nd
queens rode once, is now the entrance to a cotton factory.

We had only a few hours at Bruges--the city once more powerful than
Antwerp even, but where not a house has been raised for a hundred years,
and where nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay and
dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque, and nothing seen
that day was more charming than a piece of wall, still standing,
belonging to the old Charles V.'s palace--honey-combed, black, of florid
Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet waters of the canal. At one
end it threw an arch over the street, with a latticed window above it,
beneath which we passed, after crossing the bridge. More than one
picture of Bruges rests within my memory--its canals spanned by the
picturesque bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped their long
branches into the water, and the quaint old houses with many-stepped
gables, rising sheer from the stream.

But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best known to us
Americans through the chimes from its belfry tower, and we were some of
Longfellow's pilgrims. We drove into the great paved Place under the
shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were growing long, and
watched the stragglers across the square--women in queer black-hooded
cloaks; chubby little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a
party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the ubiquitous
American girl, with an immense bow on the back of her dress, and her eye
fixed steadily upon the milliner's shop just visible around the corner.
Almost three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above us, with low
wings on either side, where were once the halls of some guilds, in the
days when the tower was a lookout to warn of coming foes,--when the
square was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained by
passing under its arch, we watched and listened, until at last the sweet
tinkle of the silver-toned bells broke the hush of waiting--so far away,
so heavenly, we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound that fell

"Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir,
And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."

We came back to Antwerp that night, tired, but triumphant, feeling as
though we had read a page from an old book, or sung a strain from an old
song.

CHAPTER XI.

A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.

Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and