andsome and extensive pile. There are beer-shops in
the cellars of the houses, which are frequented, it is to be presumed,
by the lower sort; there are beer-shops at the barriers, where the
citizens and their families repair; and beer-shops in the town, glaring
with gas, with long gauze blinds, however, to hide what I hear is a
rather questionable reputation.

Our inn, the "Hotel of the Post," a spacious and comfortable residence,
is on a little place planted round with trees, and that seems to be the
Palais Royal of the town. Three clubs, which look from without to
be very comfortable, ornament this square with their gas-lamps. Here
stands, too, the theatre that is to be; there is a cafe, and on evenings
a military band plays the very worst music I ever remember to have
heard. I went out to-night to take a quiet walk upon this place, and the
horrid brazen discord of these trumpeters set me half mad.

I went to the cafe for refuge, passing on the way a subterraneous
beer-shop, where men and women were drinking to the sweet music of a
cracked barrel-organ. They take in a couple of French papers at this
cafe, and the same number of Belgian journals. You may imagine how well
the latter are informed, when you hear that the battle of Boulogne,
fought by the immortal Louis Napoleon, was not known here until some
gentlemen out of Norfolk brought the news from London, and until it had
travelled to Paris, and from Paris to Brussels. For a whole hour I could
not get a newspaper at the cafe. The horrible brass band in the meantime
had quitted the place, and now, to amuse the Ghent citizens, a couple of
little boys came to the cafe and set up a small concert: one played ill
on the guitar, but sang, very sweetly, plaintive French ballads; the
other was the comic singer; he carried about with him a queer, long,
damp-looking, mouldy white hat, with no brim. "Ecoutez," said the waiter
to me, "il va faire l'Anglais; c'est tres drole!" The little rogue
mounted his immense brimless hat, and, thrusting his thumbs into the
armholes of his waistcoat, began to faire l'Anglais, with a song in
which swearing was the principal joke. We all laughed at this, and
indeed the little rascal seemed to have a good deal of humor.

How they hate us, these foreigners, in Belgium as much as in France!
What lies they tell of us; how gladly they would see us humiliated!
Honest folks at home over their port-wine say, "Ay, ay, and very good
reason they have t