and, when the girls ask my brother why he
does not get married, he tells them laughingly,
but truly enough, 'that potatoes are
too dear.' To understand this joke, you must
know that potatoes are the chief, and sometimes
the only, food of our country people. I
am sorry to say they have nearly doubled in
price, as have most other provisions, since the
commencement of the war; and my brother's
fees must be raised, if his business does not
increase, before he will be able to marry and
support a family in the same respectability
as that in which he himself was brought up.
I do not know whether to attribute my
brother's scanty profits to the good government
of King Leopold—perhaps it may be
partly owing to the fact that people live
more in towns (especially at Brussels), than
formerly; but mild laws and uncorrupt tribunals,
have doubtless something to do with it.

"I am offered the place of junior clerk at a
large cloth manufactory at Verviers. I shall
receive seven hundred francs a-year directly
I begin. I can live very well on this as a
bachelor. I can get a room and my meals
at any small respectable inn, for forty francs
a-month. This is better than boarding with
a private family, because they generally
behave as if they were conferring a favour on
you. Besides, I shall have more liberty.

"If I liked to go abroad, and travel, I
might do much better. Our family has a high
character for honesty. People know they can
trust, and are glad to employ us. I was
recently offered a place of one thousand eight
hundred francs a-year, as a commercial
traveller, if I would previously qualify myself
by a three years apprenticeship to the trade.
I refused, however, a rolling-stone gathers no
moss, and my mother said I should acquire
bad and expensive habits.

"I have another brother. He is a mechanic
—a workman. He is employed at Gand for
the railway, and he earns about six francs a-
day; but he does not save anything. He
keeps too good society for that, and he is
anxious to maintain his station. I am going
to pay him a visit, and shall live with him
till I go to Verviers.

"I shall not marry till I am forty, at least.
Bachelor life is so amusing. Besides it is not
easy to find a wife. Young men are never
thought much of in their own country. I
should go to England to get married. Parents
here judge of me too closely by my sous, and if
I were to propose to a girl who has a few sous
more than I, her parents would turn me out of
the house without ceremony. I shall do very
well, however, by-and-by, for I have a rich
aunt, the widow of a doctor. She will make
me her heir. She has about eight thousand
francs in the public securities, and a small
cottage with a garden of her own."

It was an agreeable ride—our waggon soon
grew full of cheerful, homely country people,
and I was never tired of looking at them.
The men had mostly pale, passionless faces
cleanly shaved. They wore blue blouses,
like the French peasants, velvet caps with
large peaks, and often limp white handkerchiefs:
they carried stout cudgels in their
hands, and short pipes in their mouths. The
women were generally dark-eyed and ruddy
complexioned; and but for the majesty
presented by a back view of their figures, they
might have been often called graceful. Their
manners were singularly free and unembarrassed.
One of them arranged herself so as to
use me comfortably for a back-cushion during
the journey, and another tied up her stocking
before all the company, without the smallest
sense of impropriety. They wore long
earrings of a bright pale gold, something after
the fashion of the Norman women, but they
wanted the demure witchery of the snowy,
high-crowned cap. In one part of the carriage,
among an apple-faced bevy of elderly
market-women, sat a priest, with his shovel-
hat and shaven crown; in another was a
soldier, with the exceedingly short uniform
and placid countenance of the orthodox
Belgian warrior.

We laboured slowly forward, stopping at
some little station every ten minutes, and
then trumpeting on again, like a procession
of teetotallers returning from one of their
excitable festivals. On either side lay the
well-tilled and fruitful lands of the Low
Countries. Everywhere the same flat, smiling
level. Quiet villages cluster picturesquely
over the landscape, and the flight of every
quarter of an hour is pealed musically from
many steeples. Yonder is a thick, shadowy
wood, which looks like a fine property for
somebody; and near, winds a canal which
must have suffered by the railway. Long
lines of poplars mark disused dusty roads
in every direction. Stunted pollard-trees
cast their broad shadow over dykes where the
jack lies watchful and ravenous; the dull
tench is sleeping among the weeds of many a
silent pond; the eel writhes through the
mud beneath him, and the frogs croak around
—a noisy multitude. In one spot the tall
chimney of a manufactory rises high in the
air; and, wherever a breeze is to be caught,
it turns a windmill. The modest homesteads
of the comfortable farmers, with their white-
washed walls and straw-thatched roofs, their
plentiful gardens and thriving crops, stud
the prospect everywhere. The bee goes
about with a business-like hum, and the
butterfly on fluttering wings, wantons on
his whimsical way among the bean-fields.
The peasants working on the soil look up
with wistful eyes, and repose for a moment
from their labour as we wander along. All
speaks of a gentle government and a
prosperous community; though I cannot help
moralising as we draw near to Gand on the
mutability of all human things, and reflecting
how matters are altered since Charles the
Fifth wittily boasted he could put all Paris
into his Gand (Glove.)