earned. No women are more admirably adapted for making the home happy than Frenchwomen. Their general competence is matched only by their industry; and it is a pity to see these fine domestic qualities wasted on outdoor work. Of course, in the case of widows nothing can be said. When the bread-winner is taken away, the woman must perforce shut the house door, and go abroad in quest of the right to live. Girls are in their proper sphere, too, in working man-*fully on their father's farm until their marriage, and fatherless girls, without that most useful of national institutions, the dot, must needs find bread wherever they can. But the outside labour of the wife and mother can never be too deeply deplored, above all in the case of the best of wives or mothers, such as Frenchwomen, taking them as an average, usually are.
Connected with rural and provincial life are some quaint and pretty religious ceremonies. I need not refer to the Fête-Dieu, familiar to all travellers in Catholic countries. The sight of this well-known procession will please or repel you according as it appeals to your head or your imagination. But a far more picturesque procession, and one containing an element of poetry not at all discoverable in the Fête-Dieu, is the blessing of the fields and orchards between dawn and sunrise. What a novel and peaceful treat I used to find this ceremony in my far-off
