ill-cut
coats and strangely fashioned pantaloons which every Sunday, at the
English service, filled the choirs of the chapel-royal, and after it,
issuing forth into the square, came into disadvantageous contrast with
freshly and trimly attired foreign figures, hastening to attend salut
at the church of Coburg.) I had passed these pairs of Britons, and
the groups of pretty British children, and the British footmen and
waiting-maids; I had crossed the Place Royale, and got into the Rue
Royale, thence I had diverged into the Rue de Louvain--an old and quiet
street. I remember that, feeling a little hungry, and not desiring to
go back and take my share of the "gouter," now on the refectory-table
at Pelet's--to wit, pistolets and water--I stepped into a baker's and
refreshed myself on a COUC(?)--it is a Flemish word, I don't know how
to spell it--A CORINTHE-ANGLICE, a currant bun--and a cup of coffee; and
then I strolled on towards the Porte de Louvain. Very soon I was out of
the city, and slowly mounting the hill, which ascends from the gate, I
took my time; for the afternoon, though cloudy, was very sultry, and not
a breeze stirred to refresh the atmosphere. No inhabitant of Brussels
need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league
from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over
the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and
trackless round the capital of Brabant. Having gained the summit of the
hill, and having stood and looked long over the cultured but lifeless
campaign, I felt a wish to quit the high road, which I had hitherto
followed, and get in among those tilled grounds--fertile as the beds
of a Brobdignagian kitchen-garden--spreading far and wide even to the
boundaries of the horizon, where, from a dusk green, distance changed
them to a sullen blue, and confused their tints with those of the livid
and thunderous-looking sky. Accordingly I turned up a by-path to the
right; I had not followed it far ere it brought me, as I expected, into
the fields, amidst which, just before me, stretched a long and lofty
white wall enclosing, as it seemed from the foliage showing above, some
thickly planted nursery of yew and cypress, for of that species were
the branches resting on the pale parapets, and crowding gloomily about a
massive cross, planted doubtless on a central eminence and extending its
arms, which seemed of black marble, over the summits of those sinis