he to man.
Three _Aves_ repeated with devotion at this odious and melancholy
shrine are firmly believed to have the power to cause, within the
year, the certain death of the person against whom the assistance of
Our Lady of Hatred has been invoked. And it is said that even yet
occasionally, in the silence and obscurity of the evening, the figure
of some assassin worshipper at this accursed shrine may be seen
to glide rapidly from the solitary spot, where he has spoken the
unhallowed prayer whose mystic might has doomed to death the enemy he
_hates_."

I must tell one other story of my Breton recollections, which refers
to a time much subsequent to the publication of the book I have been
quoting. It was in 1866 that I revisited Brittany in company with
my present wife; and one of the objects of our little tour was the
Finisterre land's end at the extreme point of the horn-like promontory
which forms the department so named. We found some difficulty in
reaching the spot, not the least part of which was caused by the
necessity of threading our way, when in the immediate neighbourhood of
the cliffs, among enormous masses of seaweed stacked in huge heaps
and left to undergo the process of decay, which turns it into very
valuable manure. The odour which impregnated the whole surrounding
atmosphere from these heaps was decidedly the worst and most
asphyxiating I ever experienced.

We stood at last on the utmost _Finis terrae_ and looked over the
Atlantic not only from the lighthouse, which, built three hundred feet
above the sea level, is often, we were told, drenched by storm-driven
spray, but from various points of the tremendous rocks also. They are
tremendous, in truth. The scene is a much grander one than that at our
own "Land's End," which I visited a month or two ago. The cliffs are
much higher, the rocks are more varied in their forms--more cruelly
savage-looking, and the cleavages of them are on a larger scale. The
spot was one of the most profound solitude, for we were far from the
lighthouse, and the scream of the white gulls as they started from
their roosting-places on the face of the rocks, or returned to them
from their swirling flights, were the only indication of the presence
of any creature having the breath of life.

The rock ledges, among which we were clambering, were in many places
fearful spots enough--places where a stumble or a divagation of
the foot but six or eight inches from the narrow path wou