76 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



of support, if they assured him that they had access to St Peter's 

 pot. Times are altered. Pikes and halberds now glitter on the 

 spot where once this savoury chaldron used to boil. 



' Fugere pudor, verumque, fidesque, 



In quorum subeire locum, fraudesque dolique.' 



" In Ghent, too, is the Bdguinage, a convention of females who 

 assemble for public prayer every day in a handsome church be- 

 longing to the establishment. They are not recluses, nor under 

 the observance of perpetual vows. It is a kind of partial retirement 

 for them from the disgust or fascinations of a cheating world. They 

 pass their time in doing good works and in holy prayer, far removed 

 from the caustic gossip of the tea-table, or from the dissipations of 

 nocturnal gadding. It was a Beguine who attended Corporal Trim 

 so charitably, after he had got wounded in the knee at the battle of 

 Landen. 



" But it is time to travel onwards. Were I to tarry long in the 

 different abodes of art and science in this interesting country, I 

 should terrify the reader by the apparition of two large volumes at 

 least : whereas, it is only my intention to present him with one of 

 small extent, like the song of the storm-cock in the month ot 

 December. I must skip from Ghent to Aix-la-Chapelle, and just 

 remark, as I am going on, that the valley of the Meuse, on a fine 

 warm day in July, appears as rich, and beautiful, and romantic, as 

 any valley can well be on this side of ancient paradise. 



" And still I must not leave Dendermond behind me, without a 

 few words on the most feeling and pathetic story ever told by the 

 tongue of man. Who can halt in Dendermond, and not bethink 

 him of my Uncle Toby in England, when he took his purse out ot 

 his bureau, and went to befriend Lieutenant Lefevre, who was sick 

 at the inn ? Or who can fancy this dying soldier, casting his last 

 look upon his weeping boy, without taking out his handkerchief to 

 dry his own eyes ? Or who, in fine, can be unmoved, when he sees 

 the poor orphan youth receiving his late father's sword from the hand 

 of his kind benefactor? How forcibly all this speaks to the soul! 

 and 'how beautifully it shows the heart of one, in whose looks, 

 ind voice, and manner superadded, there was something which 



