I suppose that particular dishes become as it were national property, because they are so nasty that no one can eat them, except those who are brought up to it; but certainly when our mouths have been seasoned to any of these national messes in our youth, every thing else seems flat, stale, and unprofitable. They are so intimately combined with all our early recollections, that, in after years, they form no small link in that bright chain of memory which binds our affection so strongly to the days of our infancy. It is all very bathotic and gross, I know; but, nevertheless, salt salmon and peas to a Fleming, gruyere to a Swiss, or barley broth and oatmeal porridge to a Scot, will do more to call up old and sweet remembrances of home and happiness, and early days, than the most elaborate description. But all this is nothing to the power which a _galette_ has morally and physically upon a native of Brittany. I do not mean to speak any thing profanely, but had Eve been a Bretonne, Satan might have offered her an apple to all eternity. She would not have said _thank you_ for it. Nay, had it been a whole apple-pie, she would but have turned up her nose, and we might all have been in Paradise up to this present one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven. He might have prated about knowledge too, as long as he liked; it would not have made any difference, for the Bretonnes have seen no bluestockings since Madame de Sévigné's time, and I never could find ten of them that knew the difference between London and Pekin, or that wished to know it. But if the tempter had offered her a _galette_, good bye Paradise! She could never have withstood it. She would but have bargained for a little milk, and a piece of butter, and gone out as quietly as my fire is doing at this moment. But it may be necessary to explain what sort of a thing a _galette_ is; the receipt is as follows: Take a pint of milk or a pint of water, as the case may be, put it into a dirty earthen pan, which has never been washed out since it was made; add a handful of oatmeal, and stir the whole round with your hand, pouring in meal till it be of the consistency of hog-wash. Let the mess stand till next morning, then pour it out as you would do a pancake upon a flat plate of heated iron, called a _galettier_; ascertain that it be not too hot, by any process you may think fit. In Brittany they spit upon it. This, being placed over a smoky wood fire, will produce a sort of tough cake called a _galette_, which nothing but a Breton or an ostrich can digest. In this consists the happiness of a Breton, and all his ideas somehow turn upon this. If you ask a labouring man where he is going, he answers, "Manger de la galette;" If it rains after a drought, they tell you, "Il pleut de la galette;" and the height of hospitality is to ask you in "pour manger de la galette."