her of Cephas. I would not even try to
convert you, though I am aware that my Church demands it. But to a
certain extent man must be a free agent and judge for himself. I do not
hold with my Church in all things. We are all bound for the same goal,
just as two rivers flowing from opposite directions may empty themselves
into one sea. All roads lead to Rome--it would be sad if only one road
led to Heaven."

Thus the hours passed swiftly and pleasantly. The country on either side
was diversified and interesting. Occasionally a river, flowing to the
sea, reflected the sky and clouds above, giving poetry to the landscape.
Now hills and gently sloping undulations, here rocky and barren, there
fringed with trees whose graceful curves and branches were traced
against the pale background of sky. Again there were long stretches of
plain, dreary and monotonous, sad and sombre, like the Breton character.

The peasantry, indeed, are much influenced by their climate, by the sad
aspect of the long reaches of field and plain that so often meet their
gaze, unbroken perhaps by any other object than a cross or calvary
erected under religious influence in days gone by. And these very
crosses, beautiful in themselves, have a saddening tendency, reminding
them constantly of the fact that here they have "no continuing city."
These wide reaches, artistically, are full of tone and beauty, but here
again they are at fault. They know nothing of "tone," of "greys and
greens;" they only know that the general influence is melancholy; that
the sun shines too seldom in their skies, and that those skies too often
weep. They cannot argue and analyse; cannot tell why the tendency of
their nature, individually and collectively, is grave and sombre;
reasoning is beyond them, and if they think of it at all, they arrive at
the truth by instinct. For instinct takes the place of reason, and
gradually dies out as the higher powers of the intellect are developed.

They stood out here and there in the fields, few and far between, very
picturesque objects; something sad and patient in their very attitudes.
But it was not the time for ploughing and seed-sowing, when they are
seen to greatest advantage; for what is more picturesque than a peasant
following a plough drawn by the patient oxen, who are never, like so
many of the men and women of the world, "unequally yoked together." Here
and there a woman would be kneeling in the fields, her favourite
attitude when