The great Bois de Liederkerke afforded me a fine field for exploration, and many a delightful ride I took amongst its grateful shades. In one of these I discovered, in the very heart of it, a cleared spot of a few acres, part of which was occupied by the blackened ruins of some building, and part exhibited the very melancholy appearance of a once handsome garden, run wild and gone to decay--even the very ruins were nearly overrun by brushwood and weeds. A peasant, whom I met with after leaving the wood, told me that although he had never seen these ruins, he supposed they must be the remains of a convent of nuns which once existed somewhere in the wood, but had been burned many years ago. Ignorance of his language prevented my understanding a long story he told me--partly in Flemish, partly in French--but I picked out that the nuns of this convent had all been ladies of considerable, some of very high, rank. The main road to Alost, by Liederkerke and Denderlue, runs through this wood, and, emerging from it on that side, one exchanges the gloomy obscurity of the forest and confined view amongst the trees for the broad light of day and a wide expanse of fine meadows, covered with herds of cattle, through which the Dender runs brawling and bubbling along over its pebbly bed, crossed at this point by a long wooden bridge, immediately beyond which is the village of Liederkerke, at the time of my visit full of our Household troops. It was a curious sensation that of seeing Lifeguardsmen lounging about the street and before the houses--these people are so intimately associated in one’s mind with London, the Park, Horse Guards, &c. Nor was the contrast between their tall full figures and rosy complexions and the gaunt awkward figures and sallow complexions of the Flemish peasantry--the smart tight-fitting scarlet or blue jackets of the one, with the coarse homely garbs and dingy-coloured smock-frocks of the other--less curious.