A lovely May morning blesses, with its lucky omen, our approach to the frontier. All nature smiles as we glide along. The orchards are bedecked in white, pink, and green. Get ready your tubs, O cyder-drinkers, the apple-trees promise you a plentiful supply! Remember, however, that there’s many a slip between the apple-blossom and the lip. The sower strides over the well-powdered earth with measured step, and with white apron heavily laden. “Take that, old lady,” he mentally exclaims, as each handful is scattered, “and give me fifty-fold back again.” The cows in the meadows lie basking in the sun, with their feet doubled under them. They are chewing the cud, to give the grass a short respite, and to allow it a little time to grow in peace. The homesteads are overtopped by clumps of poplars, whose young and maidenly leaves blush ruddy pink at the touch of the sunbeam. On the skirts of the forest are prudent oaks, who are waiting till the blackthorn winter is over, before they put on their summer fashions. Along the road which crosses our railway come Flemish wagons, like triumphal cars in the processions of Ceres, and not of Bacchus, but of the twin gods Baccy and Beer. And so we rush over a flat fertile land, till we pass Roubaix, a wilderness of bricks and mortar. Tourcoing also, and ditto; both very rural in their aspect for manufacturing towns, and with atmospheres that Bradford and Leeds might envy. At Mouscron, we are safely over the border. The custom-house officers, I suppose, are ordered to ascertain whether new arrivals are personally cleanly in their habits; for, as soon as they have inspected my oiled-silk sponge-bag, my comb, and my bit of soap (which latter they don’t supply you with at inns), they tell me I may lock up our baggage again. It is too bad that they should rumple Mademoiselle’s muslin-dress, with which she intends to make a sensation, into a wisp, and should further annoy her by calling her Madame; but they are not a bad set of fellows on the whole, nor wanting in a certain cordiality of manner. They look at my passport, enter it in their book, and then bid me good morning by name, as if they had known me for the last ten years. They are Flemings, no doubt. You may know a Flemish man or woman by the friendly vocatives with which they interlard their conversation. Mon ami or mon cher ami is ever on their lips, while addressing you. “What are you looking for, my friend?” asked a market-woman, whom I had never in my life seen before--unless, perhaps, twenty years ago, when she must have been a little girl. “I want half a hundred cauliflower plants,” I replied.--“Ah, my dear friend, you won’t find that for another fortnight. But you’ll come and see me again in another fortnight; you’ll come to me for them, won’t you, my dear friend?”