Next day, after viewing the fortifications, which, although they had been recently repaired by the English, could no longer stand the long sieges which have made Ostend famous in history, we proceeded to Bruges, walked about in the rain till late at night, to visit the beautiful Hôtel de Ville, and other public buildings of that fine old city; and rose early the next morning to see the churches of San Sauveur and Notre Dame, and the magnificent tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter. Already the churches were crowded with pious Catholics, whose attention was sadly distracted from their devotion by our appearance: sometimes they whispered an Ave Maria with the utmost fervency of prayer; and sometimes an half-uttered exclamation of wonder burst from their lips; sometimes they resolutely resumed counting their beads, and sometimes their eyes involuntarily rested on our foreign figures with the broad stare of curiosity. We left Bruges in the same bark which had once conveyed Napoleon Buonaparte to that city, and which is now used as a côche d'eau. It contained 150 people of every sort and description, from the courtiers of Louis XVIII. down to Flemish peasants; all of whom, however, were obliging, talkative, attentive, flattering, and amusing. After dining on board, and spending a most entertaining day, we arrived in the evening at Ghent. The whole of Wednesday we spent in this ancient city, and though its extent is so great as to have been the subject of a well-known imperial quibble,[5] I believe we left but little of it unexplored. We visited its magnificent cathedral, whose walls, pillars, roofs, columns, and pulpits are formed of the richest polished marble of every varying hue, and carved with exquisite skill; and whose sculptured ornaments, the work of ages when the statuary's art was in high perfection, seemed almost to start to life before our eyes. We explored the deep sepulchral gloom of its subterranean church; visited the costly shrines of all the saints; contemplated the ancient and decaying monasteries, which were formerly its pride; made a most indefatigable research after cabinets of paintings; and wandered with the utmost perseverance through its abominable streets. We saw the balcony in which the monster Vandamme, in the bloody times of the Revolution, used to stand, day after day, to see victims led out, at his bidding, to the guillotine. In its altered scenes, we now beheld loyal Bourbon beaux in gold epaulettes, and smart Flemish belles, in French fashions, laughing and flirting. We, like them, paraded in its gay promenade, and rambled through the perfumed walks and exotic bowers of its beautiful Botanic Garden. The City of Ghent seemed to be restored to some traces of its ancient grandeur by the temporary residence of the Bourbon princes, and the little expatriated court of Louis XVIII. I had never been able to feel any extravagant degree of attachment to this unfortunate royal