Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/47



was a very well-informed Belgian in the carriage, and he told us something interesting about nearly every town through which we passed. I felt that if I could have kept awake, and have listened to that man, and remembered what he said, and not mixed things up, I should have learnt a good deal about the country between Ostend and Cologne.

He had relations in nearly every town, had this man. I suppose there have been, and are, families as large and as extensive as his; but I never heard of any other family that made such a show. They seemed to have been planted out with great judgment, and were now all over the country. Every time I awoke, I caught some such scattered remark as:

"Bruges—you can see the belfry from this side—plays a polka by Haydn every hour. My aunt lives here." "Ghent—Hôtel de Ville, some say finest specimen of Gothic architecture in Europe—where