CHAPTER V.BRUSSELS.
BRUSSELS.
The railroad—Confusion at Malines—Country between Ghent and Dendermonde—Vilvorde—The palace of Laeken—First view of Brussels—The Grand Place in the old town—The Hôtel de Ville and Maison Communale—The new town—The churches of Brussels—The carved oak pulpits of the Netherlands—St. Gudulemonuments—Statue of Count F. Merode—Geefs, the sculptor—Notre Dame de la Chapelle—The museum—Palais de l’Industrie—The gallery of paintings—The Library—Its history—Remarkable MSS.—Curiosities in the museum of antiquities—Private collections—Rue Montagne de la Cour—The theatre—Historical associations with the Hôtel de Ville—Counts Egmont and Horn—The civil commotions ofPhilip II—The fountains of Brussels—The Cracheur—The mannekin, his memoirs—Fountain of Lord Aylesbury—Dubos’ restaurant—The hotels of Brussels—Secret to find the cheapest hotels in travelling.
The railroad—Confusion at Malines—Country between Ghent and Dendermonde—Vilvorde—The palace of Laeken—First view of Brussels—The Grand Place in the old town—The Hôtel de Ville and Maison Communale—The new town—The churches of Brussels—The carved oak pulpits of the Netherlands—St. Gudulemonuments—Statue of Count F. Merode—Geefs, the sculptor—Notre Dame de la Chapelle—The museum—Palais de l’Industrie—The gallery of paintings—The Library—Its history—Remarkable MSS.—Curiosities in the museum of antiquities—Private collections—Rue Montagne de la Cour—The theatre—Historical associations with the Hôtel de Ville—Counts Egmont and Horn—The civil commotions ofPhilip II—The fountains of Brussels—The Cracheur—The mannekin, his memoirs—Fountain of Lord Aylesbury—Dubos’ restaurant—The hotels of Brussels—Secret to find the cheapest hotels in travelling.
Weagain availed ourselves of the railroad from Ghent to Brussels, starting from the Monk’s Meadow at eight o’clock in the morning, and made the journey in about three hours and a half. The route is considerably increased in length, owing to the line making an angle in order to traverse Malines, which has been made a centre at which every branch of the entire system converges and take a fresh departure. This arrangement may be a convenience to the directory, but it is an annoyance to the public, not only by the extension of the distance they have to travel, but by the scene of bustle, confusion, and risk created by the concourse of so many trains at the same point, the nuisance and danger of which can hardly be exaggerated;engines bellowing, horns sounding, luggage moving, and crowds rushing to secure their places in the departing train, or to escape from being run over by the one coming in.
The aspect of the country was, in all directions, the same—tame, but rich and luxuriant, with vessels toiling along its tributary canals, and here and there the Scheldt making its tortuous windings through long lines of pines and alders. One thing strikes a stranger as singular in this province, the almost total absence of pasture land, and the appearance of no cattle whatsoever in the fields, the ground being found to be more valuable under cultivation, and cattle more economically fed within doors. The railroad passes by some pretty but unimportant villages, such as Wetteren and Auderghem, before arriving at Termonde, more familiarly known to us as the Dendermonde of my Uncle Toby’s military commentaries. At Auderghem, a road turns to the right toAlost, one of the most flourishing towns of East Flanders, and a prosperous seat of the flax and linen trade.
After passing Dendermonde, we entered the province of Brabant, at the little village of Hombech, and the train, after traversing Lehendael (the Valley of Lillies), stopped at Mechlin, whose towers had been visible long before reaching the station. One of the most conspicuous objects here, is an immense brick building, erected in 1837 or 38, for the purpose of spinning linen yarn, but never having been applied by its proprietors to that purpose, has lately been purchased by an English gentleman, Mr. Fairburne, to be converted into a manufactory of machinery, a department of manufacture which, in the present state of of Belgium, I much fear is not likely to prove more encouraging.
From Malines to Brussels, the distance is fifteen miles, and was performed in something less than half an hour, the road lying through broad meadows and more extensive pastures than any I have yet seen in Belgium. On the left, these plains swell into a gentlehill of some miles in length, on which the towers and steeples of Brussels are discernible long before we approach them. Within a few miles of Malines, we passed Vilvorde, an ancient place, but now only remarkable for its vast prisons, which are seen at a considerable distance. It was at Vilvorde that Tindal, the first translator of the Bible into English, was burned for heresy in 1536.
Before arriving at the termination of the journey, the road sweeps along between two gentle elevations, that on the left being covered with the villas and pleasure-grounds of Schaerbeek, the Hampstead of Brussels, and to the right, with the woods and palace of Schoenberg, near the village of Laeken, a favourite residence of King Leopold. It was built in 1782, by the Archduke Albert, for the sister of the unhappy Marie Antoinette, and to serve for the future residence of the Austrian governor of the Netherlands. It suffered during the saturnalia of the French revolution, when a lofty tower, which rose above the woodsthat surround it, was torn down and sold for the price of the materials. Napoleon was partial to the palace as a summer retreat, and it was whilst lingering here with Marie Louise, that he completed the final and fatal arrangements for the invasion of Russia. It is handsomely, rather than magnificently furnished, but the grounds and gardens, which have all been re-modelled in the English style, are amongst the most beautiful in Europe, and command extensive views of the broad wooded campagne of Brabant, and the cheerful heights and gothic towers of Brussels.
The first sight of Brussels, on approaching it from the side of Malines, is well calculated to give a favourable impression of its beauty and extent, the long planted line of the Allée Vert, terminating at the handsome gate d’Anvers, (formerly the Porte Guillaume, before the change of dynasty), with its dark iron balustrade and gilded capitals, and in front, the steep acclivity covered with streets and buildings of the modern and more elegant town, whilst the turretsof the Hôtel de Ville and the towers of St. Gudule are equally conspicuous, rising above the roofs of the ancient city which nestles at its base. The city itself, though of remote antiquity, has nothing very antique in its first appearance, and, in fact, it is only in the narrow alleys and passages of the lower quarter that the mansions and municipal buildings of the former nobles and burghers of Brabant are to be discerned. Even here there are fewer architectural traces of the magnificence of the middle ages than in almost any other of the great cities of Belgium. The Grand Place is a splendid exception to this observation, as it is surrounded on all sides with lofty old Spanish-looking houses, in the style, at least, if not of the date of the palmy days of Brabant, its high peaked roofs bristling with tiers of little grim windows, its pointed gables covered with bas-reliefs and carvings, and the ample fronts of its mansions richly decorated with arabesques in stone, which had once been gaudily coloured, and here and there tipped with gold.On one side starts up to a surprising height the gothic tower of the Hôtel de Ville, by far the most beautiful in the Low Countries, and on the opposite one is a vast gloomy-looking building, now converted into shops, which was once theMaison Communaleof the city; and being rebuilt by the Infanta Isabella, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was, in commemoration of the deliverance of Brussels from the plague, dedicated to Notre Dame de la Paix, with an inscription, which is still legible, though much defaced: “A peste, fame et bello libera nos Maria pacis.”
It is in the narrow and dingy passages of this lower town, that a stranger feels all the associations of the olden time around him; but on ascending by the steep and precipitous streets to the modern quarter, with its light and beautiful houses, its open squares and gardens, with their fountains and statues, and all that is French and fashionable, the charm of association is gone, and one feels something like coming suddenly into the daylight from the dim scenery of amelodrame. To the stranger in Brussels there are, therefore, two distinct sets of objects of attraction. In the new town there are the palaces of the King and the nobles, the park, the public promenades, the chambers of the Senate and the Commons, the splendid hotels of the Place Royal, and the libraries and museums that occupy the château which was once the residence of the Austrian viceroys; whilst in the old town, there are the churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with their superb oak carvings, stained windows and statuary, the Hôtel de Ville, the gloomy old mansions of the past race of nobles, and all the characteristic memorials of the ancient capital. The first are speedily disposed of by the tourist, as there is nothing unique in any of the lions of Brussels, its inhabitants are, in fact, anxious to have their city considered a miniature Paris, and it seems to have been laid out altogether on the model of the French capital, with its boulevards and its palace gardens, its opera,its restaurants and its “café des milles colonnes.”
The churches, are, as usual, splendid specimens of gorgeous altars, (with their ponderous candelabra and Madonnas in embroidered petticoats,) solemn aisles, marble columns, painted ceilings, Flemish pictures and carved pulpits, so flowing and graceful in their execution, that they look as if the Van Hools and Van Bruggens of former times, possessed some secret for fusing the knotted oak and pouring it into moulds to form their statues and their wreathes of flowers. Their Pulpits are, in reality, one of the wonders of the Netherlands, they are of immense dimensions, some of them reaching almost as high as the gothic arches which separate the nave from the side aisles. The lower department usually represents some appropriate scene from the events of sacred history, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, Elijah fed by ravens, the conversion of St. Paul, with the frightened horse most vigorously introduced,or Christ calling Peter and Andrew, who are represented in their boat by the sea-shore, with their nets and fish, all exquisite specimens of the art; and, occasionally, the designs are allegorical, with figures of Time, Truth and Christianity. Above these, usually rises a rock, or a mass of foliage and flowers, on which are perched birds and other accompaniments, and on this rests the shell of the pulpit, the whole is then surmounted, either by a canopy sustained by angels and cherubims, or by the spreading branches of a palm tree, so arranged as to overshadow the whole. Almost every great church and cathedral in Belgium contains one of these unique productions of an art which is now almost extinct, or, at least, possessed of no practitioners at all qualified to cope in excellence with these ancient masters. The confessionals, altars and organs are likewise elaborately covered with these almost unique decorations, and even the doors and windows sometimes exhibit specimens of extraordinary beauty and value.
Thechurch of St. Gudule, which is the most remarkable at Brussels, has two huge gothic towers, each nearly the same height with St. Pauls, and from their solid and massy construction looking even more stupendous; but the effect is seriously injured by a number of ordinary houses, which have been permitted to be erected against the very walls of the building!—a curious instance of the absence of all taste in the ecclesiastical body, who can thus permit, for money, the actual defacement of their finest building. The pillars which sustain the roof within, bear each in front a colossal statue, of which there are fourteen or sixteen representing the various saints and apostles, some of them by Duquesnoy and Quellyn, but the generality of inferior merit. The pulpit was carved by Van Bruggen in 1699, and was presented to the cathedral by the Empress Maria Theresa.
The windows which are of dimensions proportioned to the huge scale of the church are all of rich stained glass, partly antique and partly of modern execution, but of greatbrilliancy of tint and high talent in design. The high altar is so composed by some ingenious machinery within, that the sacred wafer descends apparently of itself, at the moment when the host is about to be elevated by the officiating priest.
Around the choir are the monuments of some of the ancient Dukes of Brabant, surmounted by their effigies in armour, with swords and helmets disposed by their side; that of John II, who married Margaret of England, and died in 1318, bears a figure of the Belgic lion in gilded bronze, which weighs nearly three tons. Opposite this is another to the memory of the Archduke Ernest of Austria, on which rests a figure clad in mail. Close by it a marble slab in the floor covers the vault in which are interred some members of the imperial family who died during their vice-royalty at Brussels.
One statue in St. Gudule is remarkable as a favourable specimen of modern art in Belgium, it is that of the Count Frederick de Merode, a young nobleman of mostamiable personal character, whose father was of one of the ancient families of Brabant, and his mother a Grammont. On the outburst of the revolution in 1830, he returned from France, where he was residing, enrolled himself as a volunteer in a corps of sharpshooters raised by the Marquis de Chasteler, and was killed whilst leading a charge against the Dutch rear-guard, under the command of Duke Bernard of Saxe Weimar. This monument is by Geefs of Brussels, who has evinced equal judgment and ability in retaining the national blouse as the costume of his statue, and yet so disposing it as to render it perfectly classical by his arrangement. Geefs is by far the most distinguished artist, as a sculptor, in Belgium, and has recently erected a spirited statue of General Belliard in the Park overlooking the Rue Royale, and the grand monument over the remains of the revolutionary partisans, who fell in the three glorious days “of 1830,” and are interred in the centre of thePlace des Martyrs.
The other churches of Brussels contain little that is worth a visit. In that of Notre Dame de la Chapelle, there is a high altar from a design by Rubens, one of those works in which he has so profusely exhibited his astonishing command of arabesque and allegorical devices. The pulpit is another specimen of wood carving, representing Elijah fed by ravens. It is remarkable that in all the churches of Brussels, there is not a single painting of more than common place ability, nor a single specimen of either Vandyck or Rubens—painters, it would seem, like prophets, are to seek for their patrons at some distance from home.
The municipal collections of art are deposited in the museum and picture gallery in the Palais des Beaux Arts, formerly the vice-regal residence of the Austrian governors. In one wing of the building, called the Palais d’Industrie, are deposited models of machinery, agricultural instruments, and inventions of all kinds applicable to manufactures. The collection iscostly and extensive, and cannot fail to exercise a beneficial influence in the education of mechanics. The main galleries of the palace are filled with the national pictures, which amount to between three and four hundred. The description of a painting is scarcely more intelligible or satisfactory than the description of an overture. Amongst the collection are a few of considerable merit, but the vast majority are of the most ordinary description. There are a few by Rubens and Vandyck, not of the first order, some by Breughel, Cuyp, Gerard Dow, and the chiefs of that school; a multitude by the Crayers and Van Oorts and Vander Weydes, whose works one meets in every Flemish chapel, and a number of the early painters of the Netherlands, in which, I confess, I am not connoisseur enough to discover anything very attractive beyond their antiquity and curiosity as specimens of the feeble efforts of art in its infancy.
Under the same roof is the magnificent Library, begun by the Dukes of Burgundy so far back as the fourteenth century, andenriched by every subsequent sovereign of the Netherlands, till its treasures now amount to 150,000 volumes of printed books and 15,000 manuscripts; amongst which are numbers whose pedigree through their various possessors is full of historical interest, and some which belonged to the library of Philip the Hardy, in 1404, and described in the “Inventoire des livres et roumans de feu Monseigneur(Philip le Hardi),a qui Dieu pardonne, que maistre Richart le Conte, barbier de feu le dict Seigneur, a euzen garde.” Its chief treasures it owes, however, to Philip the Good, the Lorenzo de Medicis of the Low Countries, who attracted to his court such geniuses as Oliver de la March, Monstrelet, Philip de Commines, the chroniclers and men of learning of his time, and kept constantly in his employment the most able “clerks,” “escripvains” and illuminators, engaged in the preparation of volumes for his “librarie,” and having united all the provinces of the Netherlands under his dominion, he collected at Brussels themanuscripts of the Counts of Flanders, in addition to his own. The identical copy of the Cyropedia of Xenophon, which he had transcribed for the study of his impetuous son, Charles le Téméraire, and which accompanied him to the disastrous field of Morat, is still amongst the deposits in this superb collection.
Another of its illustrious founders was Margaret of Austria,la gente demoiselle, daughter to the gentle-spirited Mary of Burgundy, and friend of Erasmus and Cornelius Agrippa, who amassed for it the invaluable collection of “Princeps” editions, which were then issuing from the early press of Venice and the North. The Library still contains the common-place book of this interesting Princess, with her verses in her own handwriting, and music of her own composition.
Another equally charming guardian of literature was her niece, Mary of Austria, the sister of Charles V and Queen Dowager of Hungary, who transferred to the library of Brussels the manuscripts which her husband,Louis II, had inherited from his grandfather, Mathias Corvinus. Amongst these, is a missal, one of the wonders of the collection, painted at Florence in 1485, and abounding in the most exquisite miniatures, arabesques and illuminated cyphers. From the period of its deposit in Brussels, the Dukes of Brabant took their oath of inauguration by kissing the leaves of this priceless volume, and two pages which had been opened for this purpose at the accession of Albert and Isabella, in November 1599, are spotted with the flakes of snow which fell upon the book during the solemnity.
In the vicissitudes of Brussels, the contents of her Library has always been an object of cupidity for her invaders. In 1746, Marshal Saxe sent a selection of its treasures to Paris, which were restored in 1770, and again seized by the revolutionary army of Dumourier in 1794, and though recovered in 1815, it was with the loss of many of its precious deposits. But even the disappearance of these was less exasperatingthan the insensate vandalism of the savants of the revolution, who actually rubbed out with their wetted fingers, the portraits of the ancient emperors and kings, and even of the saints who happened to wear a crown, in order to evince their inexpressible hatred of monarchy.
Amongst the manuscripts, are some few which escaped from the sack of Constantinople in 1453, and bear the names and handwriting of Chalcondylas, Chrysolaras, and the restorers of Grecian literature, who, on the overturn of the Eastern Empire, found a refuge at Rome and at the court of the Medicis. The bindings of numbers of them, bear the imperial cypher of Napoleon, but the majority have still their ancient velvet covers, the richness of which, with their clasps of gilded silver which secure them, attest the value which was placed upon their contents by their illustrious owners.
An adjoining apartment is devoted to some interesting antiquities, among which, are a court-dress of Charles II, a souvenir of his sojourn at Brussels during the ascendancyof Cromwell; a cloak of feathers, which belonged to Montezuma; the cradle in which Charles V. was rocked; and two stuffed horses which bore Albert and Isabella at the battle of Nieuport, one an Andalusian barb which had accompanied the Infanta from Spain, the other a Moravian which afterwards saved the life of the Archduke at the siege of Ostend in 1604.
In the private mansions of Brussels there are numerous collections of pictures and objects of vertu, much more valuable than those which are the property of the nation. Those of the Duke d’Aremberg, the Prince de Ligne, M. Maleck de Werthenfels, and the Count Vilain XIV, contain several masterpieces of the Dutch and Flemish masters, and some few by Raphael Leonardo de Vinci, and the chiefs of the Italian school. The name of this latter gentleman is somewhat remarkable; his ancestor, who was ennobled by Louis XIV, being permitted to append the cypher of the monarch to his name and that of his descendants. The collection of the Duke d’Aremberg,besides a number of paintings of great excellence, contains a remarkable marble, which has excited much curious investigation amongst the dilettanti; it is a head, the fragment of a statue, whichis saidto have originally belonged to the main figure in the group of the Laocoon in the Vatican, the present head being only a restoration. The truth of this is questioned, but the connoisseurs attached to Napoleon were so satisfied of its truth, that the Emperor, by their advice, offered the possessor, weight for weight, gold for marble, if he would allow the head to resume its ancient position on the shoulders of the statue which was then in the gallery of the Louvre. The Duke, unwilling to part with it, declined, but aware of the determined nature of Napoleon’s caprices, sent it privately out of the country, and had it concealed at Dresden till the fall of the Emperor, when it was restored to its old place in the library of the Palais d’Aremberg. That the head of the central figure in the group of the Vatican is a restoration, there can be no doubt;it was copied, it is said, from an antique gem. The head at Brussels, was found by some Venetian explorers, and sold to the father or grandfather of the present Duke d’Aremberg. Whether it be the genuine original or not, no possible doubt can be entertained of its masterly execution, and the vigour and fire of expression with which it glows, justify any opinion in favour of its origin.
An almost precipitous street, appropriately called “Rue Montagne de la Cour,” rises in a straight line from the lowest level of the ancient town to the hill on which the new one is situated, which is filled with the best and most showy shops in Brussels; jewellers, printsellers, confectioners and modistes, and crowded at all hours of the day with carriages and fashionable loungers. At the bottom of this steep acclivity, is the Place de la Monnaie, where stands the theatre, in which the actual insurrection commenced in 1830, when the audience, inflamed by the music and declamation of the Muette de Portici, andinspired by the estro of Masaniello, rushed into the street and proceeded at once to demolish the residence of the minister, M. van Maanen. Turning a corner from this, one finds himself suddenly in the midst of the antique square in which stands the Hôtel de Ville, and the other principal municipal edifices of the past age—theforumof ancient Brabant, as the Place de Monnaie is of the modern. It was in this and in the sombre old mansions that are to be found in the precincts around it, that the pride of democracy appears to have delighted in “recording in lofty stone” its own magnificence, and lavished their public wealth upon the towers of the Town Hall, the most imposing monument of the popular power.
But, independently of its democratic associations, the Hôtel de Ville of Brussels was the scene of the most extraordinary episode that has ever been recorded in the chronicles of kings;—it was in the grand hall of the Hôtel de Ville that Charles V. wearied with the crown of a monarch, laidit aside to assume the cowl of a monk, and took his departure from the throne of an empire to die, a maniac, in the cell of a monastery. It was from one of the windows of the same building that the ferocious Duke of Alva looked on, in person, at the execution of two of the purest patriots of their own or any subsequent age—Lamoral, Count Egmont, and Philip de Montmorency, Count Horn—the first and most illustrious martyrs of the Reformation in the Netherlands. During the reign of terror under Philip II., Brussels was the grand scene of Alva’s atrocities and of his successors’ incapacity. It was in the little square of the Petit Sablon, that the protestant confederates assembled to draw up their famous remonstrance to Margaret of Parma, the sister and vice-queen of the bigotted tyrant, on the occasion of presenting which, by the hands of de Bredérode, the unlucky exclamation of “the beggars,” (Gueux) escaped from the incautious lips of the Count de Berlayment, in whispering his counsel to the grand-duchess to reject their prayer,a word which fell like a blister, and was adopted, at once, as the title and the sting of the protestant conjuration.
The square of the Hôtel de Ville was the scene of every popular commotion that has agitated Brabant, from the origin of the ducal dynasty, to the halcyon days of Albert and Isabella: it resounded with the insane riots of the Iconoclasts in 1566, and it was illuminated by the flames of the Inquisition, in which the same infuriated fanatics made a final expiation for their violence. It ran red with the blood of the protestants under Philip II.; and, in 1581, it rang with the acclamations of the followers of the Prince of Orange over the temporary abolition of the worship of Rome. So little is its architectural aspect altered since these thrilling scenes, that, with the Hôtel de Ville on one side, and on the other the old communal house, in which Egmont and Horn spent the night previous to their execution; and around them the venerable gothic fronts and fretted gables of its ancient dwellings, one mightalmost imagine it the ready scenery, and half expect the appearance of the dramatis personæ to re-enact the tragedy.
The ornamental monuments of Brussels are neither very numerous, nor remarkable for their refinement of taste. The public fountain called “le Cracheur,” is the statue of a man, with his arms folded, and vomiting the stream for the accommodation of the public; and the famous little fountain of themannekin, in the Rue de Chene, supplies her customers with water in a style perfectly unique, at least, in a statue. This eccentric little absurdity is the darling of the bourgeoisie, and the popular palladium of Brussels, and its memoirs are amongst the most ridiculous records of national trifling. The original which was of great antiquity, made of carved stone was replaced by one of iron. The present one is in bronze on the same model, and was cast by Duquesnoy in 1648. One story to account for its extreme popularity, is that it is a likeness of Godfrey, one of the Dukes of Brabant, who, when an infant, havingescaped from his nurse, was discovered at the spot in the attitude immortalized by the little statue. By the mob, the mannekin is perfectly worshipped—he is called “le plus ancien bourgeois de la ville,” has the freedom of the city, and a feast day in July regularly appointed in his honour. On this occasion, he is clothed in a suit which was given him by Louis XV., consisting of a cocked hat and feathers, a sword and costume complete, the King, at the same time, creating him a Chevalier de St. Louis. Charles V. was equally beneficent to the mannekin, and Maximilian of Bavaria assigned him a valet-de-chambre. He has also been left legacies by more than one of the citizens; at the present moment his income is upwards of four hundred francs, paid to his valet for his services upon state occasions, and to a treasurer for the management of his estates. Brussels has, more than once, been thrown into dismay by the mannekin being carried off, and the utmost exertion has been made for his recovery. The last violence offered to him was hisbeing carried off a few years since; but he was discovered in the house of a liberated felon, and speedily restored to his old place and functions amidst the delight of the Brussellois.
In the Place du Grand Sablon, another fountain, surmounted by a marble statue of Minerva, between figures, representing Fame and the river Scheldt, and holding a medallion with the heads of Francis I. and Maria Theresa was erected, as its inscription imports in 1711, by Thomas Bruce, Earl of Aylesbury, in recognition of the enjoyments he had experienced during a residence of forty years in Brussels.
We dined to day with the gentlemen who formed the Commission of Inquiry which had lately visited the linen districts of Great Britain. The entertainment was at du Bos’, Rue Fossé-aux-Loups, the favourite restaurant of Brussels, and the dinner was altogether French, and equal to the best cuisine of the Palais Royale. The hotels of Brussels, those, I mean, in its upper town, are on an immense scale, especially theBellevue, which overlooks the park, and was in the very focus of the fight during the “glorious three days” of 1830. Beside it is the Hôtel de Flandres, said to have the most recherché table-d’hôte of the entire, and such is its popularity, that we could neither obtain apartments in the hotel on our arrival, nor seats at the table on a subsequent occasion. In this dilemma, we took up our residence at a house on the opposite side of the same square, the Hôtel Brittanique, where we found the arrangements as execrable, in every respect, as the charges were monstrous. As usual, however, a stranger with his foot on the step of his carriage, has no resource but to submit; but, as a general rule, the traveller who is in search of thecheapesthotel, should invariably address himself to that which has the reputation of being thebest; where there is no temptation, as in the less frequented establishments, to make those who visit the house pay for the loss occasioned by the absence of those who avoid it, andwhere, even if the bill be occasionally something more than is equitable, he has, at least, the satisfaction of feeling that he has hadcomfortin exchange for extortion.