It was night when we arrived by the railroad from Antwerp at Brussels;
the route is very pretty and interesting, and the flat countries
through which the road passes in the highest state of peaceful, smiling
cultivation. The fields by the roadside are enclosed by hedges as in
England, the harvest was in part down, and an English country gentleman
who was of our party pronounced the crops to be as fine as any he had
ever seen. Of this matter a Cockney cannot judge accurately, but any man
can see with what extraordinary neatness and care all these little plots
of ground are tilled, and admire the richness and brilliancy of the
vegetation. Outside of the moat of Antwerp, and at every village by
which we passed, it was pleasant to see the happy congregations of
well-clad people that basked in the evening sunshine, and soberly smoked
their pipes and drank their Flemish beer. Men who love this drink must,
as I fancy, have something essentially peaceful in their composition,
and must be more easily satisfied than folks on our side of the water.
The excitement of Flemish beer is, indeed, not great. I have tried both
the white beer and the brown; they are both of the kind which schoolboys
denominate "swipes," very sour and thin to the taste, but served, to be
sure, in quaint Flemish jugs that do not seem to have changed their
form since the days of Rubens, and must please the lovers of antiquarian
knick-knacks. Numbers of comfortable-looking women and children sat
beside the head of the family upon the tavern-benches, and it was
amusing to see one little fellow of eight years old smoking, with much
gravity, his father's cigar. How the worship of the sacred plant of
tobacco has spread through all Europe! I am sure that the persons who
cry out against the use of it are guilty of superstition and unreason,
and that it would be a proper and easy task for scientific persons
to write an encomium upon the weed. In solitude it is the pleasantest
companion possible, and in company never de trop. To a student it
suggests all sorts of agreeable thoughts, it refreshes the brain when