think it is the wind straining the pulleys in | to a Breton as the leek to a Welshman, or the neighboring pits, or the wings of a the music of the Ranz des Vaches to a windmill creaking on their axis, or the Swiss. It is the key to the whole system twirling post placed on the great apple-tree to frighten off the birds; but the old people shake their heads, and declare that these shrieking noises are the cries of the poulpicans calling to each other to run round the cromlechs on the hill side. Those who are wise will never stir out on such occasions, but place a vase full of millet at the foot of their beds. The object of this precaution is to catch the poul picans in a trap should they venture to come into the house; for they are sure to overturn the vase in their tricksy fashion, and they are then compelled, by a strange necessity of their nature, to pick it all up again, grain by grain, an occupation which will fully occupy them till daylight, when they are obliged to abscond. The Evil-Eye, familiar to us in Scotch and Irish traditions, is universal in Brittany, where its influence is supposed to extend to the communication of infectious diseases. They give to this malevolent fascination the name of the Evil-Wind, under the impression that the pestilential effluvium, which streams from the eyes of such persons, is carried by the air to the individuals who are struck by the contagion. of national mnemonics. We remember a When a In the enumeration of these fanciful terrors, the hobgoblin, a venerable sprite, must not be overlooked. The Breton hobgoblin is a sort of harlequin among the fiends. He takes the shape of different animals, the poverty of her circumstances; seeing and also answers for the demoniacal pranks of the night-mare. The loupgarou is another formidable monster, whose business consists in all sorts of depredations in the vicinity of towns and vil lages. The word garou belongs to the dialect of Morbihan, and signifies a cruel or savage wolf. The loup-garou is the lycanthrope of the French, a lineal descendant of the prowling ware-wolf of the Greeks and Romans. which, the evil spirits do not consider it worth their while to shower misfortunes on the infant, and so they are cheated of their victim with their eyes open. When a person is drowned, the family assemble in mourning, and throw a piece of black bread, with a wax-light on it, into the water; it is sure to float to the spot where the body lies. When any thing is stolen, they have a certain method of detecting the thief by flinging pieces of black bread, A people who indulge so largely in su- of equal size, into the water, pronouncing pernatural luxuries, may fairly be allowed at each cast the name of a suspected perto pamper their imaginations with charms son; when the real robber is named, the and exorcisms; although it must be frank-piece representing him is sure to sink. It ly conceded to the Bretons, that, except might be supposed that the certainty of where their religion seems to suggest or failure in a multitude of instances, would foster such operations, they do not often re- at last have the inevitable effect of exposing sort to them. Every body who knows the fallaciousness of the test; but the exBrittany, knows that the buckwheat which perience of all human nature proves, that is cultivated in such vast quantities over the frustration of such experiments is atthe surface, and which gives such a sickly tended by no other result than that of fixuniformity to the aspect of the country, is ing the delusion still more deeply. Such regarded by the natives with feelings of articles of belief do not depend upon the enthusiasm. Buckwheat is much the same efficacy of trial, but upon the strength of faith; and failure, instead of endangering out the night, digging the sands with their their credit, deepens the halo of supersti- naked feet, and stripping off between their tion by which they are invested. A be- fingers the leaves of rosemary flowers cullliever will believe any thing rather than ed upon the beach. These women, accordthat "his faith is in the wrong;" and it is ing to the tradition, are natives of the so easy to shift the responsibility of disap- island who, marrying strangers, and dying pointment upon the blunders of manipula- in their sins, have returned home to their tion, that he always has a convenient ex- beloved birth-place to beg the prayers of cuse at hand which will cover any imagi- their friends. A great number of their sunable dilemma, and even transform the perstitions turn upon this clinging love for most palpable defeat into a victory. the scenes of their youth. In the districts that lie upon the seashore, many of the popular superstitions are full of poetical beauty, and appeal forcibly to the imagination by the elegiac pathos with which they color the actual circumstances of the people. Here the population consists chiefly of poor fishermen and their families, engaged incessantly in the most precarious of livelihoods, and liv. ing upon an iron-bound coast, where their perilous craft is constantly prosecuted at the risk of life itself. The solitude of these scenes is intense; and the tempests which brood over the waters, strewing the shore with wrecks through all seasons of the year, help to increase the gloom that acts so strongly even upon those who are accustomed to contemplate the sea under all its aspects. The frequent loss of husbands and sons, the roar of the waves, and the atmospheric effects which in such situations present so many strange illusions to the eye, are well calculated to work upon the terrors of the people, and supply them with melancholy fancies when they sit watching at midnight to catch the voices of their friends through the intervals of the storm. Their superstitions are generally shaped to this end; and phantoms and death-warnings are familiar to them all. In the long winter nights when the fishermen's wives, whose husbands are out at sea, are scared from their uneasy sleep by the rising of the tempest, they listen breathlessly for certain sounds to which they attach a fatal meaning. If they hear a low and monotonous noise of waters, falling drop by drop at the foot of their bed, and find that it has not been caused by natural means, and that the floor is dry, it is the unerring token of shipwreck. The sea has made them widows! This fearful superstition, we believe, is confined to the isle of Artz, where a still more striking phenomenon is said to take place. Some times in the twilight, they say, large white women may be seen moving slowly from the neighboring islands, or the continent, over the sea, and seating themselves upon its borders. There they remain through It is a general opinion amongst them that a hurricane can never be appeased until the waves have rejected and flung upon the shore the dead bodies of heretics who perished by shipwreck, and all other unclean bodies. This is a fragment of the old Druidical worship: a dim recollection. of that association of ideas held by the Celts as existing between the purity of the waters and the soul of man. The idea was originally derived, probably, from observation of the natural purifying process of the Alpine glaciers, which have a constant tendency to throw up to the sides the heaps of stones and mud they accumulate in their course. There is a special day set apart for the anniversary of the shipwrecked dead, called the Jour des Morts. On this occasion the winds and waters are brought into active requisition to supply materials for the spectral drama. When the wind ripples the sea into wreaths of foam, the fishermen fancy they hear melancholy murmurs stealing over the waves, and behold the souls of the poor creatures who were wrecked rise upon the summits of the billows, and then in ghostly grief, pale and fugitive, melt away like froth. If one of these sad spirits happens to encounter the soul of some wellbeloved friend, the air is filled with cries of despair at the first glance of recognition. Sometimes the fishermen, sitting in their huts at night, hear a strange and mysterious melange of sounds over the bay, now low and sweet, now loud and turbulent, now trembling, groaning, and whistling with the rising of the surge. These mixed clamors of cries and voices indicate the general meeting of the poor ghosts, at which it appears they hold a sort of marine conversazione, and diligently relate their histories to each other. At the seaside village of St. Gildas, the fishermen who lead evil lives are often disturbed at midnight by three knocks at their door from an invisible hand. They immediately get up, and impelled by some supernatural power, which they cannot resist and dare not question, go down to the beach, where they find long black boats, apparently empty, yet sunk so deeply in the water as to be nearly level with it. The moment they enter, a large white sail streams out from the top of the mast, and the barque is carried out to sea with irre. sistible rapidity, never to be seen by mortal eyes again. The belief is that these boats are freighted with condemned souls, and that the fishermen are doomed to pilot them over the waste of waters until the day of judgment. This legend, like many others, is of Celtic origin, and is related by Procopius. Such are a few of the salient superstitions of a people not yet embraced in the girdle of modern civilization, who have derived none of their notions from books, and who realize in their living faith all those characteristics of Romance which we are too apt to believe, in our sober England, have long since passed out of the world. To the Breton, the elements of that Romance are part and parcel of his daily existence; he breathes the very atmosphere of the middle ages, which are not revived, but continued in him; and acts to the life the whole round of their enchantments, without being in the slightest degree conscious of the performance. How long the people are destined to preserve these peculiar attributes is a problem rapidly has. tening towards solution. Two great railroads from Paris-the one stretching to Rouen, the capital of Normandy, and the other to Orleans, on the banks of the Loire -have just been thrown open. The railroad is the giant annihilator of old customs and provincial manners. The moment its fiery chariot touches the boundary line of Brittany, we may take our last look upon the Armorica of the ancients. RELIEVO MAP OF ENGLAND AND WALES.(Dobbs & Co.)-It is eminently characteristic of English integrity and enterprise, that almost every improvement introduced amongst us is speedily carried farther and farther on the road to perfection. This embossed map is a useful and beautiful illustration of the fact-the first, it is announced, of an intended series. What with the proportionate elevations of the mountains and the aid of color, the eye at once distinguishes all the principal features of the geography of the land; and we obtain at a glance as much information as it would take us days to gather from description or reading. The design is excellent, and the execution most laudable.-Literary Gazette. "HONOR TO WOMEN." FROM SCHILLER. HONOR to women! entwining and braiding, Man, and his wild spirit strives, The restless phantom of his dream. Man is ever warring, rushing Onward through life's stormy way, Pluck the moment's brief flowers as they wander along, More free in their limited range, richer ever To a gentler spirit bending, To the godlike power of Love,— O wakened like harp, and as gently, resembling Breathes woman's fond soul, and as feelingly too: Touch'd lightly, touch'd deeply, O ever she borrows Grief itself from the image of grief, and ber sorrows Ever gem her soft eyes with Heaven's holiest dew. Man, of power despotic lord, In power doth insolently trust; Combat spoilers wild and dread, Where the charities have fled. But gently entreating, and sweetly beguiling, Woman reigns while the Graces around her are smiling, Calming down the fierce discord of Hatred and Pride; Teaching all whom the strife of wild passions would sever, To unite in one bond, and with her, and for ever, All hopes, each emotion, they else had denied. DR. FRANCIA AND SOUTH AMERICA. From the Foreign Quarterly Review. 1. Funeral Discourse delivered on occasion of celebrating the Obsequies of his late Excellency the Perpetual Dictator of the Republic of Paraguay, the Citizen Dr. José Gaspar Francia, by Citizen the REV. MANUEL ANTONIO PEREZ, of the Church of the Incarnation, on the 20th of October, 1840. (In the "British Packet and Argentine News," No. 813. Buenos Ayres: March 19, 1842.) 2. Essai Historique sur la Révolution de Paraguay, et le Gouvernement Dictatorial du Docteur Francia. Par MM. RENGGER et LONGCHAMP. 2de édition. Paris. 1827. 3. Letters on Paraguay. By J. P. and W. P. ROBERTSON. 2 vols. Second Edition. London. 1839. 4. Francia's Reign of Terror. (By the same.) London. 1839. 5. Letters on South America. (By the same.) 6. Travels in Chile and La Plata. By JOHN THE Confused South American revolution, and set of revolutions, like the South American continent itself, is doubtless a great confused phenomenon; worthy of better knowledge than men yet have of it. Several books, of which we here name a few known to us, have been written on the subject: but bad books mostly, and productive of almost no effect. The heroes of South America have not yet succeeded in picturing any image of themselves, much less any true image of themselves, in the CisAtlantic mind or memory. And Bolivar, "the Washington of Columbia," Liberator Bolivar, he too is gone without his fame. Melancholy lithographs represent to us a long-faced, square-browed man; of stern, considerate, consciously considerate aspect, mildly aquiline form of nose; with terrible angularity of jaw; and dark deep eyes, somewhat too close together (for which latter circumstance we earnestly hope the lithograph alone is to blame): this is Liberator Bolivar :-a man of much hard fighting, hard riding, of manifold achievements, distresses, heroisms, and histrionisms in this world; a many-counselled, much-enduring man; now dead and gone, of whom, except that melancholy lithograph, the cultivated European public knows as good as nothing. Yet did he not fly hither and thither, often in the most desperate manner, with wild cavalry clad in blankets, with War of Liberation "to the death?" Clad in blankets, ponchos the South Americans call them: it is a square blanket, with a short slit in the centre, which you draw over your head, and so leave hanging: many a liberative cavalier has ridden, in those hot climates, without further dress at all; and fought handsomely too, wrapping the blanket round his arm, when it came to the charge. With such cavalry, and artillery and infantry to match, Bolivar has ridden, fighting all the way, through torrid deserts, hot mud-swamps, through ice-chasms beyond the curve of perpetual frost,-more miles than Ulysses ever sailed: let the coming Homers take note of it. He has marched over the Andes, more than once; a feat analogous to Hannibal's; and seemed to think little of it. Often beaten, banished Iturbide, "the Napoleon of Mexico," a from the firm land, he always returned great man in that narrow country, who was again, truculently fought again. He gainhe? He made the thrice-celebrated "Plan ed in the Cumana regions the "immortal of Iguala;" a constitution of no continu- victory" of Carababo and several others; He became Emperor of Mexico, under him was gained the finishing "immost serene "Augustin I.;" was deposed, mortal victory" of Ayacucho in Peru, where banished to Leghorn, to London; decided Old Spain, for the last time, burnt powder on returning-landed on the shore of in those latitudes, and then fled without reTampico, and was there met, and shot: turn. He was Dictator, Liberator, almost this, in a vague sort, is what the world emperor, if he had lived. Some three times knows of the Napoleon of Mexico, most over did he, in solemn Columbian parliaserene Augustin the First, most unfortunate ment, lay down his Dictatorship with WashAugustin the Last. He did himself publishington eloquence; and as often, on pressmemoirs or memorials, but few can reading request, take it up again, being a man them. Oblivion, and the deserts of Pana- indispensable. Thrice, or at least twice, ance. "A Statement of some of the principal events in the Public Life of Augustin de Iturbide writ ten by Himself." London. 1843. did he, in different places, painfully construct a Free Constitution; consisting of "two chambers, and a supreme governor for life, with liberty to name his successor," the reasonablest democratic constitution | was appointed to do it. By way of prepayou could well construct; and twice, or ration, for he began from afar, San Martin, at least once, did the people on trial, de- while an army is getting ready at Mendoza, clare it disagreeable. He was, of old, well assembles "at the Fort of San Carlos by the known in Paris; in the dissolute, the phi-Aguanda river," some days' journey to the losophico-political and other circles there. south, all attainable tribes of the Pehuenche He has shone in many a gay Parisian soirée, Indians, to a solemn Palaver, so they name this Simon Bolivar; and he, in his later it, and civic entertainment, on the esplanade years, in autumn 1825, rode triumphant into there. The ceremonies and deliberations, Potosi and the fabulous Inca Cities, with as described by General Miller, are someclouds of feathered Indians somersetting what surprising; still more the concluding and war-whooping round him,*-and "as civic feast, which lasts for three days, which the famed Cerro, metalliferous Mountain, consists of horses' flesh for the solid part, came in sight, the bells all peeled out, and and horses' blood, with ardent spirits ad li there was a thunder of artillery," says Ge- bitum, for the liquid, consumed with such neral Miller! If this is not a Ulysses, Po- alacrity, with such results as one may fanlytlas and Polymetis, a much-enduring and cy. However, the women had prudently many-counselled man; where was there removed all the arms beforehand; nay, one? Truly a Ulysses whose history were "five or six of these poor women, taking it worth its ink, had the Homer that could by turns, were always found in a sober do it, made his appearance! state, watching over the rest;" so that Of General San Martin too there will be comparatively little mischief was done, and something to be said. General San Mar-only" one or two" deaths by quarrel took tin, when we last saw him, twenty years place. ago or more, through the organs of the The Pehuenches, having drunk their arauthentic steadfast Mr. Miers,-had a hand-dent-water and horses' blood in this mansome house in Mendoza, and "his own por-ner, and sworn eternal friendship to San trait, as I remarked, hung up between those Martin, went home, and-communicated to of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington." his enemies, across the Andes, the road he In Mendoza, cheerful, mudbuilt, white- meant to take. This was what San Martin washed town, seated at the eastern base of had foreseen and meant, the knowing man! the Andes, "with its shady public-walk, He hastened his preparations, got his artilwell paved and swept;" looking out plea-lery slung on poles, his men equipt with santly, on this hand, over wide horizons of knapsacks and haversacks, his mules in Pampa wilderness; pleasantly on that, to readiness; and, in all stillness, set forth the Rock-chain, Cordillera they call it, of from Mendoza by another road. Few things the sky-piercing Mountains, capt in snow, in late war, according to General Miller, or with volcanic fumes issuing from them: have been more note-worthy than this there dwelt General Ex-Generalissimo San Martin, ruminating past adventures over half the world; and had his portrait hung up between Napoleon's and the Duke of Wellington's. march. The long straggling line of soldiers, six thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal solitudes!-For Did the reader ever hear of San Martin's you farre along, on some narrow roadway, march over the Andes into Chile? It is a through stony labyrinths: huge rock-mounfeat worth looking at; comparable, most tains hanging over your head, on this hand; likely, to Hannibal's march over the Alps, and under your feet, on that, the roar of while there was yet no Simplon or Mont-mountain-cataracts, horror of bottomless Cénis highway; and it transacted itself in chasms;-the very winds and echoes howlthe year 1817. South American armies ing on you in an almost preternatural manthink little of picking their way through ner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high the gullies of the Andes: so the Buenos- before you, and behind you, and around Ayres people, having driven out their own Spaniards, and established the reign of freedom, though in a precarious manner, thought it were now good to drive the Spaniards out of Chile, and establish the reign of freedom there also instead: whereupon San Martin, commander at Mendoza, * Memoirs of General Miller. you; intricate the outgate! The roadway is narrow; footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to mind your paces; one false step, and you will need no second; in the gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the suspension-bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though they swing |