Every quarter of the city exhibits traces of the former wealth of the burghers, and every building has some tradition characteristic of the fiery turbulence of this little municipal republic. Bruges and Ghent are, in this regard, by far the most interesting towns of Flanders. Brussels, Liege and Ypres, are all of more modern date and infinitively less historical importance, during the stormy period of the Flemish annals from the 12th to the 16th century. Ghent was a fortified town a thousand years ago, when its citadel was erected by Baldwin of the Iron Arm, but it was only with the rage for the Crusades, that the wealth and importance of the towns of the Low Countries arose; when the Seigneurs, in order to obtain funds to equip them for their expeditions to the Holy Land, released the inhabitants of the towns from their vassalage, and sold to them the lands on which their cities were built, and all the rights of self government, privileges which subsequently assumed the form of a corporate constitution. Ghent thus obtained her independence from Philip of Alsace, in 1178, and for the first time secured the right of free assembly, the election of her own provosts, a common seal, and belfry, always an indispensable accompaniment of civic authority, and important in sounding the alarm and convoking the citizens upon every emergency. It was in consequence of these momentous concessions, that whilst the lords of the soil and their agrarian followers were wasting their energies in distant war, or subsisting by rapine and violence against one another, the inhabitants of the towns, secured within their walls and fortified places, were enabled to devote themselves to manufactures and to commerce, and thus to concentrate in their own hands, the largest proportion, by far, of the monied wealth of the Netherlands. But, coupled with their high privileges, there were also some restrictions, to which we of to-day are indebted for the vast and magnificent edifices which the burghers of these flourishing communities have left for our wonder and admiration. The rights accorded to them by their Seigneurs were rigidly confined to the limits of their own walls, no free burgher could purchase or hold landed estate beyond the circuit of his municipality; and thus, whilst driven to accumulate capital in the pursuit of trade and traffic, they were equally constrained to invest it, not in land, like the retired merchants of modern times, but in the construction of these vast palaces and private mansions, and in the decorations of their dwellings, and the adornment of their cities. It is to this political circumstance of their position that we are to refer, in order to account for the extent and splendour of those ancient houses which we meet at every turning in Bruges and Ghent--for the costly carvings and sculptured decorations of their fronts and interiors, and for the quantity of paintings and ornaments in which they abound.