We had, this morning, a visit from Count d’Hane, a member of the “senate,” the elective House of Peers for Belgium, to which he is returned for the district of Alost. The Count is a younger brother of the most distinguished family of Ghent, and head of the educational section of the legislature, besides being an ardent amateur of agriculture. He is married to the only daughter of M. de Potter (not the de Potter of the Revolution, however) and in conformity to the Flemish usage, has appended the name of that family to his own. We drove along with him to the house of his mother, the Dowager Countess d’Hane de Steenhausen, in the Rue des Champs, the most splendid mansion in the city, built in the style of Louis XIV, and containing a collection of choice pictures of the Dutch school. The dining-room is a superb saloon with mirrored walls, an inlaid parquet and richly painted ceiling: the latter, however, is torn down in many places, the soldiers of the French revolutionary army having thrust their sabres through it in 1794, in the hope of finding gold concealed between it and the floor above, an outrage, the traces of which the owners have never removed. It was in these apartments that the late Count received the Emperor Alexander on his return from England after the Peace of Paris, and the same suite of rooms were subsequently the residence of Louis XVIII, who fled hither during the Hundred Days, and remained till the events of 1815, restored him to his throne. A few doors distant in the same street, we visited the gallery of M. Schamps which had long been regarded as one of the lions of Ghent. It has since been dispersed and sold. When we saw it, it was numbered and catalogued, and the rooms filled with dealers from all parts of Europe, inspecting their intended purchases previous to the auction, which was to take place a few days after. The gentleman by whom it was originally collected is but recently dead, and its dispersion now was attributed, we were told, partly to impatience of the present proprietor, at having his retirement perpetually invaded by travellers to see his pictures, and partly by the operation of the law against primogeniture, which rendered its sale indispensable, in order to a more equal partition of the family estates. Count d’Hane did us the favour to conduct us over the buildings of the University, one of the many valuable institutions for which Belgium is indebted to the munificence of the King of Holland. It was founded by him in 1816, and thrown open for the reception of students in 1826; an inscription upon the portico records the event, _Auspice Gulielmo I. Acad. Conditore, posuit, S. P. Q. G._ DCCCXXVI. the initials in the usual magniloquence of the low countries, represent the Senatus Populus Que Gandavensis!