with an enormous tricolour cockade, exclaiming:  “I should like to see any one come and take this away from me,” and as he was a general favourite people used to answer:  “Why, no one, Captain.”  My father shared the same sentiments.  Taken by the English while serving under Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, he passed several years on the pontoons.  His great delight was to go each year, when the conscription was drawn, and humiliate the recruits by relating his experiences as a volunteer.  Regarding with contempt those who were drawing lots, he would add:  “We used not to act in this way,” and he would shrug his shoulders over the degeneracy of the age.

It is from what I have seen of these excellent sailors, and from what I have read and heard about the peasants of Lithuania, and even of Poland, that I have derived my ideas as to the innate goodness of our races when they are organised after the type of the primitive clan.  It is impossible to give an idea of how much goodness and even politeness and gentle manners there is in these ancient Celts.  I saw the last traces of it some thirty years ago in the beautiful little island of Brehat, with its patriarchal ways which carried one back to the time of the Pheacians.  The unselfishness and the practical incapacity of these good people were beyond conception.  One proof of their nobility was that whenever they attempted to engage in any commercial business they were defrauded.  Never in the world’s history did people ruin themselves with a lighter or more careless heart, keeping up a running fire of paradox and quips.  Never in the world were the laws of common sense and sound economy more joyously trodden under foot.  I asked my mother, towards the close of her life, whether it was really the case that all the members of our family whom she had known were upon as bad terms with fortune as those whom I could remember.

“All as poor as Job,” she answered me.  “How could it be different?  None of them were born rich, and none of them pillaged their neighbours.  In those days the only rich people were the clergy and the nobles.  There is, however, one exception, I mean A——­, who became a millionaire.  Oh! he is a very respectable person, very nearly a member of parliament, and quite likely to become one.”

“How did A——­ contrive to make such a large fortune while all his neighbours remained poor?”

“I cannot tell you that....  There are some people who are born to be rich, while there are others who never would be so.  The former have claws, and do not scruple to help themselves first.  That is just what we have never been able to do.  When it comes to taking the best piece out of the dish which is handed round our natural politeness stands in our way.  None of your ancestors could make money.  They took nothing from the general mass, and would not impoverish their neighbours.  Your grandfather would not buy any of the national property, as others did.  Your father was like all other