station. It possesses
also a footway for pedestrians, from which point the whole town lies
mapped at your feet, and you may trace the faraway windings of the
river. The viaduct is nearly two hundred feet high, and nearly four
hundred yards long, and from its position it looks even more gigantic
than it is. It divides the town into two portions, as it were, the outer
portion consisting of the port and harbour: and from this footway far
down you may see the picturesque shipping at repose: a very modest
amount to-day moored to the river side, consisting of a few barges, a
vessel or two laden with coal or wood, and a steamer in which you might
take passage for Havre, or perhaps some nearer port on the Brittany
Coast.

It is a charming picture, especially if the skies overhead are blue and
the sun is shining. Then the town is lying in alternate light and shade;
the pavements are chequered with gabled outlines, long drawn out or
foreshortened according to their position. The canal bordering the old
market-place is lined with a long row of women, alternately beating
linen upon boards and rinsing it in the water. We know that they are
laughing and chattering, though we cannot hear them; for a group of even
sober Breton women could not be together and keep silence. They take
life very seriously and earnestly; with them it is not all froth and
evaporation; but this is their individual view of existence;
collectively there comes the reaction, forming the lights and shadows of
life, just as we have the lights and shadows in nature. That reaction
must come is the inevitable law; and possibly explains why there are so
many apparent contradictions in people.

Morlaix has had an eventful history in the annals of Brittany. It takes
its name from _Mons Relaxus_, the hill that was crowned by the ancient
castle; a castle which existed at the time of the Roman occupation, if
the large number of medals and pieces of Roman money discovered in its
foundations may be taken as indicating its epoch. Many of these remains
may be seen in the small museum of the town. They date from the third
century.

The progress of Morlaix was slow. Very little is recorded of its earlier
history. Though the Romans occupied it, we know not what they did there.
Nearly all traces of Roman architecture have disappeared. The town has
been frequently sacked and pillaged and burnt, sacrilege in which the
English have had many a hand; and even Roman bricks and mortar