And

the rough pavement like the sweet ringing of the Angelus; and in the moonlight his horse shone white against the night, white as the ermine that the good Duchess loved. as he passed, in the old speech of her country he spoke to her: "Marry me, beautiful princess, and, neither German nor even French, thy white ermine shall be always the ermine of Brittany." But the Duchess did not answer, and the knight passed upon his way. Nevertheless the day after

he came back, again, and always again, and always was his speech the same; but never a word did the Duchess answer, and at the end of the year Brittany became French.

But those who live to-day in the Cour la Houssaye and in the streets about it, say that when the Angelus rings one can sometimes hear the tramp of a horse's feet near by the House of the Duchess Anne; and when the white moon is high, there sometimes passes against the night the shape of a horse white as the ermine of ancient Brittany. And the grandams of St. Malo, the old women, rich and poor, who have heard the story when they were little children from those that went before them, still nod their old heads wisely when it happens that things go awry:"All that perhaps would never have come to pass if the good Duchess had married the Knight of the White Horse, and if her white ermine had remained always the ermine of Brittany."

Four hundred years have gone since Brittany became France, and yet Brittany is Brittany still. The world has changed its face, yet St. Malo has withstood the hand of time, and the constant fretting of the sea, and the terrible north-west gales of winter; she has withstood even the destructiveness of man. And she will

withstand all these, tradition tells us, so long as a single taper burns before Our Lady of the Grand' Porte, where to-day not one but many twinkle and flicker unceasingly about the niche set within the stonework midway between the huge squat towers on either hand. Outside is the gray stone wall, a rude and candid strength; inside, the dark and narrow street running up to the flying buttresses of the choir, and high above, the white single spire set radiantly in the arch of sunshine and sky. And on the inner side of the gate in a wide vaulted niche fronted with glass, Our Lady of the Grand' Porte looks down, smiling, with tapers flickering amidst the flowers about her feet.

It is a busy little square beneath; busy at all times, busiest of all on certain infrequent days during the long quiet of winter. Here in autumn, when the Terreneuvas and the Islandais return, who are under her especial protection, and go yearly in pilgrimage to her shrine at St. Jouan des Guerêts, here they meet to make their engagements for the next season's fishing; brown-skinned and vague-eyed, with the long-sightedness of men who dwell much upon the sea. And the engagements they sign here, with perhaps a glass too many even for their strong heads, are signed also with the sea and the fogs and the long strong winds of the Banks. But through the tavern-windows they look up at Our Lady of the Grand' Porte, the Star of the Sea, the Patroness of St. Malo; and they are content to remember that even yonder her protection is with them still.

The winter passes, and Christmas with it; the midnight mass has gone by, with its loud uproarious bells pealing out across the water, and the coming and going of Christmas merrymakers. There are more tapers than can be counted shining about Our

Lady of the Grand' Porte, and a great wreath of evergreens is twisted about the stanchions that support the lamps below. But there are greater days for her to come.

Now it is Lent, and with it the Carnival. Outside on the Quai St. Louis, there are the swings and the booths and the lotteries; the quaint piled baskets of strangely-shaped biscuits, and the periwinkles in huge bowls; there are drums and trumpets, hideously vociferous, and a loud perpetual laughter that is not to be described in words. And inside the walls, where the crowd presses thickest, there are masks and dominoes, and figures grotesquely clad; there are false noses and painted faces; there are pierrots and clowns, devils and punchinellos, men in women's clothes and women in men's; there are pious folk, chaplet in hand, taking their way lingeringly to vespers,

priests with breviaries tucked under their arms and tolerant wandering smiles, sisters in close black veils, or wide outstanding linen caps. There is life, life of all ages and of all conditions, about her feet, where Our Lady looks down from the Grand' Porte and smiles with understanding.

And a little later it is still another

are

fair, or so it seems. Only outside the walls, along the Quai St. Louis, there are two great steamers which rapidly filling with the last of the Terreneuvas, the men who will join the fishing-schooners at St. Pierre-etMiquelon. There are perhaps three thousand of them, rarely less, who are leaving their villages desolate and their homes empty; who will be starting presently for the summer's fishings, to return thence in late autumn, or perhaps—who knows?—to return not at all.

There are so many wrecks, so many boats that vanish into the fogs and are no more heard of; in all the length and breadth of the Clos-Poulet,

so many widows who wait eternally for news, so many orphans.

Now the shrill wail of the steamwhistles sobs across the town, calling up the laggards; it is time to go, and Our Lady of the Grand' Porte looks down pitifully on those that pass beneath. For they are her children, and she is their mistress and their guard; and as, in hurrying through, they glance up at her and cross themselves, it seems to them that in her smile there lies a terrible knowledge of that mysterious thing, the sea, whose secrets she shares, of that barrier through which some day they all must pass. And then they remem

ber with a new confidence that she is herself the Star of the Sea, the Happy Gate of Heaven. Outside the whistles sound once more, and the steamers move off with a loud angry roar of escaping steam; there is a clatter of innumerable feet as the crowd rushes to the breakwater for the last farewell. But over all rises the sound of the Terreneuvas singing the canticle that is peculiarly their own, and as the Ave, Maris Stella peals out upon the air, Our Lady of the Grand' Porte looks down and smiles with understanding.

Later still, when the month of roses has come, there is the Fête-Dieu with its processions, when a great altar is set up before her and a wonderful carpet of flowers is laid over the little square below. An oriental mat of marvellous colouring is spread the length of the streets; strange ingenious devices and symbols are wrought in petals and flowers, massed and sprinkled in a bewildering sequence, stars and crowns in daisies and marigolds, hearts in poppies, crosses and anchors and sacred monograms in exquisite roses and white lilies ; everywhere along the passage of the Host is spread an indescribable carpet of sweet scents on which alone the priest who bears it may walk. And

all the length of the streets there are white hangings and crossing garlands of leaves, and banners, and everywhere roses. And upon the kneeling crowd, and the red-clad choir-boys tossing their censers and flinging rose-petals into the air, till the little square is full of them, flickering and falling; upon the great golden canopy, and the priest with the monstrance held high in his covered hands, Our Lady of the Grand' Porte looks down, and still she smiles with understanding. Perhaps she remembers that presently in August they will come again to her; and she remembers too the many times that they have so come before. It is only the faces of the kneeling crowd that change; all else goes on the same for ever.

Only a legend all that, one says; a legend that still lives and is honoured in its observance. A beautiful legend nevertheless to those who come and go, and remembering these things look up curiously at the niche in the great gate, where lights burn always about the figure that is seen dimly behind its flowers.

These are but one or two of the

stories of the streets; but one or two of the legends that have come down. to us through time. There are many others. There is the House of Glass, with its hanging gardens; there are the chapels, each with its history; there are the crosses within the town and without the walls; there is the strange and simple pathos of the departure of the Terreneuvas. There is the origin of the saying "Duc, cherche tes chiens!" and why, at St. Malo, one must cross one's self before bathing; there is the cat's gold and silver, and the stories of the wonderful city of the Saracens at Quid-Aleth.

And, above all, year by year and season by season, there is the everchanging life, which yet changes so little, of the town, compact within its embracing walls, set in the midst of the free air and the large sky and the purple water. Outside are the country and the wide sunlit beaches, where Paris comes with its gaiety and its laughter and its perpetual need of amusement; within, dark streets and ancient houses, a crowded neighbourliness of life, a small contented labour, and so much of the past as Time has left to us.

WHEN We were boys our first lessons in riding were taken on (and off) the back of a donkey. He was a creature of changeable but, on the whole, amiable disposition. When his temper gave way before the trials to which we subjected it, we took many lessons in that gentle art of falling off which is so useful a supplement to the science of riding as more generally understood. We can make this avowal without any sense of shame now, for it happened once, on a day for ever memorable, that our donkey kicked off our riding-master himself in all his glory of boots and breeches. Joe, the coachman's boy, declared all our theory of donkey-riding to be incorrect; and it is significant that, though the donkey could kick off the riding-master, boots and breeches and all, it entirely failed to shake Joe from his seat by any of its antics. But then Joe's method was entirely different from that of the riding-master's; it was indeed simple as scarcely to deserve the name of method, being contained in the single precept that you should sit as near the tail of the animal as possible. That was the sum total of his theory of donkey-riding, and it worked to perfection in practice. Our uncle, who was in the Navy, explained the mechanics of Joe's style of riding nautically: "It's as plain as a pikestaff," said he, "that when you've got all the weight in the stern, the craft isn't likely to go down by the head." It was at all events true as a statement of fact, however it may have been as an explanation of the principles, that the donkey did not "go go down by the head" so frequently so frequently

SO

when Joe was riding him as when we were mounted "amidships." And this going down by the head always had the same result; we went off over the head.

But

For a long while we were not allowed to ride with stirrups, and whether or no this was a wise provision is hard to say. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. it is very certain that Authority was justified of its wisdom in making us ride often without bridle. The mouth of our donkey was as the nether millstone, and had we been allowed to drag on it at will our hands would inevitably have been ruined irretrievably. As it was, we learned to gallop along secure of our seat, so long as "the craft did not go down by the head," while we guided the donkey by means of a stick more or less ungently applied to one side or other of his head and neck. The first principle of good riding, we were taught, was that the seat was to be kept by the hips, knees, and balance only.

We learned the value of these precepts, which seemed at the time so much vanity and vexation, when we were promoted to the high distinction of riding a pony. Jumping Jenny was the inspiriting name of this creature, and the good little lady in no way belied her designation. She was Exmoor bred, and an ideal boy's pony for a heavy banked country. Timber or water she could jump at need; but her two special points were the nimbleness with which she could climb up and down a great Devonshire bank, and her unfailing eye for a bog. She had not been brought up on Exmoor

for nothing. She knew the look of a bog far better than we knew it, and a team of elephants would scarcely have pulled her into it; certainly no boy would ever induce her to put foot into one.

She was as generous also as she was prudent. Though no consideration would make her set hoof on a real undoubted bog, she yet would face mere boggy ground in the most gallant fashion. Only once did she ever refuse a fence, and we carry in our mind still the time and place of that refusal and the overwhelming shock of astonishment it caused us. We had sent on our horses on the previous day, for the meet was some twenty miles from home. We were driven out in the morning in a dogcart by Authority, who was to ride a new horse that day, fresh to the country. The first covert drawn was a big furze brake, a sure find for foxes and woodcock, of which delectable birds we counted no less than fifteen come out at the corner where we stood awaiting the first whimper. From this covert there were several lines that the fox might take, all comparatively good except one. If he took that line we should find it, we had been told, very boggy, but the odds were some five to one against it. Nevertheless that, and none of the other four, was the line that perverse fox elected to take; and we found it, as we had been told, very boggy. Authority had the best of us all, for his horse, new to the big banks, refused the very first of them, and half a precious hour was passed in getting him over it; it was, by the way, one of our most stringent rules that if an animal once refused a fence he was to be put at it till he was over somehow, or till darkness closed the contest. In the intervals of his arguments with the new horse, Authority took a glimpse at Boyhood and Jumping Jenny growing conNo. 435.-VOL. LXXIII.

stantly more distant over a succession of banks, and noticed, as we were told afterwards, an undue elevation in the heels of Jenny after each ascent. In truth these banks were just a little higher than those to which we and Jenny were commonly accustomed and upset us a little in consequence. We pecked severely over several, but the ground was soft (a deal too soft!) and we were always up and on again, Jenny with a nose growing rapidly dirtier. Off the fifth bank the landing was terrible; Jenny was in up to the hocks, and the soft mud sucked lovingly as she drew each leg out of it. Some of the field were making play on firmer ground to the right. On the left was a big gray mare jammed tight in a ditch, while her late rider lay on his back in the soft bed of an indisputable bog. Poor Jenny was herself scarcely better than a fixture now, but there was no going back. The hounds were in front, and Devonshire fields are small. Together we struggled on, Boyhood sometimes afoot, sometimes, for a pace or two, in the saddle; Jenny was a mass of mud right up to the girths, and Boyhood equally muddy to an equal height. Still we plunged away until at length we floundered on to more solid ground close by the further bank of the field. There was now breathing-space to count-up our losses. These consisted of a broken curb-chain, the result of a particularly severe peck on Jenny's part, and а lost stirrup-leather. The latter loss was serious; but it was hopeless to attempt any search for them in that hardly-passed Slough of Despond; we were only too thankful to be out of it at such slight cost. Then we put Jenny at the low bank, beyond which was a beautifully hard high-road; anything hard looked beautiful after our late experience. To our utter amazement she would not

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