, while her mother screamed after her not to forget to pull up her frock when she kneeled down.

"All the time employed in this little revision of the toilet had not been left unimproved by my companion, who at the end of it produced and showed to the proud mother an admirable full-length sketch of her pretty darling. The delighted astonishment of the poor woman, and her accent, as she exclaimed, 'O, si c'était pour moi!' and then blushed to the temples at what she had said, were irresistible, and the good-natured artist was fain to make her a present of the drawing."

My Breton book ("though I says it as shouldn't") is not a bad one, especially as regards the upper or northern part of the province. That which concerns Lower Brittany is very imperfect, mainly, I take it, because I had already nearly filled my destined two volumes when I reached it. I find there, however, the following notice of the sardine fishery, which has some interest at the present day. Perhaps the majority of the thousands of English people who nowadays have "sardines" on their breakfast-table every morning are not aware that the contents of a very large number of the little tin boxes which are supposed to contain the delicacy are not sardines at all. They are very excellent little fishes, but not sardines; for the enormously increased demand for them has outstripped the supply. In the days when the following sentences were written sardines might certainly be had in London (as what might not?) at such shops as Fortnum and Mason's, but they were costly, and by no means commonly met with.

On reaching Douarnenez in the summer of 1839 I wrote:—"The whole population and the existence of Douarnenez depend on the sardine fishery. This delicious little fish, which the gourmands of Paris so much delight in, when preserved in oil, and sent to their