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thrown open. The glare of fire-light in the decaying moonbeams, on a company of faces varying in colour from yellow brown to jet black, and displaying teeth of ivory whiteness, produced a singular effect. Soon after we met other groups, some on foot, others on horseback; the women riding astride, like men, with infants in their arms, or asleep behind them in apron folds at their back. Urchins of boys, as is almost always the case in these expeditions, ran before or behind, and everywhere. "Bon jour, Monsieur," " Bon jour, Madam," were the cheerful salutations that met our ear, accompanied sometimes by a sentence of unintelligible Creole, half French, half African, that amused us from its oddity. The people were dressed in common clothing; the women in dark blue check, or printed cotton, with a Madrass handkerchief; the men in white jackets, or worn-out military coats; the children in an Osnaburgh shirt or shift, some of them more than half naked. The appearance of the men was rather ragamuffin, something like that of a banditti. The common people of Hayti are wonderfully docile, and free from the charge of attempts at highway robbery, or we should not have wondered at the strange fashion, for it is only a fashion, of going armed through the country. It was once a common custom in the Spanish part of the island, and is now absurdly adopted on the French side. The roads we passed over had hedges of the ordinary description, in some places formed of the penguin aloe, or a plant with sharp prickly pointed leaves, called Adam's needle; and in others of logwood, which grows to a great height. We passed by the massive gateways of many deserted or neglected sugar estates, where the mansions that once adorned them are now crumbling and in ruins, showing the marks of their former destruction by fire, and subsequent decay.

ART. XII.-La Petite Chouannerie: Histoire d'un College Breton sous l'Empire. Par A. F. Rio. Moxon.

THE "History of the Breton College under the Empire," though a Paris octavo, has been published in London. It has sundry claims upon attention in this country. It is handsomely printed: it is by an author who is an enthusiast for England: almost every page of the volume contains testimonies of regard for us, and things held in the highest esteem amongst ourselves; while the story of the book is one of engaging romance, written by a Frenchman of literary accomplishment, possessed of all the grace and spirit characteristic of his countrymen; and moreover imbued with a patriotism, so chivalrous, which, whether rightly directed or not, must ever command respect, admiration, and strong sympathy. And then this national ardour is so deeply imbued with a love for olden usages and antique modes, as to mellow every thing that might be objectionable or repulsive had a less genial soul and more sceptical narrator undertaken the history.

M. Rio is one of the most sincere and straightforward royalists that it is possible to think of: nor has the enthusiasm of his youth for the old French dynasty abated, apparently, one jot in his mature

and advancing years. The story he has to tell is that of the revolt of the Vendeans and Bretons, during Napoleon's memorable reign of the Hundred Days,-the insurrection being known by the name of Chouannerie; but more especially of the outbreak of a company of students belonging to Breton college at Vannes, who performed the exploits of veterans, to the no small annoyance of the Emperor. He could ill afford to have his attention withdrawn from the mighty preparations for his last campaign, and could endure with but a bad grace the idea of a province giving such tokens of enmity and patriotism as the collegians evinced. The rising, the achievements, and the sacrifices of the juvenile battalion constitute the particular theme of M. Rio's volume, under the title of "La Petite Chouannerie;" he himself having figured as one of the foremost leaders in the movement. The main subject of the book is not broad; while the precise object contemplated by the young insurrectionist will not meet with general approbation. But still there was a great principle, having most important practical bearings, in the revolt, which is worthy of homage and preservation, viz., that of defence, and not of aggression, that of maintaining what is considered to be indispensable to social and moral good, and resisting whatever savours of tyranny and oppression. Such was the belief, such were the motives of the regiment of Breton students; this belief and these motives having been all along with the most perfect good faith and religious zeal cherished by the author. The particular application of the doctrine may have been injudiciously, but it was honestly made; and never was a narrative of boyish enthusiasm, or heroism of any sort, more fitly conveyed, nor in a manner more surely to enlist the sympathies of all classes of persons, in behalf of the championship of independence. Nor has this sympathy been without eloquent and touching expression in England; for Wordsworth, Mrs. Norton, Mr. Landor, and Mr. Milnes, have each in poetic strains, worthy of themselves and of the Breton heroes, contributed poems to the volume.

It is impossible not to sympathize with, and pay the warmest admiration to, the boy-patriots' romantic attempt to brave the veterans of Napoleon's army; and so far as the facts of the youthful struggle for freedom go, the volume before us must interest every Englishman. There is something singularly engaging and natural in the account given of the growth of the heroic spirit in the college, long prior to the outbreak. The institution had been re-opened in 1804; and imimmediately did the students become subject to influences which had legitimate results during the eventful Hundred Days. In the course of the first years, M. Rio states, it was merely mutual instruction in contemporary history, confined to the town or canton of the narrator, that greatly interested the boys; for there was not a single parish of Morbihan which had not its recorder,-every fragment of the annals of the Chouannerie during the struggle with democracy having made

its full impression on the ardent minds of the youths. Our historian continues to express himself as follows: :

The recollections of classic antiquity became feeble in comparison to these relations in the imaginations of these simple children, over whose cradles tears and blood hath been shed. Happy was he amongst them, who, having had a chief of Chouans or a martyr-priest in his family, possessed sufficient eloquence to place their exploits or their sacrifice in a glowing light! Once acknowledged as a superior storyteller, he immediately became an object of veneration, and gained an ascendancy such as a great poet may do over hearts open to admiration. Besides the true accounts of military valour and resistance, and the persecutions practised against those who would not bend the knee to a revolutionary idol, the memories of the men and children of Britanny were stored with a multitude of legends, some tender, some terrible; every pupil could contribute his share in these mysterious tales, which were generally connected with the links existing between the visible and invisible world. Thus around their innocent minds a radiant atmosphere of Faith was formed, which long defied all the power of rationalism. It would be in vain to seek, even in the acts of martyrs or the legends of the Middle Ages, more affecting recitals than those which thus circulated in the college, and which, to children so poetically credulous, had all the fragrance of newly-blown flowers. With what simplicity of faith did they cling to sentiments, which formed a sort of supplement of popular canonization to the public belief! but also with what bitterness did they propagate all those legends which might be called revenging records, and which, like the Eumenides of Paganism, were attached to certain persons and families reputed accursed! With what harshness did they interpret certain passages of the Bible on retributive justice, when, for instance, they were accustomed to point out two poor young girls, who sat working all day in the recess of a window, and to recount to each other, according to a tradition too well believed by the common people, that these girls were condemned by Divine law, in expiation of the crimes of their parents, never to leave their home, for the moment they stepped over the threshold their shoes became full of blood!

Then there came to be contests about Napoleon's substituting the Eagle for the Dove; and when the former was painted over the gateway of the college, it is quite in keeping with the years of the discontents, the disfiguring with mud the huge and fierce monarch of birds; and when water removes the dirt, to put a rope round its neck, which cannot so easily be washed away. When, again, we hear of the wrath evinced on the patron saint of the institution, St. Nicholas being laid aside by imperial edict, to make room for a perfectly new and entirely strange candidate for the callender, viz., St. Charlemagne; or again, that Tacitus became a mighty favourite as soon as it was known that the Historian was anything but popular with the Emperor, we have other amusing, but significant indications of how the tide was setting in. To be sure there was much of a purely boyish, and therefore ludicrous character in these symptoms and explosions, when viewed as the forerunners of

great political convulsions, and the turning points of national destinies. But the Breton boys were made of such stuff, and so thoroughly inspired, that their bearing and their influence assumed a serious shape, so as to awaken the loftier sentiments, and to draw tears instead of provoking a smile.

We must, however, in a great measure withhold our admiration and our sympathies from the zealot and shrineless priests, who took every means that fanaticism could devise, or that could operate on superstitious credulity, to urge the powerless students to a course, which, even if the Bourbons had been deserving of restoration, could only result in discomfiture, so long as opposed to Napoleon. The youths, no doubt, were ready to perish for what they sincerely believed was their country's good; but what was their immolation to signify, further than that they offered themselves with unsurpassed heroism and devotion as willing sacrifices for the preservation of altars and hearths, which it must have been futile in them to strive to guard against violation. But, not longer to dwell on the chimerical nature of a revolt, that was as romantically bred, conceived, and carried out, as it was rash, and that will hereafter be regarded with an interest beyond the merits of the subject, through the attractions of M. Rio's history, we give portions of the poems in which the English muse has breathed its sympathies, and fully in harmony with the author's tone.

Mr. Landor has manly and searching verses, when he inquires of France what she won in the days of the Breton revolt, by having an ear ever open to glory, but an eye seldom to pity. Let the poet himself answer:

Much-yea, much more than thou hast known.

Along the Armoric shore how brave,

How true those hearts whose early grave

Their mothers least bemoan.

Ye parents! none have been more fond;
But other thoughts must now

Repress your tears: look far beyond

Where heaven's pure light illumes the vow:

The first your children ever made

Was that their God should be obey'd,

His word for ever blest:

Therefore in His own peace they lie,

Therefore (whence else?) your tears are dry,
And sure as theirs your rest.

Children are what the mothers are,
No fondest father's wisest care

Cau fashion so the infant heart
As those creative beams that dart,
With all their hopes and fears, upon
The cradle of a sleeping son.

His startled eyes with wonder see
A father near him on his knee,
Who wishes all the while to trace
The mother in his future face;
But 'tis to her alone uprise

His wakening arms, to her those eyes
Open with joy and not surprise.

Wordsworth has lines about the Eagle and the Dove that are warm and beautiful. His references to Caractacus are happy, whose memorable words, in the pages of Tacitus, ripened in the souls of the stripling patriots.

Shade of Caractacus, if spirits love

The cause they fought for in their earthly home,

To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove

May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.

These children claim thee for their sire; the breath

Of thy renown, from Cambrian mountains, fans
A flame within them that despises death,
And glorifies the truant youth of Vannes.

With thy own scorn of tyrants they advance,
But truth divine hath sanctified their rage,
A silver cross enchased with Flowers of France,
Their badge, attests the holy fight they wage.

The shrill defiance of the young crusade
Their veteran foes mock as an idle noise;
But unto Faith and Loyalty comes aid

From Heaven, gigantic force to beardless boys.

The heroism, sacrifices, and sufferings of the Breton Mother inspire the earnest and tender muse of Mrs. Norton. The poem opens in these strains :

It was a Breton Mother

Long widowed and alone;

From her brow the look of gladness,
From her lips the smile was gone;
But the light of Beauty lingered

Despite the trace of tears,
For her gentle cheek was faded
With sorrow more than years.

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