Olla Podrida | Page 7

voyage to Ghent, I can only say that every thing passed us--for the roads were very heavy, the horses very lazy, and the boys still lazier--they rode their horses listlessly, sitting on them sideways, as I have seen lads in the country swinging on a gate--whereby the gait of the track-schuyt could not be styled a swinging pace. We did arrive at last, and thus ended our water carriage. At Ghent we went to the Hotel Royal, from out of the windows of which I had a fine view of the belfry, surmounted by the Brazen Dragon brought from Constantinople; and as I conjured up times past, and I thought how the belfry was built and how the dragon got there, I found myself at last wandering in the Apocrypha of "Bel and the Dragon."
We went to see the picture by Van Eck, in the cathedral of Saint Bovin. The reader will probably wish to know who was Saint Bovin--so did I--and I asked the question of the sacristan: the reader shall have the benefit of the answer, "Saint Bovin, monsieur, il etait un saint."
That picture of Van Eck's is worth a van full of most of the pictures we see: it was Van Eck who invented, and was indeed the father of painting in oil. It is a wonderful production.
Mrs Trollope says that people run through Belgium as if it were a mere railroad to other countries. That is very true--we did the same--for who would stop at Ostend to be swindled, or at Bruges to look at empty houses, or at Ghent, which is nothing but a Flanders Birmingham, when Brussels and King Leopold, and the anticipation of something more agreeable, were only thirty miles off. Not one day was our departure postponed; with post-horses and postilions we posted post haste to Brussels.
CHAPTER FIVE.
April 22.
The Queen of Belgium "a fait un enfant." On the Continent it is always the wife who is considered as the faiseuse; the husband is supposed, and very often with justice to have had nothing to do in the matter--it certainly does appear to be optional on the part of the ladies, for they limit their family to their exact wishes or means of support. How different is it in England, where children will be born whether it is convenient or not! O Miss Martineau! you may talk about the "preventive check," but where is it? In England it would be as valuable as the philosopher's stone.
I think that the good people of Paris would do well, as they appear just now to have left religion in abeyance, to take up the manners and customs of the empire of the Nahirs, a Mahratta nation, which I once read about. In that country, as in heaven, there is no marrying, nor giving in marriage. All are free, and all inheritance is through the children of the sister; for although it is impossible to know who may be the father of any of the children, they are very certain that the sister's children must have the blood on the maternal side. What a good arrangement this would be for the Parisians--how many peches a mortels would they get rid of--such as adultery, fornication, etcetera,--by passing one simple law of the land. By-the-by, what an admirable idea for reforming a nation--they say that laws, now-a-days, are made to prevent crime: but if laws were enacted by which crime should no longer be considered as crime, what a deal of trouble might be saved.
The theatre is closed owing to the want of funds; the want of funds is owing to the want of honesty on the part of the manager having run away with the strong box, which was decidedly the very best box in the theatre.
April 26.
I went to see a species of Franconi, or Astley's: there is little variety in these performances, as there are only a certain quantity of feats, which can be performed either by the horses or the riders, nevertheless we had some novelty. We had the very best feminine rider I ever saw; she was a perfect female Centaur, looking part and parcel of the animal upon which she stood; and then we had a regularly Dutch-built lady, who amused us with a tumble off her horse, coming down on the loose saw-dust, in a sitting posture, and making a hole in it as large as if a covey of partridges had been husking in it for the whole day. An American black (there always is a black fellow in these companies, for, as Cooper says, they learn to ride well in America by stealing their masters' horses) rode furiously well and sprained his ankle--the attempt of a man in extreme pain to smile is very horrible--yet he did grin as he