of France moreover, and, when we penetrate below the surface, we find
that in manner and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the
peasant and agricultural population, generally, differ no little from
their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making
country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the speciality of these rich dairy
farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little
that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and
progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home,
wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns when paying visits. I
was going to say when at church, but nobody does go here!

It is a significant fact that in the fairly well to do educated
district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, where well-being is
the rule, poverty the exception, the church is empty on Sunday, and the
priest's authority is _nil_. The priests may preach against abstinence
from church in the pulpits, and may lecture their congregation in
private, no effect is thereby produced. Church-going has become out of
date among the manufacturers of Brie cheese. They amuse themselves on
Sundays by taking walks with their children, the _pater-familias_ bathes
in the river, the ladies put on their gala dresses and pay visits, but
they omit their devotions.

Some of these tenant-farmers, many of the farms being hired on lease,
possessors of small farms hiring more land, are very rich, and one of
our neighbours whose wealth had been made by the manufacture of Brie
cheese lately gave his daughter a 100,000 francs, L40,000, as a dowry.
The wedding breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a
hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in
spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters
still attend to the dairies, and, when they cease to do so, doubtless