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This is not the first poetical tribute which in our times has been paid to this beautiful city. Mr. Southey, in the “Poet’s Pilgrimage,” speaks of it in lines which I cannot deny myself the pleasure of connecting with my own.“Time hath not wronged her, nor hath ruin sought Rudely her splendid structures to destroy, Save in those recent days, with evil fraught, When mutability, in drunken joy Triumphant, and from all restraint released, Let loose her fierce and many-headed beast. But for the scars in that unhappy rage Inflicted, firm she stands and undecayed; Like our first Sires, a beautiful old age Is hers in venerable years arrayed; And yet, to her, benignant stars may bring, What fate denies to man,–a second spring. When I may read of tilts in days of old, And tourneys graced by Chieftains of renown, Fair dames, grave citizens, and warriors bold, If fancy would pourtray some stately town, Which for such pomp fit theatre should be, Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee.”
In this city are many vestiges of the splendour of the Burgundian Dukedom, and the long black mantle universally worn by the females is probably a remnant of the old Spanish connection, which, if I do not much deceive myself, is traceable in the grave deportment of its inhabitants. Bruges is comparatively little disturbed by that curious contest, or rather conflict, of Flemish with French propensities in matters of taste, so conspicuous through other parts of Flanders. The hotel to which we drove at Ghent furnished an odd instance. In the passages were paintings and statues, after the antique, of Hebe and Apollo; and in the garden a little pond, about a yard and a half in diameter, with a weeping willow bending over it, and under the shade of that tree, in the centre of the pond, a wooden painted statue of a Dutch or Flemish boor, looking ineffably tender upon his mistress, and embracing her. A living duck, tethered at the feet of the sculptured lovers, alternately tormented a miserable eel and itself with endeavours to escape from its bonds and prison. Had we chanced to espy the hostess of the hotel in this quaint rural retreat, the exhibition would have been complete. She was a true Flemish figure, in the dress of the days of Holbein; her symbol of office, a weighty bunch of keys, pendent from her portly waist. In Brussels the modern taste in costume, architecture, etc., has got the mastery; in Ghent there is a struggle: but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a thinly-peopled city is inexpressibly soothing; a pensive grace seems to be cast over all, even the very children.–“Extract from Journal.”