knew him, believed in all sorts of superstitious rubbish.  He now believes in nothing at all.  He was disposed to honour and respect God, and his priest, and his seigneur perhaps somewhat too indiscriminately.  Now he neither honours nor respects any earthly or heavenly thing.  These at least were the observations which a second, or rather third visit to the country a few years ago suggested to me, mainly, it is true, as regards the urban population.  And without going into any of the deeper matters which such changes suggest to one’s consideration, there can be no possible doubt as to the fact that the country and its people are infinitely less interesting than they were.

My plans were soon made, and I hastened to lay them before Mr. Colburn, who was at that time publishing for my mother.  The trip was my main object, and I should have been perfectly contented with terms that paid all the expenses of it. Di auctius fecerunt, and I came home from my ramble with a good round sum in my pocket.

I was not greedy of money in those days, and had no unscriptural hankerings after laying up treasure upon earth.  All I wanted was a sufficient supply for my unceasing expenditure in locomotion and inn bills—­the latter, be it observed, always on a most economical scale.  I was not a profitable customer; I took nothing “for the good of the house.”  I had a Gargantuesque appetite, and needed food of some sort in proportion to its demands.  I neither took, or cared to take, any wine with my dinner, and never wanted any description of “nightcap.”  As for accommodation for the night, anything sufficed me that gave me a clean bed and a sufficient window-opening on fresh air, under such conditions as made it possible for me to have it open all night.  To the present day I cannot sleep to my liking in a closed chamber; and before now, on the top of the Righi, have had my bed clothes blown off my bed, and snow deposited where they should have been.

But quo musa tendis? I was talking about my travels in Brittany.

I do not think my book was a bad coup d’essai.  I remember old John Murray coming out to me into the front office in Albemarle Street, where I was on some business of my mother’s, with a broad good-natured smile on his face, and putting into my hands the Times of that morning, with a favourable notice of the book, saying as he did so, “There, so you have waked this morning to find yourself famous!” And, what was more to the purpose, my publisher was content with the result, as was evidenced by his offering me similar terms for another book of the same description—­of which, more anon.

As my volumes on Brittany, published in 1840, are little likely to come under the eye of any reader at the present day, and as the passage I am about to quote indicates accurately enough the main point of difference between what the traveller at that day saw and what the traveller of the present day may see, I think I may be pardoned for giving it.