‘I had not been a week in the château when a travelling Englishman sprained his ankle within a short distance of the house. As a matter of course he was brought there, and taken every care of for the few days of his stay. He was fed, housed, leeched, and stuped, and when at length he proceeded upon his journey was profuse in his acknowledgments for the services rendered him; and yet what was the base return of the ungrateful man? I have scarcely temper to record it. During the very moment when we were most lavish in our attention to him, he was sapping the very peace of his benefactors. He learned from the Flemish servants of the house that it had formerly been the favourite residence of Van Dyck; that the very furniture was unchanged since his time; the bed, the table, the chair he had sat on were all preserved. The wretch--am I not warranted in calling him so?--made notes of all this; before I had been three weeks in my abode, out came a _Walk in Flanders_, in two volumes, with a whole chapter about me, headed “Château de Van Dyck.” There we were, myself and my wife, in every window of the Row: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Blue, had bought us at a price, and paid for us; there we were--we, who courted solitude and retirement--to be read of by every puppy in the West End, and every apprentice in Cheapside. Our hospitality was lauded, as if I kept open house for all comers, with “hot chops and brown gravy” at a moment’s notice. The antiquary was bribed to visit me by the fascinations of a spot “sacred to the reveries of genius”; the sportsman, by the account of my “preserves”; the idler, to say he had been there; and the guide- bookmaker and historical biographer, to vamp up details for a new edition of _Belgium as it was_, or _Van Dyck and his Contemporaries_. ‘From the hour of the publication of that horrid book I never enjoyed a moment’s peace or ease. The whole tide of my travelling countrymen--and what a flood it is!--came pouring into Ghent. Post-horses could not be found sufficient for half the demand; the hotels were crowded; respectable peasants gave up their daily employ to become guides to the château; and little busts of Van Dyck were hawked about the neighbourhood by children of four years old. The great cathedral of Ghent, Van Scamp’s pictures, all the historic remains of that ancient city were at a discount; and they who formerly exhibited them as a livelihood were now thrown out of bread. Like the dancing-master who has not gone up to Paris for the last pirouette, or the physician who has not taken up the stethoscope, they were reputed old-fashioned and _passé_; and if they could not describe the Château de Van Dyck, were voted among the bygones.