THE WANDERER IN WESTERN FRANCE.* IF Mr. Lowth's conversation is
only half as good as his book, be must be a very charming acquaintance. The art of gossiping in his style, never wearying the listener, yet perpetually convey- ing to him valuable information, is a very rare one, and he possesses it to perfection. Whether describing the social state of Brittany, or the effects of the over subdivision of land, or the manners and customs observed by bathers at St. Malo, he never forsakes for a moment the easy chit-chat of intimate conversation, and never fails to convey a well defined impression. His writing is the talk of a man of the world, who has, in spite of his contempt
* The Wanderer in Western France. By George T. Lowth, Fact., author of "The Wanderer in Arabia," de. I.ondon: Hurst and Eilackett, for art, the art of never throwing a word away. We doubt if the
whole book contains one "eloquent" sentence, one "fine" de- scription, one line indicative of any semi) that the writer was preparing matter for print, yet few readers will lay it down with- out a conviction that they never understood Brittany before. Mr. Lowth wanders on from village to village, telling here an anecdote of his own adventures and there a story of Froissart, now giving a disquisition on tenure, and then relating an incident which, though correct enough for 1803, has a sub-flavour of Sterne. He will weary no one, and yet no one will quit his volume without feeling that he understands Brittany and La Vendde.
The provinces are worth describing, for they are the last bits remaining of old France—the country in which properties were large, manners laxly refined, and the nobles all in all. There are still country gentlemen in Brittany who live pretty much like country gentlemen in England, though they have not attained to the dignity of park " lodges ;" who hunt and shoot and live on their rents, and carefully keep down
the number of children, lest their properties should be divided and their status in consequence diminished. They keep harriers, three or four to a house, and sometimes combine.to keep a pack-
s whole pack, as Englishmen understand it, being beyond any one man's means. They have not the passion for emigrating to Paris, which is the bane of most Frenchmen with property enough to walk the asphalte without working. "No country in the world can be more thoroughly the home of its population than the Bocage, and in no country is the life more entirely rural. The higher classes live at home in a great measure in their country houses, and occupy and amuse themselves with farming and hunting, and go but little to the capital ; while the farmers and peasantry, engaged with their little holdings, pro- prietors of their small farms or renting them from the nobles, live an entirely rustic life — a hardworking and rude, but healthy life. These latter are generally a fine athletic race." The gentry are too fond of show, disputing as to the best house and the finest garden and swiftest horse ; but they are a manly race, and could they resist the influence of the law of subdivision, might form a permanent middle class for the agricultural pro- vince. They cannot, however, and Mr. Lowth, a cool observer without theories, draws a terrible picture of the effects of the practice :—
"There is, it is said, a quantity of land always in the market, in con- sequence of the perpetual subdivisions it is subject to by the law on the death of the owner ; and people pay very high prices, beyond their real value, for small farms or plots of ground, so eager is every one to possess laud. But this, though it has its good side in satisfying the general desire of the people, and giving them an interest in the locality, yet has its bad side for those very persons who are become the owners of the land. It is the source of many evils in the country, as the buyer will pay for it more than it is worth, and then when he has impoverished himself by its purchase he will submit to almost any privation rather than part with it again. His poverty prevents his working the ground beneficially. Thus an immense deal of land in all France is miserably farmed, and does not produce but a very small proportion of what it should produce for the general benefit. The usual mode of letting farms in La Vend& is for seven years, on a lease. The land is rich naturally, and will pay as much as five per cent. for any outlay upon it. But there is such an inveterate desire to raise the rent at the end of each lease, upon any pretext, that the farmer in possession tries to avoid this by working the land, or rather scourging it, for the first four or five years, and then neglecting it for the last two or three, so that if he is turned out rather than pay an increased rent, there is a difficulty about replac- ing him, in consequence of the state of the farm. On this account be often stays on in his farm, the owner in fact knowing but little of these manceuvres."
In some few places the owners of a commune agree to submit to a manager, farm all the land together, and take each his own share of the profits. This amounts to the English system, with very high wages, the labourer getting his share of the income as
well as pay for his toil, and it works very well ; but in other places, "where the land is subdivided into portions, and a sepa- rate family dwells on each portion, the reverse of all this often happens ; indeed generally, where the property is circumscribed within a certain limit. There are not capital and labour enough, not stock enough, not manure enough; and so the family vege- tates in its miserable holding, unwilling to sell and go, and unable to work it well, pay the charges on it, and live by it in any degree of comfort. The family exists in squalor, and the taxes are not paid." And be it remembered the limit of subdivision has never been reached, for though the determined refusal to have children keeps down the increase over the whole country, the tendency still is to have two children per family, and so to an incessant halving of each little portion of soil. Mr. Lowth was admitted into the Trappist convent of La Melleray, of which he gives a pleasing account. Only the porter and one or two others are allowed to speak, and theruht seem to be strictly observed. The monks, however, are not the I various steps by which our institutions gradually assumed their gloomy persons the rules would seem to indicate :--
" Nothing could be more cheerful and fresh to the senses than this large dining-room —a state of things not usual in convents, according to my experience. Here there was no unpleasant odour of any kind. For each monk there was a jug of cider, and one of water, a plate of fruit consisting of an immense slice of melon, a peach, and two pears, and some bread. These large slices of melon, of a rich red and amber colour, all down the tables at intervals, imparted a peculiar warmth and a most tempting appearance to the dinner. But this was not the whole of the repast ; there was something more preparing in the kitchen. An aged monk was moving quietly about arranging the plates, and when I pointed to the melon—no talking was allowed here—and to the peaches, and made signs that these were capital eating, the old man laughed, my com- panion laughed, and we all three patted our waistcoats, or rather I patted mine, and the two monks very vigorously performed the same action on the part where their waistcoats would have been had they worn such garments, and iii the midst of a profound silence we were all exceedingly merry, gesticulat'ug and grinning in a very ridiculous manner. From this the monk led um through a door into the kitchen."
In the kitchen they made capital vegetable soup, and rice blancmange, and "every one seemed to enjoy good health, in spite of the absence of meat from their food. Here in the kitchen the pattings and the laughings, the gesticulations and the grimaces, of all of us four, were even more ridiculous and absurd than those in the dining-hall. How we told each other by opening our mouths wide and making pretence of swallowing huge gulps of the savoury contents, first of one copper and then of the other, how capital those contents were! How we smacked our lips, and turned up our eyes, and clasped our hands, and hugged ourselves about the waistcoat all in the most profound silence I It was a ludicrous exhibition ; but the two silent monks, so grave when I went into the kitchen, gave themselves up to it with a convulsive heartiness." The monks work on their farm, and Mr. Lowth fairly contrasts the blamelessness of a life like that pursued in this convent with its uselessness, selfishness, and want of purpose for any true end of living. Throughout his reflections there is the calm as of an observant but very old mind, which has discerned that all lives deliberately adopted have usually in them something which exempts them from just contempt - a toleration which is the resu't not so much of a sense of justice as of a very wide know- ledge or man. In a very wide landscape otte to:erates little p itches of sand. H3 describes the Protestants of the west as mo.c industrious than Vie Romanists, and more wealthy, but is careful to rope it, nevertheless, the stet nnent of a Bible culpor- tem- whom he met near Niort :— " In the country round Niort it is calculated that there are about fifty thousand Protestants —the inhabitants of many villages, many of these, rich farmers and their labourers, being of that persuasion. They and the Roman Catholics live on very good terms with eaCh other, and t he authori tie.; at Niort, although Roman Catholics, have the reputation of leaning very much towards the Protestants. The Poitou farmer and peasant are quiet farming people, whether of the one religion or the other, wi Ii little liking for polemics or theories, and they prefer living peaceably with their neighbours and making money, to any religious dispute or church ques- tion. Sc the clergy likewise partake of this mildness of character of the country people. The ex-cAporteur, however, said that all this easy way of treating each other, by the two parties, had its bad side. It produced a fatal indifference to all religion. There was a great want of some good preachers in the Protestant community, for the whole body in the country parts was asleep. They took life easy, thinking of little beyond their mere farming ; and then their preachers did the same. There was no warmth in their faith, and their pasteurs were inferior men, of no earnestne,s, and the people were content with spoor, thin, feeble nothing- ness—a mere d ll lifeless mass. He said there were plenty of schools, and Bibles and prayer books in every house, but us one seemed to care much about the subject. But in Niort it was rather different. There were some persons there he knew who would be glad to see a leas torpid state of things. He knew that a really able and earnest pasteur would be well received among the Proteritauta in Niurt."
We have quoted chiefly Mr. Lawth's facts, but his book is full of anecd.)te, legend, and gossip, all in )st pleasantly related, and all chosen with an eye to a single effect—that of making the reader comprehend external life in Brittany.
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