but complains that wood was 400 livres a cord, and meat three livres a pound. The value of his estate was between sixty and seventy thousand livres _per annum_; but of this to the amount of not more than twelve thousand lies contiguous to the house. The timber, however, on this latter part was so valuable, as to be reckoned at twice the worth of the land.”----It appeared to me, indeed, to be very thickly wooded. We bade adieu to our obliging informer, and returned towards our ship, by a different way from that which we had come. On this road I observed three or four stone crosses, broken and thrown down. When we reached the landing-place, the peasants were again dancing, with some soldiers, sailors, and fishermen. We went close to look at them, and, except from one lady, who told us, in broken French, she did not like the English, met with neither rudeness or insult. The figure of their dance was very simple, consisting only of describing a circle, through various parts of which, with joined hands, they threaded from time to time; and notwithstanding their wooden shoes, I thought they executed it with more spirit and less awkwardness than our clowns generally perform. None of the women were handsome, but they had all healthy cheerful countenances, and were coarsely but cleanly dressed; their long white caps, which form a sort of hood behind, giving to the younger ones a very sober and matron-like appearance. A publick-house, which the dancers of both sexes frequently visited, was close by, where cyder and a small acid red wine were retailed. These people conversed entirely in the Breton language, the sound of which, had I not forcibly felt from other circumstances where I was, would have made me swear that I was in Wales. I found, upon trial, that not one in ten of the peasants could speak French, or even understood it when spoken to them. I asked if the gaiety which I saw was continual, or only occasional; and was told, that this was the week of the _carnival_, a period of festivity, which the Bretons of all ranks, notwithstanding the austerity of the times, have never failed to celebrate in revelry and dissipation. I went into several houses. They form a medium between the neatness of an English, and the filthiness of an Irish, cottage; they are dark and gloomy like the latter, but the walls are strongly built of stone, the roofs well thatched, and none of them are without a chimney. There was a moderate quantity of necessary household utensils in all, and a good fire burning, over which, in most of them, hung large pots boiling. Here was no indication of want or distress. “Destruction to the châteaux, peace to the cottages,” is an aphorism, which has been often repeated in the convention, to instigate the poor to plunder the rich.