300 Connection of the Physioonomy of a Country, 



pilling the extortions of tradesinen to the cliaracter of the people. The 

 Belgians have always appeared to us remarkable for stolidity and plod- 

 ding industry, ■without much refinement of mind or feeling, or, on the 

 other hand, any extreme stupidity or coarseness. They are, in our judg- 

 ment, a race deficient in marked features of character, rather than ob- 

 noxious to the imputation of any prominent vice. Without pretensions 

 to high virtues, they are generally exempt from characteristic crimes. 

 "Whether there is any natural connection between scenery and character, 

 we will not undertake to pronounce ; but a striking analogy prevails be- 

 tween the productive flatness of the land and the utilitarian mind and capa- 

 city of the inhabitants. It is no uncommon thing, especially in Flanders, 

 to see four miles of road with a strip of pavement in the middle, and a 

 ditch on each side straight before you, and a dead level right and left as 

 far as the eye can reach. The land, if it be in summer, is blooming with 

 bean blossoms, or gilded with the rich and ripening corn ; and very agri- 

 culturally interesting it doubtlessly is, to see so much goodly produce and 

 evidence of fertility ; but where the land is a dead flat, and roads and 

 trees run in perfectly straight lines, it is tiresome work to travel there, 

 and very soporific. To be sure, one does occasionally see a church at 

 the end of an interminable looking road. You watch it (for it forms a 

 pleasing variety in the landscape), gradually developing itself, as you jog 

 nearer and nearer to it, till at length_its form, then its shape, its colour, its 

 weathercock, and its cherubed waterspouts, one by one appear ; and at 

 last the grim countenances of the weather-beaten saints scowl out of 

 their niches at you as you pass; you then make a slight turn, and another 

 long flat line opens upon you. The lives of the Flemish women are, 

 at any rate, akin to the intense sameness and monotony of scenery ; 

 and Mr TroUope's description is not very wide of the truth. A Flemish 

 wife rises in the morning and drinks her coffee, dresses the children and 

 herself, sends the former to school, and goes to market, where the entire 

 mental exertion of her life centres ; and something faintly apj^roaching 

 energy and animation is observable as she higgles in succession with the 

 poultry woman, the fruit and vegetable women, the butcher, and the egg 

 merchant. If she be of the easy class, her servant follows and baskets 

 the purchases as the mistress makes them. When completed, she repairs 

 forthwith home ; or if she has no servant, with basket on her arm, goes 

 to church and says her prayers. The personal superintendence of the 

 preparations for dinner occupy her till noon, when the husband returns ; 

 and that great event ^f the day having been achieved, and the children, 

 if any, been again dispatched to school, the knitting-needles are plied in- 

 cessantly till evening, enlivened by a cup of coffee at about four o'clock. 

 W^hen the husband returns, occasionally in summer half an hour's walk 

 is indulged in, or they visit a garden, where the husband smokes and the 

 wife not unfrequently knits. Supper is served at seven, the children arc 

 sent to bed, and the wife, after another batch of knitting, follows at nine 

 or ten o'clock, having performed her functions much after the fashion of 

 the clock, bv wliose mechanism her own niovc'reits are regulated. A 



