making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking
strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, and so making for
herself a stately garden. The men and women don't seem to have much more
to do. There are a couple of tall chimneys at either suburb of the town,
where no doubt manufactories are at work, but within the walls everybody
seems decently idle.

We have been, of course, abroad to visit the lions. The tower in the
Grand Place is very fine, and the bricks of which it is built do not
yield a whit in color to the best stone. The great building round this
tower is very like the pictures of the Ducal Palace at Venice; and there
is a long market area, with columns down the middle, from which hung
shreds of rather lean-looking meat, that would do wonders under the
hands of Cattermole or Haghe. In the tower there is a chime of bells
that keep ringing perpetually. They not only play tunes of themselves,
and every quarter of an hour, but an individual performs selections from
popular operas on them at certain periods of the morning, afternoon, and
evening. I have heard to-day "Suoni la Tromba," "Son Vergin Vezzosa,"
from the "Puritani," and other airs, and very badly they were played
too; for such a great monster as a tower-bell cannot be expected to
imitate Madame Grisi or even Signor Lablache. Other churches indulge in
the same amusement, so that one may come here and live in melody all day
or night, like the young woman in Moore's "Lalla Rookh."

In the matter of art, the chief attractions of Bruges are the pictures
of Hemling, that are to be seen in the churches, the hospital, and the
picture-gallery of the place. There are no more pictures of Rubens to
be seen, and, indeed, in the course of a fortnight, one has had quite
enough of the great man and his magnificent, swaggering canvases. What
a difference is here with simple Hemling and the extraordinary creations