Of the luxury of her citizens in this age, many traditions are still extant; such as that of the wife of Philip the Fair exclaiming on finding herself eclipsed in the splendour of her dress by the ladies of her capital:--“_Je croyais être ici la seule reine, mais j’en vois plus de cent autour de moi!_” A similar story is recorded of their husbands, who when they returned to Paris with their Duke, Louis le Mael, to do homage to King John, the successor of Philip of Valois, felt affronted on finding that no cushions had been provided for them at a banquet to which they were invited by the King, and having sat upon their embroidered cloaks, declined to resume them on departing, saying:--“_Nous de Flandre, nous ne sommes point accoutumés où nous dinons, d’emporter avec nous les coussins._” All this has now passed away, other nations have usurped her foreign commerce, and her own rivals at home have extinguished her manufactures. But still in her decline, Bruges wears all the air of reduced aristocracy; her poor are said to be frightfully numerous in proportion to her population, but they are not, as elsewhere, ostentatiously offensive; except a few decrepid objects of compassion, by the door of the cathedral, we did not see a beggar in the streets. The dress of the lower orders is remarkable for its cleanliness and neatness, and an universal costume with the females of the bourgeoisie, was a white muslin cap with a lace border and a long black silk cloak, with a hood which covered the head, and is evidently a remnant of the Spanish mantilla. There was, also, a cheerful decorum in the carriage of the people whom we met in the streets, that one felt to be in accordance with the gravity of such a venerable old place, as if the streets were consecrated ground: The city one vast temple, dedicate To mutual respect in word and deed, To leisure, to forbearances sedate, To social cares, from jarring passions freed.[3] By the way, it is an instance of the abiding hatred with which the people of the Low Countries must have, traditionally, regarded their former tyrants, that so few traces of their dominion or their presence should now be discernible in the country which they so long blasted with their presence. Occasionally, one recognizes in the olive complexion and coal black eye of the Fleming, the evidences of her southern blood; and at Ghent and Brussels there are one or two families who still bear the names of Alcala, Rey and Hermosa, and a few others who trace their origin to Castilian ancestors; but there are no striking monuments now existing of a people, who so long exercised a malignant influence over the destinies of Flanders.