edulity if you ventured to assert any other. Foy's
history of the Spanish War does not, unluckily, go far enough. I have
read a French history which hardly mentions the war in Spain, and calls
the battle of Salamanca a French victory. You know how the other day,
and in the teeth of all evidence, the French swore to their victory of
Toulouse: and so it is with the rest; and you may set it down as pretty
certain, 1st, That only a few people know the real state of things in
France, as to the matter in dispute between us; 2nd, That those who do,
keep the truth to themselves, and so it is as if it had never been.

These Belgians have caught up, and quite naturally, the French tone.
We are perfide Albion with them still. Here is the Ghent paper, which
declares that it is beyond a doubt that Louis Napoleon was sent by the
English and Lord Palmerston; and though it states in another part of
the journal (from English authority) that the Prince had never seen Lord
Palmerston, yet the lie will remain uppermost--the people and the editor
will believe it to the end of time. . . . See to what a digression
yonder little fellow in the tall hat has given rise! Let us make his
picture, and have done with him.

I could not understand, in my walks about this place, which is certainly
picturesque enough, and contains extraordinary charms in the shape of
old gables, quaint spires, and broad shining canals--I could not at
first comprehend why, for all this, the town was especially disagreeable
to me, and have only just hit on the reason why. Sweetest Juliana, you
will never guess it: it is simply this, that I have not seen a single
decent-looking woman in the whole place; they look all ugly, with coarse
mouths, vulgar figures, mean mercantile faces; and so the traveller
walking among them finds the pleasure of his walk excessively damped,
and the impressions made upon him disagreeable.

In the Academy there are no pictures of merit; but sometimes a
second-rate picture is as pleasing as the best, and one may pass an hour
here very pleasantly. There is a room appropriated to Belgian artists,
of which I never saw the like: they are, like all the rest of the things
in this country, miserable imitations of the French school--great nude
Venuses, and Junos a la David, with the drawing left out.

BRUGES.

The change from vulgar Ghent, with its ugly women and coarse bustle,
to this quiet, old, half-deserted, cleanly Bruges, was very pleasant.