l, and the old part of the town nestling at its
base.

Soft and summery, fertile and reposeful, was the scene; and the busy
peasants at their work added to the charm. Pretty English children with
Breton nurses, each in the costume of her native town, played under the
lindens all abloom with odorous flowers and alive with bees. Workmen
came to these green places to eat the black bread and drink the thin
wine that was all their dinner. Invalids strolled here after their baths
at the little house in the rose-garden below. Pretty girls walked there
in the twilight with long-haired lovers in knee breeches and round hats.
Nuns in their grey gowns went to and fro from hospital and the insane
asylum or charity school; and the beautiful old priest sometimes went
feebly by, smiling paternally on his flock, who rose and uncovered
reverently as he passed.

Flowers were everywhere,--in the gardens of the rich, at the windows of
the poor. The stalls in the market were gay with plumy lilacs, splendid
tulips, roses of every shade, and hyacinths heavy with odour. All along
the borders of the river waved the blossoming grass; every green bank
about the mills at Lehon was yellow with dandelions, and the sunny
heads of little children welcoming the flower of the poor. Even the
neglected churchyard of the ruined abbey, where the tombs of the stately
Beaumanoirs still stand, was bright with cheerful daisies and blue-eyed
forget-me-nots.

The willows in the valley were covered with fragrant tassels, and the
old women and children sat all day on door-stones and by the wayside
stripping the long, white wands for basket-making. Flax fields were
blooming in the meadows, and acres of buckwheat, with its rosy stems and
snowy blossoms, whitened the uplands with a fair prophecy of bread for
all.

So, garlanded about with early flowers and painted in spring's softest,
freshest colours, Brittany remains for ever a pleasant picture in the
memory of those who have been welcomed to its hospitable homes, and
found friends among its brave and loyal people.

III.

_FRANCE._

'Girls, I have had a scintillation in the night: listen and approve!'
said Amanda, coming into the room where her comrades sat upon the floor,
in the first stages of despair, at the impossibility of getting the
accumulated rubbish of three months' travel into a couple of immense
trunks.

'Blessed girl! you always bring a ray of light just at the darkest
moment,' retur