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.
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            "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."
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        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."