family: their restoration had not given me any enthusiastic joy, nor their fall much sorrow; and even the honour of paying my devoirs to Louis le Désiré, and exchanging some profound and reverential bows and courtesies with his most Catholic Majesty, failed to inspire me with much interest or admiration for this persecuted, princely race. These bows, by the way, cost the good old king considerable time and labour, for he is extremely unwieldy and corpulent, and gouty; and he looks very lethargic and snuffy; and it is really a thousand pities that an exiled and dethroned monarch should be so remarkably uninteresting a personage. Early in the morning of Thursday, the 15th of June, we left the City of Ghent, passed its ancient walls, and crossed the "lazy Scheldt," which is here but a small stream, and belies the epithet Goldsmith applies to its more advanced course; for it runs with considerable rapidity. We proceeded along the straight, undeviating line of the broad, flat chaussée, or paved road, that leads to Brussels. It is bordered on each side with rows of tall trees, which form one long interminable avenue, as far as the eye can reach. We remembered that it was down this very road that Napoleon Buonaparte had made his triumphant progress through the Netherlands, and we most devoutly hoped, that neither by this, nor any other road, he would ever have it in his power to enter them again. The country is thickly covered with neat cottages, scattered hamlets, and small farm-houses: the fields were waving with tall, luxuriant crops of corn, and far from wearing the appearance of the theatre of war, it seemed to be the abode of peace and plenty; and hope, contentment, and hilarity shone in the countenances of the people. The peasants almost all wore sabots; but the cottage children, bare-footed and bare-headed, frequently pursued the carriage for miles, keeping pace with the horses, tumbling as they went along, singing Flemish patriotic songs, the burden of which was invariably, "Success to the English, and destruction to the French;" and crying with unwearied perseverance, "Viv_é_[6] les Anglaises!" "Dat for Napoleon!" expressing at the same time, by an emphatic gesture, cutting off his head. They threw bouquets of flowers into the carriage, twisted their little sun-burnt faces into the most extraordinary grimaces, and kept whirling round on their hands and feet, in imitation of the rotatory motion of a wheel. Dr. Clarke, in his Travels, mentions that the children of the Arabs in Egypt performed the same exploit, and for the same purpose, that of extorting from the passengers a few sous; nay, even one they seemed to think a sufficient reward for a laborious chase of more than a league, and the exhibition of all these fatiguing antics.