Belgium and Western Germany in 1833 Author:Frances Milton Trollope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GHENT. 27 CHAPTER II. Ghent Antiquities St. Bavon The University Schamp's Collection Bull Fight Espions Begui- nage St. Michael's Antwerp ... more » Spanish Air of the Siege. Odr Ostend friends still accompanied us when we left Bruges for Ghent. The distance is about twenty-one English miles. Here again we found ourselves surrounded by buildings of the most picturesque form and colour; with the additional novelty of numerous canals cutting through the town in all directions, and connecting the rivers Scheldt and Lys. Volumes might be fairly and worthily filled by mere catalogues of the antiquities which an industrious amateur might find in these glorious old Flemish towns. No story of the days that are gone, though we have had some which seemed to bring past ages before us by an en- chanter'swand, can throw so forcible a light on that portion of history which relates to the period of Flemish splendour, as the sight of these laboured relics themselves. We read, 28 GHENT. in most speaking hierolyphics, through every street, a commentary on the manners, customs, wealth, and taste of this interesting country. The vast ware-rooms reaching up to the very pinnacle of the steep and pointed gable that finishes the richly-ornamented mansion, show that the wealthy merchant lived splendidly under the same roof which sheltered his wares; while the large door-way that opens from more than one of the upper stories, and not seldom the traces of a crane beside it, prove that the portly dames who sat in the" look-out," had no objection to seeing the merchandise, on which their style and state depended, hoisted and lowered before their windows. Then rises close beside the merchant's house, the proud towei which marks the dwelling of a noble. None else were permitted to...« less