d,
"Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only
encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like
all the others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"
upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors,
and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the
wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so
well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown
tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was
explaining the principles of hydraulics?

We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We
left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have
no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver
of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was
comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with
great, glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to
the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and
the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the
coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were
only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he
passed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage
them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional
sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of
Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble
feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went
upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we ejaculated, absently,
our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle
as yet); of the tall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought
from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary
information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in
decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the
early Flemish school filling every available space. Once out of the
church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city,
our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of
the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying
spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's
"Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghen