Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/211

Rh which these led to, were over, I set off in company with these amiable friends, to visit some of the remarkable towns and places of Belgium.

First of Ghent.

In Ghent, it was so rainy, that I could see nothing of the exterior of this celebrated old city, excepting the many bridges and canals, over which we drove. Of the interior, I saw the library, as well as various orphanages, or educational institutions for fatherless and motherless children, as well as poor girls. These are under the care of nuns; the girls are employed in lace-making, in which they acquire great skill. I had visited such institutions also in Brussels, and there, as in Ghent, had seen their costly labors; had seen small pocket-handkerchiefs, which cost each from five to seven hundred francs—and which seemed to me more suitable for the noses of angels than for those of human beings—small collars, which cost from two to three hundred, and so on. However wondrously beautiful this work may be, yet I cannot feel glad that this branch of industry is so universal amongst the female population of Belgium, and I believe that it is neither beneficial nor healthy in any respect. I received in Brussels, a well-written anonymous letter, which warned me not to judge of these lace-making, educational institutions, according to their outward seeming, assuring me that “the greater number of the young girls brought up in them, gave themselves up, on leaving them, to an immoral and dissolute way of life.” I have not much faith in anonymous letters, nor in those who write them; still it seems to me more than probable, that the long-continued sedentary