THE BEETON CHARACTER. 23 



is here, particularly in North Cornwall, that we see it under its most 

 desolate aspect, with its chains of black treeless hills covered with 

 heath and furze ; with its deserts of broom and fern, its ruins scat- 

 tered along the winding roads, its attenuated herds wandering at their 

 will across the moors, and its savage, ignorant, and scanty population. 

 The Bretons of Cornwall, according to a French writer, are elevated 

 but a little above the true savage life. Those who dwell upon the 

 coast live on the products of their fishing, except when the fortunate 

 occurrence of a wreck provides them with temporary abundance. At 

 bottom, they possess the qualities and defects of characters strongly 

 tempered, but absolutely uncultivated. They are as hard and bare 

 as their own granite rocks. Persevering, courageous, resolute, they 

 make excellent sailors, the best which France can find ; the sea is 

 for them a second country. Progress, which they do not understand, 

 inspires them with a sort of terror, a gloomy mistrust. When the 

 railway surveyors first intruded upon their solitudes, these rigid 

 conservatives assailed them with volleys of stones, and when the 

 railroads were laid down flung beams across the lines to overthrow 

 the hissing, whirring trains which threatened to disturb their pre- 

 scriptive barbarism. They asked but to be let alone to be suffered 

 to live as their forefathers lived to be spared the ingenuities, suc- 

 cesses, vices, and virtues of the New World. But modern civilization, 

 like Thor's hammer, or Siegfried's magic sword Balmung, will break 

 down the last barriers raised by ignorance and superstition. It will 

 shed its light upon the wilds and wastes of Brittany, and compel 

 their inhabitants in the course of years to acknowledge its value and 

 accept its benefits. 



