1831.] The Popular Literature of France. 45 



fork indicates the time for manuring the ground ; a pair of scissars, 

 that for cutting the hair ; a fan is heat ; a covered pot, cloudy weather ; 

 a pot overturned, wet weather; and an owl, piercing cold. These 

 cyphers, joined with figures corresponding with the order of the days of 

 the week, point out the various labour to which each is to be consecrated. 

 It is, in fact, the infancy of art, and we may easily believe that this 

 calendar has remained stationary since the sixteenth century, when it 

 was in high fashion. It is mentioned, among others, in a work of that 

 period, containing minute details of the interior life, which might be 

 envied by the novelist of Abbotsford. The following fragment relates 

 immediately to the subject of this paper, as it enumerates some works 

 which have now fallen into the domain of popular literature : — 



" In the parlour of the house (for to have two is only the privilege of 

 grandeur) is the stag's horn tipped with iron, and suspended from the 

 ceiling, whence hang caps, hats, leashes for the dogs, and the great 

 chaplet of paternosters for common use. On the dresser, or two-storied 

 buffet, lie the translation of the Holy Bible, made by order of King 

 Charles V., Les quatrefls Aymon, Ogier le Danois Mclusine, and the Ca- 

 lendrier des Bergers. Behind the great door are a number of long and 

 high perches of hung game, and at the bottom of the hall, upon shelves 

 fixed to the wall, half a dozen bows with their quivers and arrows, two 

 good large rondelles (shields), with two short broad-swords, tAvo halberds, 

 two pikes twenty-two feet long, two or three coats and shirts of mail in 

 a small chest filled with bran, two strong cross-bows, and in the large 

 window over the chimney, three hocqiiebutes (which we must now call 

 arquebusses). Near it is the hawk-perch, and below are the nets and 

 other sporting apparatus. Under the great bench, three feet wide, is 

 good fresh straw for the dogs to lie on, which makes them better and 

 more apt to hear and smell their masters." 



At this time the Calendrier des Bergers is still reprinted at Troyes, but 

 the demand for it diminishes every year, in the inverse proportion of the 

 increase in the number of individuals who learn to read. If the labours 

 of the council of enlistment did not furnish us with more direct evi- 

 dence on this point, we might obtain a sufficiently satisfactory result 

 from the fact, that the Almanack des Anes, of which, even in the time of 

 the empire, 300,000 copies were printed, has now scarcely 20,000 pur- 

 chasers. 



The Cantiques Spiriluels, which long contested the palm of literary 

 popularity with the Almanachs, have lost ground in the large towns, 

 but preserve their footing in most of the provinces. Not a country fair 

 or market is held without its being attended by some itinerant ven- 

 ders, with a sanctified and artful deportment, straight hair, and covered 

 with chaplets, scapularies, and agnuses, proclaiming to his half-penitent 

 audience the healing virtue of certain relics. Each separate locality 

 having thus the means of extolling its own relics, these lyric manifes- 

 tos supply the place of those chevauchecs (cavalcades) of the middle 

 ages, when the desire of possessing such objects was (from their value 

 in attracting crowds of worshippers and pilgrims to the temples in 

 which they were enshrined) not unfrequently a sufficient motive for 

 going to war. " Is not the immense number of holy bodies in the 

 abbey of 8t. Saulve de Montreuil," says the historian of Abbeville, " a 

 sufficient proof of the cupidity of tlie Counts of Flanders ? Were not all 

 those holy bodies stolen .'' Did not the nose of St. WUbrod come from 



