splendor never mentioned by historians, who are always more concerned
with facts and dates than with the truer history of manners and
customs.  The tradition of this splendor still lives in the memory of
the people,--as in Brittany, where the native character allows no
forgetfulness of things which concern its own land.  Many of these
towns were once the capitals of a little feudal State,--a county or
duchy conquered by the crown or divided among many heirs, if the male
line failed.  Disinherited from active life, these heads became arms;
and arms deprived of nourishment, wither and barely vegetate. 

For the last thirty years, however, these pictures of ancient times
are beginning to fade and disappear.  Modern industry, working for the
masses, goes on destroying the creations of ancient art, the works of
which were once as personal to the consumer as to the artisan.
Nowadays we have /products/, we no longer have /works/.  Public
buildings, monuments of the past, count for much in the phenomena of
retrospection; but the monuments of modern industry are freestone
quarries, saltpetre mines, cotton factories.  A few more years and even
these old cities will be transformed and seen no more except in the
pages of this iconography.