ve lately arrived from Brussels or
Lisle will not be much struck with the merits of the performers. From
Gand to Ostend and Dunkirk there are no public conveyances, except along
the canals. This mode of travelling I was not inclined to adopt; and
hearing that the road by Lisle, although thirty miles longer, passed
through a finer country, I determined to proceed that way. I did not
hear a favourable account of _Ostend_; and, notwithstanding the peace,
above a third of the houses were said to be untenanted. Bruges has
neither river nor fountain, but abundance of stagnant canals and
reservoirs. The word _Bourse_, as designating the place where merchants
assemble to transact business, had its first origin from a house at
Bruges, then belonging to the family of _Van der Bourse_, opposite to
which the merchants of the city used to meet daily. As the road between
Ghent and Lisle did not claim any minute survey, and as I had been
satisfied with the trial I had before made of a diligence in their
country, I engaged a place for Lille for the next morning.

I was awakened, long before daybreak, by the noise of packing in the
carriages in the yard, and by the vociferations of several Frenchmen in
the house, who seemed to exert their lungs more than the occasion
required. I was not sorry to see them set off in a different carriage
from that in which I was to proceed, as their extreme noise would have
been tiresome. I had not to complain that my companions made an
unnecessary _depense de parole_. They were, I believe, all Flemish. One
of them prided himself on being able to speak a little English, which he
said he could read perfectly, and pulled from his pocket "The Vicar of
Wakefield," which, he assured me, he admired extremely. I have, on many
occasions, in Germany, been in company with persons who were more
desirous of beginning a conversation in English, than able afterwards to
continue it; but in general I have found that the English make less
allowance for the want of proficiency of foreigners in their language
than foreigners do for our ignorance of theirs. On one occasion, at a
_table d'hote_, a person who sat near me pointed out a gentleman at some
distance, and observed that it would be impossible to please him more
than by giving him an opportunity of speaking English, as he valued
himself much on his knowledge of that language. He was not long without
finding the opportunity he sought for, but not the approbation which h