“How triste, how sad it is for you not to be able to speak Flemish!” ejaculated a dame who sold goeden drank, but who could not, though she would, converse with me. In such cases, it rarely strikes the tongue-tied Flemings belonging to the portion of society below the middle-class, that they are like the fox who was minus a tail. They are content with, and would have other people learn, a language which confines them, as tightly as a tether fastens a cow, to a few score square leagues of the earth’s vast superficies. But a striking point in Flemish popular manners, is the forming themselves into bands and societies. These little close corporations are perhaps, in some degree, the result of their narrowly-diffused tongue. And so the blue-bloused archers of one town go and shoot against the black-capped long-bows of another, distant a quarter-of-a-day’s pedestrian journey; the chorus-club of Schoutenhoul will pay a fraternal visit to the orpheonists of Raspenscraep. In the French army, the French Flemings hang together like bees at swarming-time. Here at Ghent, the workmen, even at leisure hours and meal-times, form themselves into companies. Young people, both girls and boys, run together in distinct and closely-grouped herds, like flocks of young lambs at the same age. One would think that babies in Flanders came all at once, in falls, in imitation of the lambing season with Southdowns and Leicesters. But the Botanic garden--where is it? Let us first look at our map, and then at the corner of the street, and endeavour to pilot our way thither. In Belgian towns, generally, if you use your eyes with the slightest expression of inquiring curiosity, up starts a phantom before you, like a most impertinent Jack-in-the-box, calling himself a commissionaire, but who must not be confounded with a superior being, the French commissionaire. Where these creatures come from, I cannot tell. They suddenly appear before you, as if the air had curdled itself into human form. Peep into a shop window, and you have one at your elbow; gaze up at a steeple, and, when you look down, you will find a commissionaire between your legs; turn the angle of a street, on a walk of discovery, and round the corner you knock your nose against a commissionaire. They start from behind doors, down staircases, out of cellars, from the dark mouths of narrow lanes; and I believe that, upon inquiry, they would be found now and then to drop from the roofs. They follow you about with the hungry look of a beast of prey, regarding you as the game on their preserve, and themselves as very forbearing to spare you a little while. I do not say that no respectable man exercises the calling of commissionaire; but, whenever such jewels are found, they ought to be set in sterling gold. In age, they vary from sixteen to sixty. They deal in cigars, and have often a select female acquaintance. They are mostly seedy in garment, cloudy in complexion,