1828.) A Cheap Journey. 251 
pint of good wine at each dinner, and the gratuities to servants. The 
items of his bill will consist of three nights’ ledgings, three breakfasts, 
and three dinners—all excellent in their way. We have not reckoned 
upon his taking any thing at his holel after dinner, having allowed him 
carte blanche at the café. We shall reckon these latter, together with 
theatres, gratuities to guide, servants at public institutions, &c., at seven 
shillings more—making his whole expences at this chief place amount to 
one pound sterling. 
Tuurspay.—Ghent. Hotel de Vienne, Marché aux Grains.—Our tra- 
veller, if not a singularly well seasoned one, will not be much disposed 
towards arandom ramble, after rumbling over pavé all night. And it is 
not much matter ; for he might wander all day long in this great but by 
no means agreeable city, without meeting with any thing worth his par- 
. ticular attention. His plan, therefore, will be to take an early break- 
fast, and then immediately provide himself with the means of arriving 
by the shortest road at all that zs worth seeing here. As at Brussels and 
Bruges, the churches will be the chief points of attraction; and he will 
find more good pictures in one or two of them than in all those of Brus- 
sels united. Besides the churches, the chief objects of interest are, the 
Botanical Garden ; the University, with its Museum of Natural History, 
&e.; the Academy of Painting, &c.; and the celebrated prison, called 
the Maison de Force. The time of our traveller, after having visited all 
the churches, will not allow him to see the whole of tlie institutions just 
named ; therefore he will choose between them, as his taste may direct. 
-Let him bear in mind, however, that museums of natural history, bota- 
nical gardens, and libraries of books can be seen every where, and are 
every where pretty much alike; but a fine picture is a thing individual 
to itself, and like no other thing in existence: consequently, that to miss 
the sight of one that might have been seen is to sustain a loss that 
nothing else can repair. There is in this city a very fine private collec- 
tion of pictures, belonging to a Mr. Skamp, to which access may be 
gained without much difficulty. If, therefore, our traveller can contrive 
to see these, at the expense of abandoning all the above-named lions of 
Ghent, he will be wise to do so. At night he will visit the cafés of the 
Place d’Armes, and then retire to an early bed—having previously 
arranged to start for Bruges by the barque to-morrow at about nine, and 
from thence to proceed onward immediately by another to Ostend. His 
_ expenses at this place will amount to fourteen shillings, including four 
and sixpence for his diligence from Brussels last night. : 
Frray.—Our traveller will do well, instead of breakfasting at his 
inn, and then getting into the barque from the quay, to rise early enough 
to allow him time to walk on to a little village with some unspeakable 
Flemish name, about five miles from Ghent, on the banks of the canal. 
Here he will breakfast at one of the little delicately nice cabarets, and 
will perchance grow romantic in his admiration of the quiet happiness 
that seems to reign every where around. There will be no great harm 
done if he forms certain indefinite plans of, “ some day or other,” coming 
back to live here, in a charming little house that shall cost him some 
eight or ten pounds sterling per annum, and surrounded by all sorts of 
agrémens, except that greatest of all in the eyes of some folks—the 
facility of Same money! If he should form such a plan, we will 
answer for his being able to put it in practice—always provided he does 
not insist on spending more than about a hundred and fifty pounds a year 
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