ore tolerably certain that where, according to
phrenologists, the organ of Hope is situated, there the Breton head will
be found undeveloped.

Now without hope no one can be constitutionally happy, and the Bretons
would be amongst the unhappiest on earth, just as they are amongst the
most slow-moving, if it were not for a counterbalancing quality which
they own in large excess. This virtue is veneration; and it is this
which saves them.

They are the most earnest and devoted, almost superstitiously religious
of people. They observe their Sabbaths, their fasts and feasts with a
severity and punctuality beyond all praise. With few exceptions, their
churches are very inferior to those of Normandy, but each returning
Sunday finds the Breton churches full of an earnest crowd, evidently
assembled for the purpose of worshipping with their whole heart and
soul. The rapt expression of many of the faces makes them for the moment
simply beautiful, and if an artist could only transfer their fervency to
canvas, he would produce a picture worthy of the masters of the Middle
Ages, and read a lesson to the world far greater than that of an
_Angelus_ or a _Magdalene_.

It is a sight worth going very far to see, these earnest worshippers,
with whom the head is never turned and the eye never wanders. The
further you pass into the interior of Brittany--into the remote
districts of the Morbihan, for instance--where the outer world, with its
advancement and civilization, scarcely seems to have penetrated, there
fervency and devotion are still full of the element of superstition;
there you will find that faith becomes almost synonymous with a strict
observance of prayers, penances and the commands of the Church. When the
Angelus rings out in the evening, you will see the labourer, wending his
way homeward, suddenly arrest his steps in the ploughed field, and with
bent head, pass in silent prayer the dying moments of _crepuscule_.

There will scarcely be an exception to the rule, either in men or women.
The reverence has grown with their growth, having first been born with
them of inheritance: the heritage and the growth of centuries. All over
the country you will find Calvaries erected: huge stone crosses and
images of the Crucifixion, many of them crumbling and beautiful with the
lapse of ages, the stone steps at their base worn with the devotion of
pilgrims: crosses that stand out so solemnly and picturesquely in the
gloaming against th