curious desire to hear anything they may have to tell her about the
great world.

It is too bright a picture to last; she too, it would seem, has
day-dreams of cities; she would give up her freedom, she would join the
crowd and enter the 'great city,' she would have a stall at '_les
halles_,' and see the world. Day-dreams, but too often fulfilled--the
old story of centralization doing its work; look at the map of Normandy,
and see how the 'chemin de fer de l'Ouest' is putting forth its arms,
which--like the devil-fish, in Victor Hugo's '_Travailleurs de la
Mer'_--will one day draw irresistibly to itself, our fair 'Toiler of the
sea.'[26]

'What does Monsieur think?' (for we are favoured with a little
confidence from our young friend), and what can we say? Could we draw a
tempting picture of life in cities--could we, if we had the heart, draw
a favourable contrast between _her_ life, as we see it, and the lives of
girls of her own age, who live in towns--who never see the breaking of a
spring morning, or know the beauty of a summer's night? Could we picture
to her (if we would) the gloom that shrouds the dwellings of many of her
northern sisters; and could she but see the veil that hangs over London,
in such streets as Harley, or Welbeck Street, on the brightest morning
that ever dawned on their sleeping inhabitants, she might well be
reconciled to her present life!

[Illustration: A TOILER OF THE SEA.]

'Is it nothing,' we are inclined to ask her, 'to feel the first rays of
the sun at his rising, to be fanned with fresh breezes, to rejoice in
the wind, to brave the storm; to have learned from childhood to welcome