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But this surprise over, I was subsequently enabled to meet Dr. Pritchard without any renewal of strong emotion. My esteem for his worth, my heartfelt gratitude for the services he had rendered me in saving the life of my child, were most sincere; and the kindly recollection of old times no less so. But the dream of my youth had long past; death, calamity, and long suffering, had awakened me to the reality of things; and I was no longer the slave of any too ardent affection. Time does not change our nature, nor our predominant dispositions, but it assuredly subdues them. At eighteen and at thirty we are not more changed in our outward than we are in our inward self. I could recollect the time when I could not have met Doctor Pritchard, when I could scarcely hear him named, without a thrill through my whole frame, and a feeling so painful that it was frequently overpowering. In those days I had often withdrawn from society, even from the company of my dear mother, to conceal my emotions from the scrutiny of her indulgent eye. But I could now see the same person with those gentle regards, with that sense of grateful feeling, which carries with it every thing to please and nothing to give pain; for it is not too strong for expression, nor too agitating for our peace: the judgment approves, whilst the heart receives and cherishes the kindest emotions.

Such was the character of my feelings, when Doctor Pritchard, to whom I had fully related all the melancholy events of my life, once more offered to me his hand, with the assurance that though, whilst I was the wife of another, he had endeavoured to banish all recollections of old times from his heart, yet he had never thought of giving to any other that place which I had once occupied in his affections. I was now free, and sincerely attached to him-his circumstances were thriving; and, if he had not enough for wealth, he had sufficient for respectability, and that for us all. He begged me to leave my painful and anxious way of life, and accept in him a husband for myself, and a father for my children. Soon after I I was united to this excellent person, who enabled me to bring up my children in an honourable station of society; nor did I fail in thankfulness to my heavenly Father, who had given me so much cause for tracing his guiding hand throughout all the vicissitudes to which I had been exposed in the course of my pilgrimage (that is now drawing towards a close), to find at the last so large a portion of happiness and peace.

THE ADOPTED.

And if thou tell'st the heavy story right,
Upon my soul! the hearers will shed tears;
Yea, even my foes will shed fast falling tears,
And say-Alas! it was a piteous tale.

SHAKSPERE.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

In the year 1818, I visited Britanny, after having made the tour of La Vendée and many other parts of France. Bretagne, or Britanny, at that period, was so little known, in its more remote districts, that it might be considered as new ground to the tourist, whether the object of his journey were of a particular or of a general nature.

On my return to England, I was persuaded by my friends to publish the descriptive letters which I had addressed to a beloved parent on this, the first separation from my family, for any length of time, that had ever occurred. I was also advised to accompany the work with illustrations from the sketches made by my husband and myself during our journey. The letters were published in 1820.* They were well received; a circumstance that encouraged me to pursue my labours as an author.

Though in these letters I had spoken much of Britanny, nevertheless I had not said all that I might and could have said on the subject. This arose, in part, from a dislike to add much to real letters, that had been written under the impressions of the moment, and also from a feeling of timidity; for being then young in authorship and in years, and never having appeared before the public, I felt doubtful; and have since found, by my own experience, that many little personal anecdotes, original traits of character, and events, that I omitted from the motives above named, would I think have added much to the interest of my work.

Of all the parts of France which we visited, none afforded so much curious matter for observation and research as Britanny-a province that had been neglected by the artist, the antiquary, the modern historian, and the lover of romance. I

* By Messrs, Longman.

repeat it, Britanny was indeed new ground.* But no wonder it had been thus neglected, as except on the direct line to the few chief towns, the roads were in such a state, the villages so poor, the inns (where an inn could be found) so truly wretched, and the people so inconceivably dirty in themselves and in their habits, and so many hindrances and annoyances were altogether presented to the traveller, that none but such as might be thither bound on matters of necessity ventured within the confines of the ancient Armorica. Yet Britanny may truly be called the land of Froissart. So many of the stirring and chivalrous actions he records in his delightful Chronicles there took place, that there is scarcely a town or a village but carries with it an historical interest of the most pleasing kind; and the ancient and magnificent vestiges of the Middle Ages, in its cathedrals, churches, abbeys, monasteries, castles, and walled towns (many in ruins, or falling fast into ruin from the havoc of the French revolution), are beautiful beyond all attempts to do justice to them by description. Yet whatever the reader may find of a local or descriptive character in the following pages; whatever vestiges of ancient customs, or any other peculiarities of the people, it is right he should know such are derived either from my own observations made on the spot, or from such information as I was enabled to obtain from the most respectable authorities, during a journey of constant inquiry and diligent investigation in the province itself.

In the course of this inquiry I gained some very interesting particulars relating to the state of Britanny at the period of the French revolution: circumstances so little known, that I doubt if many of them have ever found a record; yet, should the reader now visit Britanny, he would find some of the local customs, etc. mentioned in the following pages, entirely swept away-not a vestige of them left. They fell, even as did most of the ancient convents and churches, before the exterminating fury of the French revolution; for no part in all France suffered more during that memorable epoch than this miserable and devoted country.

The Bretons, however, as a people, are now, and were even more so before the reign of anarchy, in their general character, quite a distinct race from the French. A Breton and a Pari

So much so, I may here be allowed to state, that, when my tour was published, I was honoured by a letter from Sir Richard Colt Hoare, respecting my visit to Carnac, of which he was desirous to learn all particulars. The reviewer in the Quarterly also considered that I was the first English traveller who had described that extensive druidical remain. Since then the Rev. Mr. Deane has done so; and has produced a most learned and interesting work on that curious monument of Celtic antiquity.

sian were no more like each other than a Welshman is like a Londoner, except in the common resemblances of human beings with the usual and general characteristics of civilised creatures. I have said thus much, for the information or satisfaction of those critical readers who have never seen, and really know nothing about, a Breton; and who, if they do not find in the following sketches anything according with their own standard ideas of a Mounseer, might be apt to think the picture unfaithful.

When the ancient Britons retreated before their Roman invaders, a portion of them took shelter in Cornwall, another in Wales, and a third passed over seas, and settled in that part of Gaul called Armorica, now Britanny. No descendants of the ancient Celts have less intermingled with other nations. Their language, or patois, bears so strong an affinity to the Welsh, that I well recollect hearing a good curé of Bretagne say, that once, when a light vessel from the coast of Wales had been driven by stress of weather to seek shelter at St. Malo, the Welshmen on board, and the native Bretons, conversed with each other with perfect ease. In their personal appearance, their manners, and character, they resemble the people of no other province in France. Though the ancient customs, habits, and superstitions of the Bretons have certainly, of late years, undergone a considerable change, and have fallen much into desuetude since the revolution, yet before that epoch, and at the time of which I write, they retained, I was assured, several that bore a strong similarity to the customs of the Welsh; and of some of these I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. The peasantry, in general, rarely spoke any other language than their native tongue; but the townspeople, the settled tradesmen, the wandering hawkers, and many of the domestic servants, spoke the French equally well; though the latter with a guttural accent that was peculiarly their own, and of which no idea could be conveyed by description.

This people, in their peculiarities so little known to the English, had a simplicity of manners, and a primitiveness of character, that rendered them not unworthy the attention of the curious and inquiring traveller; but no such traveller came into Britanny for any such purpose for many centuries; and till the revolution broke out, and though tardily, yet surely, brought misery and death into their quiet land, their obscurity and their peace remained undisturbed for successive generations. I will here try to sketch them in their general characteristics as a people, leaving it, of course, to be understood, that among them, as among all other nations, individuals, more or less, are to be found who form exceptions to the common distinctions of their countrymen.

The Bretons are usually short in stature, but strongly built; they have an awkward gait, and move slowly. Their complexions are generally wan, and always sunburnt; they live hard, and are abominably dirty. The latter circumstances may account for their wanting that florid freshness which distinguishes the complexions of so many among the natives of Normandy. Some of the men have a wild look, which is greatly increased by their wearing their hair long and loose; and when they come forth clad with a coat (though not common, yet worn by several in the least civilised districts, particularly in Bas-Bretagne), formed of goat's skin, with the shaggy side worn outward, they look as wild, and almost as savage, as did Robinson Crusoe, when dressed in the spoils of those animals which were almost his only subjects in the island where he held his solitary rule for nearly twenty-seven years. Many Bretons, like the Welsh, go barefoot; but the greater number wear the sabots, or wooden shoes, into which they thrust straw to prevent them galling their feet; and with these shoes they tramp over the pavement of their towns with a clatter so peculiar, by the way in which they shuffle along their feet, that the approach of a Breton may often be heard before he is seen turning the corner of a street somewhat distant from you.

Their common dress is generally of a coarse mulberrycoloured woollen cloth, often lined with scarlet: the lower part, or skirts of the coat, however, from a strange whimsicality of taste, is usually formed of a cloth of a more faded colour than the deep mulberry which constitutes the upper half. They are so fond of scarlet that their waistcoats are almost always lined with it. A broad belt is bound round the waist: these belts I have frequently seen plaided like a Scotch cloak. They wear a broad-flapped hat, generally made of very coarse plaited straw, and edged with red or blue braiding the low crown has a couple of bands of some gay coloured ribbon as the finishing adornment. On the hand of the poorest of the peasantry you will generally see a silver ring. To these rings they seem to annex a more than ordinary value, and the gift of one of them, drawn from the finger of the wearer, is the highest mark of faith and affection a Breton can bestow upon a friend.

The dress of the women, more especially of Bas-Bretagne, is very gay indeed when new and clean. A full petticoat of coarse white flannel, edged with scarlet round the bottom; a tight scarlet or mulberry-coloured jacket with long sleeves, sometimes set off with tinsel, or more commonly with black

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