GHENT.

us to neglect thus shabbily. This is a place to stay a week in, not a morning; and some day I trust to see it again at better leisure.

Bruges having thus been cruelly squeezed into three hours, after restauration and a bottle or two of Mursault, a poor sort of French hock, off by rail again through the flat but richly cultured country to Ghent; a gloriously picturesque old city, full of Prouty bits, architectural curiosities and monstrosities; streets of houses, with their gables up and down stairs, multitudinous morceaux of florid gothic dotted about everywhere, and the maison de ville in particular a wonder of various orders and every order beautiful. A trifle of time in such a a town as this is bewildering; it is like having to describe a curiosity shop, and I am not going to attempt it, nor to re-write my genuine journal it shall as much as possible be spread before your kindliness verbatim. And it is just because my route is a familiar one, that I would be frank and familiar with you; dull at some times, too, no doubt, because at all times veracious; and (if you will be critical) foolish enough to be vexing you with the private log of a Swiss family Robinson. However, few folks care to keep a journal now, Murray being all-sufficing, and fewer still to print them, and nobody to publish them; and so it comes

to pass that the sort of thing is in some sort practically a novelty; and supposing Austrian chicanery contrives to close the continent to us next year, it may, perchance, attain to be even a book inquired for. If John Bull cannot travel in his britscka, he must in his arm chair; therefore it is that I dare to remind him of his own manner of life in all this our actual family tour. We are about the largest, and in some of our members the youngest, family of travellers now extant on the continent; and that we have by dint of continual energies accomplished so much with such a following, at no very extravagant cost, and yet all sights well seen, (and, thank God for it, with a clean bill of health throughout) ought to be an encouragement to you, good brother Paterfamilias, not to think such a trip in your own case quite impracticable," when Mrs. P. ventures to express a hope that "she and the children may accompany you and your friend Brown" in the proposed excursion. If you have well earned your holiday in the counting house, she has in the nursery; and as for the young ones, leave no cares behind you, let your house, dismiss your bad batch of servants, and enlarge your children's minds by a course of wholesome travel. And now to go on genuinely.

After table d'hôte then, always the best method of dining on the continent, and fixing ourselves for the day at our splendid quarters, La Poste, we set off with a commissionaire to St. Bavon's; wondering, as plain English churchmen may, at its marble and oak pulpit, and its manifold wealth in beautiful chapels, full of pictorial and sculptured masterpieces; all, if you desire details, as per published volumes of description: thence to the Béguinage, a white old interior, crowded with nuns at their prayers, outstretching their arms simultaneously, and astonishingly sheeted over head; our entrance fee to their devotions being six francs for some fancy-fair trifles; and their nunnery being quite a toy-town, moated all round, very clean, and inaccessible except by one gate. Our girls' brown round hats create no small sensation among the saboted vulgar, especially near John of Gaunt's castled cradle, and the Neptune of the Poissoniere every English lady in a similar convenient coiffure will remember her own like undesirable popularity this year; which is the only reason why I mention it. What a place Ghent would be for photography! every street corner, every canal bridge, every old building, is an artistic "thing of beauty and a joy for ever."

:

to pass that the sort of thing is in some sort practically a novelty; and supposing Austrian chicanery contrives to close the continent to us next year, it may, perchance, attain to be even a book inquired for. If John Bull cannot travel in his britscka, he must in his arm chair; therefore it is that I dare to remind him of his own manner of life in all this our actual family tour. We are about the largest, and in some of our members the youngest, family of travellers now extant on the continent; and that we have by dint of continual energies accomplished so much with such a following, at no very extravagant cost, and yet all sights well seen, (and, thank God for it, with a clean bill of health throughout) ought to be an encouragement to you, good brother Paterfamilias, not to think such a trip in your own case quite impracticable," when Mrs. P. ventures to express a hope that "she and the children may accompany you and your friend Brown" in the proposed excursion. If you have well earned your holiday in the counting house, she has in the nursery; and as for the young ones, leave no cares behind you, let your house, dismiss your bad batch of servants, and enlarge your children's minds by a course of wholesome travel. And now to go on genuinely.

After table d'hôte then, always the best method of dining on the continent, and fixing ourselves for the day at our splendid quarters, La Poste, we set off with a commissionaire to St. Bavon's; wondering, as plain English churchmen may, at its marble and oak pulpit, and its manifold wealth in beautiful chapels, full of pictorial and sculptured masterpieces; all, if you desire details, as per published volumes of description: thence to the Béguinage, a white old interior, crowded with nuns at their prayers, outstretching their arms simultaneously, and astonishingly sheeted over head; our entrance fee to their devotions being six francs for some fancy-fair trifles; and their nunnery being quite a toy-town, moated all round, very clean, and inaccessible except by one gate. Our girls' brown round hats create no small sensation among the saboted vulgar, especially near John of Gaunt's castled cradle, and the Neptune of the Poissoniere every English lady in a similar convenient coiffure will remember her own like undesirable popularity this year; which is the only reason why I mention it. What a place Ghent would be for photography! every street corner, every canal bridge, every old building, is an artistic thing of beauty and a joy for ever."