household language of a people. Of itself, it
may die out; but that contingency is still far
removed. To forbid its use, and to degrade
its respectability, only makes the words of
childhood and home dearer to Flemish hearts
than ever. Whether in France or Belgium,
language (not speech) will be as free as
thought. Houthem, near Ypres, and Zounebeke
in the environs of Courtrai, speak and
are French, although isolated amongst a
crowd of Flemings. And, on the other hand,
bits of Flanders are to be found dropped here
and there in France. The inhabitants of
Haut-Pont and of Lysel, suburbs of St. Omer,
speak Flemish by a droll anomaly, and are
a people by themselves in the midst of a
French population. Note, too, that the
Flemings at St. Omer are admirable and
successful gardeners.

St. Omer is not visible from our station;
but look full south, and in the horizon you
will see a blue and cloud-like hill, which is
the eminence of Mont Cassel. That spot
again is Flemish at heart. If you visit it—
which is well worth while for half-a-day—
Cassel looks like some wilful and capricious
little town, which, determined to enjoy a
purer air and extensive views, had flown
away from the plain below, and perched
itself on the top of a hill. There it sits in
quiet contemplation, which many travellers
might call a state of dullness; allowing you,
however, now and then, to catch a glorious
glimpse of landscape through the arches and
portes-cochères which you pass on your solitary
way up and down the streets. Two women
sitting to sell vegetables in the place, and a
few groups of girls at the windows
cunningly twisting their lace bobbins before
them, are just sufficient to indicate that some
few of its forty-five hundred inhabitants are
still a living and a moving people. The
gardens, too, on the slope of the hill, with
their terraced beds of vegetables— hasty
little peas and precocious sorrel—give
evidence that Flemish arms and legs do
sometimes go to work during the four-and-twenty
hours.

The view from the top of Mont Cassel
enjoys a European celebrity. It is very
nearly in the same style as our own famous
panorama from the Malvern Hills. It would
be pleasant to bring these rival pictures a
little nearer to each other, for the sake of
comparison; but, as far as it is possible to
retain in the memory the just pretensions
of an absent acquaintance, I am inclined to
assign the superiority to the more varied
features and bolder composition of our own
genuine British water-colour sketch.

Now let us go to the western parapet, and
direct our survey towards Belgium. The coast,
as far as your eyes can stretch, is fringed by a
belt of hopeless sand. Hillock after hillock
of barrenness is scattered up and down, as if
the giant Garagantua, in a fit of ill-humour,
had punished the Dunkerqueians by tossing
over them the sweepings of his kitchen-floor;
—just as he made the hill-chain, which starts
inland from Cape Blanez, with the scrapings
of his dirty shoes. And yet, in spite of the
sand and the giant, the desert fringe is
suddenly checked by a promontory of trees and
verdure, which reach up to the very
fortifications of the town. Cottages peep out from
amidst the trees; a road is visibly and busily
traversed by beasts of burden and laden
carriages; beyond, the broad and deep-dug Furnes
canal starts off straight for Belgium, inclosing
between itself and the wide, sandy, up-tumbled
shore, a long narrow tract or peninsula of
luxuriance. That paradoxical appendage to
Dunkerque, is Rosendael, the square on our
chess-board which contrasts so strongly with
Mardick on the other side. Rosendael is
completely Flemish; abhors a cod-fishing,
seafaring life; and is another instance how
good a thing it is, that men should have a few
difficulties to contend with. On a soil where
faint un-Flemish hearts would lie down and
starve, the Rosendaelers have made for
themselves a land of gardens. Rosendael is nothing
else but a compact epitome of horticulture,
hemmed in on one side by the canal, and on
the other threatened with invasion by the
dunes; a long, continuous, wire-drawn plot of
pot-herbs, so fertile that its produce would
have to be cast into the sea, under the
impossibility of consuming it at home, were not the
overplus of vegetables sent far and wide away,
in aid of the hungering and greenless stranger.
When London butchers eat up their own
shops full of meat, Dunkerque will be
competent to consume all the cooling diet which
its suburbs supply.

And, lastly, let us look at home. Let us take
a peep at Dunkerque itself the square on
which our chess-tower stands. Stretch
yourself well over the parapet; do not be
nervous, we are perfectly safe; and stare straight
downwards into the town. What is the
perspective which terminates your view? The
bottom of the steps leading into a few
neighbouring cellars. There, " in cool grot," dwell
multitudes of human beings, who for
generations have led a subterranean life, that is to
say, so long as they remain in-doors. Not
only workshops, and storehouse, and green-
groceries are thus crushed into the very earth,
but the cellar-dwellings of Dunkerque contain
great part of what is called " the lower classes,"
and even something beyond them, in respect
to means of livelihood. An Englishman not
long ago fitted up a suite of cellars as an
hotel, with dining-room, coffee-room, bed-
rooms, and kitchen, all " delightfully
situate" in the Land of Moles. His wife
assisted him to keep it for a time, but
at last she got tired of burrowing any
longer. " My lodging is on the cold ground,"
was a national melody of which she preferred
the variations to the air itself. In fact, she
declared that there was a great deficiency of
air, and she left her husband to remain buried