is an essentially Flemish town of some 10,000 inhabitants,
and the arrondissement, which comprises 7 cantons and 53 communes,
contains 112,921 inhabitants, is absolutely Flemish. The early
sixteenth-century church of St.-Nicholas at Hazebrouck, with its lofty
and graceful spire, was begun about the time of the first voyage of
Columbus, and is one of the most beautiful extant Flemish buildings of
that time. The people of this arrondissement and their neighbours in the
arrondissement of Dunkirk were almost as famous before 1789 as the Dutch
for their skill as florists and their success in developing all manner
of eccentric varieties of roses, tulips, primroses, and pinks. I do not
know that they ever managed to produce a blue rose, but they came very
near it, and at the present time their rich and level country is gay
with cottage gardens. They are given to sociability also, for the
arrondissement possesses, I am told, at least one cabaret for every 70
inhabitants. But then the cabarets in the department at large average 1
to every 61 inhabitants, and in the thoroughly agricultural
arrondissement of Avesnes they number 1 for every 38 inhabitants. In the
arrondissement of Avesnes, a property of from five to twenty hectares is
called a small farm. In the arrondissement of Hazebrouck, a farmer
cultivating from six to fifty hectares passes for an agriculturist of
the middle class. The people are prosperous, and their hostility to the
Republic seems to have its origin chiefly in the intolerance and
extravagance of the Government. This is the case too, apparently, with
their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk. The 1st District of
Dunkirk elected a Boulangist Revisionist by a solid vote of 7,821
against 4,806 votes, given not to a Government Republican but to a
Radical, while the 2nd District of Dunkirk elected a Monarchist by a
majority of 5,036 votes in a poll of 11,168.

In the face of such figures as these it seems to me that the friends of
religion and of liberty in the Department of the Nord hardly merit the
reproach put upon them by my pessimistic journalist at Lille of
lukewarmness in the political battle of 1889.

Neither he nor any one can well accuse them of lukewarmness in any other
matter affecting the interests either of religion or of liberty. And I
cannot help hoping that my Northern pessimist may perhaps have
over-estimated the prevalence of juvenile prostitution in Lille as much
as he certainly under