Bruges is a highly interesting town at all times; but after being shut out from the Continent so many years, the novelty of everything one saw enhanced this interest amazingly. My ramble led me through streets of lofty, whimsically constructed houses, the upper parts of which sometimes projected in the manner one frequently sees in our old midland towns, the projections decorated with drop-balls on fretwork; immense windows sometimes occupied the whole front of each floor; ample portals, the lofty folding-doors of which were occasionally studded with iron, like those of a fortress or dungeon; gables, with high pointed roofs, presented almost everywhere to the street; chimneys of bizarre and fantastic forms, and surmounted by a finish of semicircular tiles rising pyramidally over each other; here and there towers or turrets with high conical roofs;--such were the architectural peculiarities that attracted my attention. The long streets running in wavy lines, and of unequal breadth, between these grotesque buildings, exhibited specimens of costume as novel, and frequently not less grotesque, which, intermingling with the scarlet and blue uniforms of our soldiers, very much heightened the picturesque effect. It was only in the principal thoroughfares and business parts of the town that all this animation was met with. In those quarters principally inhabited by the richer citizens the streets were as dull, solitary, and scrupulously clean as it is possible to conceive. In these I frequently found myself the only animated being visible--not a loiterer at a door, not even a head at a window. Many of even the best houses appeared absolutely uninhabited. Could this have always been the case? Was this the state of things when Bruges was the central mart for the whole Pays Bas, and saw merchants from every nation in Europe crowding to its fairs in search of its linen and woollen cloth, and of the naval stores and rich productions of India continually arriving from the north, the Venetian and other Italian States, when the splendid dress and magnificent palaces of its citizens were sufficient to excite the indignation and envy of a queen? Surely not. These grass-grown streets, now so solitary, then exhibited very different scenes. Many a plumed and portly burgher then trod their pavement, and many a fair bejewelled dame graced the numerous windows of its palaces, now so silent. This decay and depopulation dates from the moment when these wealthy merchants arrogantly resisted their sovereign, Maximilian, who, aided by Antwerp and Amsterdam, shut up its port of Sluys, and thus, diverting its commerce into other channels, inflicted on it that punishment the effects of which are so perceptible even after a lapse of more than 300 years. From these melancholy monuments of fallen grandeur, and the death-like silence of these deserted streets, I suddenly emerged into the midst of bustle in the Grand