Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/130

Rh ; rich it certainly is, and enjoyed it appears. After a bustle and confusion at the depôt that made us feel quite at home, we finally got into an omnibus with twelve persons inside, nearly as many outside, and an enormous quantity of baggage, all drawn with apparent ease by two of these gigantic Finnish horses, looking, like their masters, well content with their lot in life.

Brussels is a royal residence, and gay with palaces and park. The park impresses me as twice as large as St. John's in New-York; it has abundance of trees, a bit of water with a rich fringe of flowers, and statues, in bad taste enough. There are splendid edifices overlooking it, and among them the palace of the Prince of Orange, and King Leopold's. That of the Prince of Orange, which Leopold, with singular delicacy for a king, has refused to occupy or touch, is shown to strangers. We were unlucky in the moment of making our application to see it. First come first served is the democratic rule adopted. Four parties were before us, and as we could not bribe the portress to favour us—to her honour I record it—and had no time to waste in waiting, we came away and left unseen its choice collection of paintings. Our coachman, to console us for our disappointment, urged us to go into the royal coach-house and see a carriage presented to William, which, he gave us his assurance—truly professional—was better worth seeing than anything in Brussels! A gorgeous thing it was, all gold and crimson outside, white satin and embroidery in; and with