e big nose of St. Carlo Borromeo. One-half of England is gone to
China, the other half to Africa; these will speak to you of Kamschatka,
those of the mountains of the Moon, just as a London cockney or a
Parisian _badaud_ would speak to you of Greenwich or of Bagnolet. Some
have boxed with the bears of the Pyrenees; others have killed lions and
tigers by dozens; one has crossed the Nile on a crocodile, another vows
he waltzed with a dying hippopotamus, and several have bagged
camelopards and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a
bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous
planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and
devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age,
as well as the yellow guineas from their long and well-filled purses.

Well, then, ask of all this wandering tribe, who boast of having been
everywhere, and seen everything; ask those travelling birds who have
flown through France and Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Palestine;
who have sledged in Russia and fished in Norway; who have lost
themselves in the prairies of the far West, or in the Pampas, the
gorges of the Andes, or the Alleghanies; who have bronzed their
epidermis in the fierce heat of the tropics, or moistened their fair
_chevelure_ in the diamond spray of Niagara; who have, in fine,
journeyed through calm and hurricane, snow-storms, sirocco, and simoom;
who have rubbed noses--male noses--of the tattooed savage; mounted
donkeys, ostriches, camelopards, lamas, and dromedaries; mules, wild
asses, negroes, and elephants; ask them all if once in their lives--one
single once--they have seen or even heard of LE MORVAN?

Not one of these thousands will answer yes. Le Morvan, where is it? what
is Le Morvan? Is it a mountain, a church, a river, a star, a flower, a
bird? Le Morvan, who knows anything about Le Morvan? Echo answers, "Who
knows?" Paddy Blake's replies, "Nobody." And yet all of you roving
English, who delight in athletic sports and rural scenes--the forest
glade and murmuring streams, a view halloo and the gallant hound; who
love the bleak and healthy moors, the cool retreats, the flowery paths,
and mountain solitudes, how happy would you be in Le Morvan. Where,
then, is Le Morvan?

Le Morvan is a district of France, in which are included portions of the
departments of the Nievre and the Yonne, having on the west the
vineyards of Burgundy, and on the e