were so cut and hacked, that _we_ were under a necessity of taking them away.” A gentleman, who had joined me in the church, informed me, that the altar and confessionals which I saw had been brought hither from another church; for that those belonging to this had been either burnt, or broken into a thousand pieces: nay, that the figures, with which the altar had been adorned, were carefully separated from it, and triumphantly guillotined in the middle of the great square of the town. Cold and republican must have been the eye which could survey such scenes of barbarous devastation unmoved, and the heart which could listen to such descriptions of sacrilegious delirium without a sigh! “-------- Oh! but man! proud man! Dress’d in a little brief authority; ------------ like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As makes the angels weep.” Shakespeare. Upon enquiring, I learned that the church had been open for public worship about three weeks, in consequence of a proclamation issued at l’Orient, on the 13th of January, by the representatives Guesno and Guermeur, in which liberty of worship is granted to all men in their own way, on “proper terms,” but not as a national worship; the republic disavowing a national religion, although tolerating and permitting the free exercise of all, provided the priests who officiate have taken the oaths of allegiance to the state. To this last stipulation the thinness of the weekly congregations is in part attributable, the rigid catholics holding in detestation the priests who have taken the paths.-------- Adieu. LETTER VIII. Quimper, 4th of April 1795. I should not amuse you with a disquisition on the etymology of the name of Quimper, or a research into the date of its foundation, were I capable of furnishing such an entertainment; but I will tell you all I know of its present state, and of the country contiguous to it. It is unquestionably a town of considerable antiquity, and when it formed a part of the possessions of the dukes of Bretagne (ere those were annexed to the crown of France, by the marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne of Brittany) sometimes sided, in the wars between the English and the French, with one party, and sometimes with the other. A massy stone wall surrounding the old town, the cathedral, and some other buildings, are believed to be the works of our countrymen.