t: the mingled romance and
history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can
never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have
been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition--always up in arms
for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a
new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and
palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets,
and the old market squares, in which every stone could tell a story.

We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs the bell that
tolled,--

"I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"

and the old Hotel de Ville, of conglomerate architecture, one side of
which, in the loveliest flamboyant Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling
away from its very richness. In the Friday-market square--it chancing to
be Friday--was a score of bustling busybodies, swarming like bees.
Here, in the old, quarrelsome times, battles were fought between the
different guilds. I say battles, because at one time fifteen hundred
were slain in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it seemed
to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses, that have echoed to the
sound of strife, fairly smiling in the sunshine, and the market women
kneeling upon the stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose a
tower, and half way up its height may still be seen the iron rod, over
which was hung imperfect linen, to shame the weaver who had dared to
offer it in the market.

There is a great nunnery here in Ghent--a town of itself, surrounded by
a moat and a wall, where are six hundred or more sisters, from families
high and low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the flesh in
black robes and white veils. When they become weary of it, they may
return to the world, the flesh, and--their homes: no vows bind them. We
drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where they dwell. Over
the door of each was the name of her patron saint. It seemed a quiet
retreat, a noiseless city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But by
far the most interesting sight, because the most ancient in the quaint
old city, was the archway and turret of the old royal castle, erected a
thousand years ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt was
born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses of more recent date,
themselves old and tottering, and the arch beneath which kings a