triumph, whether in a field of battle or a court of justice. No one was more vehement in his speeches and exhortations than the young and enthusiastic Marquis de Pontcalec; he was most popular among the Bretons of every class; admiring crowds followed him whenever he went abroad; and he was serenaded at night by old chaunts and ballads devoted to the praise of nationality. Youthful vanity was thus flattered into the wildest rashness; he rushed madly into treason; but, before insurrection could be organised, the regent occupied the cities and fortresses of Brittany with strong garrisons; large bodies of cavalry and light troops were stationed in various parts of the province, and the jurisdiction of the parliament was suspended by an edict, which created special tribunals for the trial of treason and sedition.

A panic seized the great body of the conspirators; traitors were found in every club, and informers in every association. There was a painful superabundance of evidence and information tendered to the government; the confederation was dissolved, almost as soon as it had been completed. There were a few isolated revolts at remote points, but these were soon suppressed by military force; the Breton peasants, though the bravest in Europe, were unable to contend with regular troops, especially as most of those who had profferred to act as leaders, were not to be found on the day of battle, but had provided for their personal safety by escaping to Spain. The only insurgents who made anything like a stand, were some bands of smugglers, who fought a sharp action with one of the royal regiments, but were in the end cut to pieces.

Pontcalec could have made his escape: a ship was provided by his

friends, and a sufficient force collected to ensure his safe embarkation; but he said that he had been warned by a fortune-teller that he would perish by La Mer (the sea), and he therefore refused to venture on board a ship. His friends resolved to stay and share his fate; they were all arrested. Soon after reaching the prison, Pontcalec learned that the name of the executioner was La Mer, and from that hour he regarded his fate as sealed. The suspicious similarity between this story and the prediction of the Duke of Suffolk's fate, as recorded by Shakspeare, will strike every reader; but the Pontcalec prophecy was universally believed, and we find it recorded in the cotemporary memoirs of Madame le Duchesse d'Orleans, the mother of the regent.

Pontcalec and his companions were tried by a special commission; there was no doubt of their guilt, but they felt it a grievance that they were not tried by their national court of parliament. Montlouis and Cöedic had some hopes of a rescue, and referred to the boasts and promises made by the Bretons in the first excitement of the agitation. Pontcalec had formed a better estimate of his countrymen. "Those who were loudest in their vaunts and promises of aid," said he, "will be the calmest spectators of our execution." He guessed aright; the four conspirators were beheaded by torch-light on the night of the 26th of March, 1720; and historians indignantly record, that the crowd exhibited much more of curiosity than of pity.

Several popular ballads were written on the conspiracy of 1720, but the best and most interesting is that on the fate of Pontcalec, which we translate literally.

I.

their mothers.

VOL. XXXII.-NO. CLXXXVIII.

P

M. de Villemarquè obtained from the Coedec family a copy of the letter mentioned in the ballad. It was written by the monk who attended the execution, and was addressed, as the song correctly states, to the rector of Bernè. It contains some very interesting details, which we shall give in an abridged form.

After M. Coedec had confessed, the monk bowed to him reverentially, and he, anxious to return the salute, asked, "Where is my hat?"

"What do we wants of hats," asked Pontealec, "when we are about to lose the moulds on which hats fit?"

The only emotion he exhibited, arose from his feelings of nationality, and dignity. Pontealec could not withhold tears when the executioner cut off his long, flowing locks, the characteristic and pride of the Breton race; and when his hands were bound, he exclaimed, "What, a felon's cords for the hands of nobles! Infamy! Injustice-Cruelty!"

As the melancholy procession ad. vanced from the prison to the scaffold, the manly fortitude of Pontealec excited general admiration. Once only he expressed something like contempt for the cowardice of Bretons, and indignation at being deceived by the promises of boasters. But when the chaplain remonstrated, he assumed an air of pious resignation, and looking up to heaven said, "Pater fiat voluntas, tuia!"

At the foot of the scaffold, the four friends embraced for the last time, as well as their bonds would permit them, and mutually said that their next meeting would be in Paradise.

Pontcalec was the last to die. When it came to his turn to ascend the scaf fold, he said to the monk, "I forgive all those who caused my death;" adding, with a smile, "But that is rather a pitiful compliment." On reaching the block he exclaimed, "Cor detritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies,"— his last words, "Into thy hands, my God and Saviour, I commend my spirit."

It had been ordered that the bodies should be interred "without peal of bell or song of church"-they were taken to a monastery, and brought into the chapel, where the superior and all the monks assembled to bestow on those whom they regarded as martyrs

all the maimed rites that the government allowed. Though no organ pealed, and no hymn was sung, sincere prayers for the repose of the dead were whispered, amid tears, sighs, and sobs, and several of the brethren remained all night on their knees beside the graves.

The fate of those who had escaped to Spain was even more lamentable. They obtained small pensions from Philip V., and wandered about the streets of Madrid and Seville, a prey to that home-sickness for which the Cymric race is pre-eminently distinguished

"Voices from their country's pines, Met them mid the alien vines;

And their proud hearts would not stay, And their spirits died away."

They met no sympathy from the Spaniards; the extravagant boasts of the Bretons contrasted too strongly with the feebleness of their achievements, and they were everywhere taunted with having raised an insurrection of words, not of deeds. They felt the reproach keenly, and they offered their prayers for the preservation of the nationality of Brittany in their own native tongue, to hide the object of their aspirations from the Spaniards.

Immediately after the coronation of Louis XV., the few surviving exiles were permitted to return. They found their country entirely changed-the citizens of Nantes, L'Orient, Quimper, St. Malo, and Brest, had become zealous supporters of the union with France, in consequence of the lucrative commerce which they had opened with the French colonies in India and America. Many of the nobles had equally abandoned the cause of nationality, because French commerce and French colonies opened to them the means of providing for the younger branches of the family. "The Repeal of the Union" was soon but a vague dream in the minds of ancient peasants and village bards; but it is still a dream which has charms for the occupants of the bocages, and other unfre quented districts, where ballads continue to be recited at every festive meeting, declaring the eternal hostility of the Bretons to the Franks and Saxons, and describing the real or fancied triumph of their ancestors over these alien races.

"WELL! and what are we to be at next?" is the pretty general exclamation of a tourist after he has got comfortably housed in his hotel, and is about "to break cover" over new ground.

"What are we to be at next?" My good sir, on your arrival at Cairo and I rejoice to find you have so safely accomplished the voyage from Alexandria; really-save that your face is somewhat scorched, your nose in blisters, and what remains of your physiognomy rather puffed, pimpled, and otherwise experimented on by musquitoes-you present a spruce, spicy, if not a distingué appearance on your first arrival at Cairo (allow me again to congratulate you), you may profitably turn your attention to four cardinal points of observation, namely -but first let me ask you are you provided with a dragoman?

If you were fortunate, you picked one up at Alexandria; if provident, you engaged the requisite at Malta; but if both luckless and improvident, I will not (like the world) desert you in necessity, but do all that is in my power to aid and assist in your unpleasant perplexity. Haud ignara, &c., as we used to say at school.

We are,

as you perceive, in a fine, capacious bedchamber in the Hotel d'Orient, and by good fortune in a front room, too.

Now look out of that window-not off there to your right, those are the pyramids of Jizeh, old gentlemen most unlikely to assist us in our present emergency but look down below you, there a little to your left, do you see that straight-nosed, dark-visaged fellow, with a scowl on his countenance, and the eye of a fox; I mean that fellow in the flaunting crimson sash, embroidered jacket, loose Turkish trowsers; his ears, like a second Midas, protruding on each side, from under his turboosh? That gentleman is called Ibraim Copt, and as proper a vagabond as ever stood on two legs-not but very

questionable characters have rejoiced in one only. He will produce you certificates from the King of Prussia, old Mohammed Ali, or for that matter, if you desire it, from the Sultan himself. Eschew him, and eschew all Copts; they are dark, treacherous, vindictive, and dishonest.

That very showy sans culotte beside him, with as much soiled linen on his person as would stock a moderate draper's shop, boasts himself to be a bold Athenian. 'Ware all Greeks, fellowtraveller; may heaven forgive old Homer, but they are all true foals of the "Trojan horse;" a verier set of cutthroats never stood on the face of mother earth-the Albanians above the rest; no man in his senses would submit his jugular to an Albanian barber, or be led by the nose by a cringing, scheming, bragging, cowardly, Athenian dragoman.

But mark that broad-faced, snubnosed Cyclops, with the paunch of Bacchus, and the shoulders of Hercules. That is an Arab dragoman; a hot-tempered, good-natured fellow, yclept Hadge Bourri. He was for some time in my service after I had dismissed the Copt, a "jocosus puer" in his way, and truly a humbugging vagabond. I may as well tell how it was I happened to light on him, for never was factotum taken on more complete haphazard. One evening, after a busy day, I sat down to the interesting occupation of overhauling the complicated accounts of our friend Ibraim Copt. Ibraim had been for some days engaged in completing our outfit for the Nile; and Ibraim was perpetually coming for renewed "lots of moneè for de baggage," some £40-a large sum, by the way, in piastres-having been already expended, with a marvellous small return for the same. My companion and I were unwillingly convinced of our unexceptionable dragoman's very palpable dishonesty, and disgusted at his roguery, were determined to give him leave

to depart and look for other victims. But we were strangers in Cairo, and utterly at a loss where to turn in search of another servant.

In the very nick of time the door opened, and, ushering in himself, appeared a boisterous fellow-countryman, whose acquaintance we had made at Alexandria. He had been some two years travelling in the East, had a general smattering of Arabic, and (by his own account) no small knowledge of the natives. Dignus vindice nodus, I mentally exclaimed, as W. entered, con amore, into the matter of our perplexities, and good naturedly set about a thorough investigation of our affairs. Sundry items-purely imaginary on the part of drago-were forthwith struck out of Ibraim's account; others shrunk, under the scrutiny, into mere ghosts of their former selves. A radical reformation was the consequence, and the Copt indignantly resigned. So far well, we had got rid of one incumbrance, but where were we to look for a successor? Our boat was ready, and the crew had been some days under pay. No time was to be lost.

"There is a rough sort of fellow," suggested W., "who brought me from Alexandria, and begged me to recommend him to you, or any one in want of a good servant."

"Do you know anything of him?" "Nothing. He came alongside my yacht in harbour, and offered to take me, goods, chattels, and three men, by boat to Cairo for five pounds, and bere I am."

"Has he a testimonial from any one as dragoman?"

The big

"Hang his testimonials. gest scoundrel I ever met with, B. and I had going up the Nile, and he produced the best testimonials I ever read. I don't know whether he has any papers, I saw none, and told him to bring none, but this I can say in his favour, he would go with you as cook, rather than be unemployed. He has even offered to leave his wages in my hands till your return. I solemnly promised," added W. suiting the action to the word, "to break every bone in his body with this stick-(a goodly olive, by the way, that might fell an ox) if during his engagement he should not turn out as he ought."

This pithy panegyric was decisive;

our forlorn hope was ordered for parade.

Next morning I was sitting up in bed, suffering under a splitting headache, when W. thundered at the door. Enter our magnus Apollo with the Cyclops at his heels!

"Alee," commenced W. in bad Italian, "I have recommended you to this gentleman, and said all I could say in your favour. Now if you misconduct yourself, I promise faithfully, on your return from Nubia, to give you the most infernal threshing ever man received, and, mark me, I will be as good as my word."

Alee looked complimented, and grinned, rolled his solitary eye, and muttered most complacently in English, "Him want to make him face white, not black, Mista W." And accordingly Alee was sworn in.

The Hadge, on acquaintance, proved wonderfully amusing; a man of monosyllables and no palaver, fond of good living, and indisposed to overwork; designating a favorite as "Ver good man, not bad," the rest of the human species as "All d--n rascal;" under which very complimentary category the basha himself was included, as "He make him (the Hadge) pay one hundred piastre every year for one shop in Alexandria."

Alee had a single household god, and she, by the way, was a goddess. This was his "old modder," whom, with his wife, he had taken with him the whole journey to Mecca-a pilgrimage not, however, for the benefit of the old lady's soul-he doubts "old modder have any" but from a characteristically prudential motive, for "if I leave him behind me, him have notin' to eat, if I send him money, bad Arab steal it on de way, so I take him wid me."

The Hadge's filial devotion is illustrated in the following narrative, which I beg leave to give verbatim. One fresh December's afternoon we were bowling along under press of canvas, weathering Sheik Harreedeh in glorious style, when the Hadge seated himself opposite us on the gunwale, and waxing unwontedly communicative, revealed a few of the valuable experiences of his domestic life.

As might be anticipated, he began by talking of his modder, who was evidently his "one thing in life;" and told us that he was in the habit of leaving all his money in her hands.