related to have spent 29 years of his reign in reducing. As I was desirous of visiting Antwerp and Ghent, and as the period allotted for my tour was drawing to a close (a circumstance which the advanced season of the year gave me but little reason to regret) I left Brussels, enveloped in a fog, which might remind the English fashionables of those so prevalent in London during the gloomy season of November, and proceeded to Malines, 14 miles distant, formerly one of the greatest cities of Belgium, but now like too many other once celebrated places in that country, affording a melancholy contrast to its former splendour, and proving that in the vicissitude of all sublunary affairs, cities, as well as their inhabitants, are subject to decay. Non indignemur mortalia corpora solvi Cernimus exemplis oppida posse mori. Here are several manufactories of excellent lace and many breweries, but the beer is considered as greatly inferior to that of Louvain. The houses are spacious, and exhibit singular specimens of ancient taste; the roofs rise to a great height and terminate in a sharp point. Their walls are generally of an excessive whiteness. The tower of the cathedral is highly finished, and rises to a vast height. There being little to detain me here, Malines being more remarkable for what it once was, than for what it now is, I continued my way to Antwerp along an excellent paved road, lined by avenues of trees, which are often so cut (the Dutch differing from the Minorquins, who never prune a tree, saying, that nature knows best how it should grow) as not to be at all ornamental, and in some places cannot be said to afford either "from storms a shelter, or from heat a shade." In that state, however unnatural, they answer the intention of their planters, by marking the course of the road in the snowy season, without excluding the air from it in the wet weather, prevalent in autumn.