120 BRITANNY AND THE CHASE. 



posed upon. Ask for a bottle of port in a French hotel. A 

 hottle of a mixture duly labelled " Porto " is set before you, 

 of a syrupy^ sickly, unctuous flavour, which disturbs your 

 stomach and fills you with remorseful regrets for the many 

 bottles of black jack which you have consimied heed- 

 lessly without appreciation. Port it is called; but it is 

 not, the spirit is gone. " You sigh, for soul is wanting 

 there." You fly into a passion, and call in the landlord : 

 " That port ! take it away, it is not fit to drink." And the 

 landlord shrugs, says that " On dit que c'est bien bon," 

 and retires, sacring in his heart at " ces betes d' Anglais." 

 The fact is, that port is extensively manufactured in France, 

 and especially in Britanny, where from old English con- 

 nexion I suppose the ghost still lingers ; and at Saint- 

 Brieux it is fabricated by thousands of bottles annually. 

 With this ignorance of port is coupled an equal one of 

 sherry. They have no notion of it, though they drink it 

 occasionally. But there is one reason of this in the fact, 

 that by the rules of the customs sherry is classed as a 

 liqueur, and therefore is subject to a higher duty, and so 

 the people lose one of the finest wines in the world. For, 

 as I once heard an old English friend say, " How the deuce 

 can you expect the French to get on well ? they neither 

 drink port nor sherry ; they shoot foxes, and drive on the 

 wrong side of the road." 



Britanny is a very tolerable country for a gentleman to 

 live in, in many respects, i. e. that for a moderate income 

 he can live well. In many points, with 250?. a 3'ear a man 

 may have luxuries, and by degrees he Avill become so far 

 habituated to the style of the country as to cease disturbing 



