Spiers: Memoranda of an autumn tour in 1836

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CONT AUG 15 MON

a dangerous one, he objected to obey the command & was then desired to conduct his regiment back to Brussels to a post that might suit his bravery better in to animate by his presence the frightened inhabitants of that place.

We looked into the church of Genappe en passant. It was filled with devotees & grand mass was performing this being the day of Notre Dame. - We breakfasted at Quatre Bras where the diligence took us up & in few hours took us to Namur. Our companions were a laughing young lady & her mama who coquetted much with a spruce young blade in a straw hat. - The road had nothing in it of remarkable until our approach to Namur when the hills around seemed to rise to form a high rock for the citadel. All the world were making holiday the men as usual in blue bleuse, like mice, the women in all gay colors. Wooden shoes we had left behind us; throughout our progress of Belgium barefooted people were extremely rare, when thick soled shoes are 6d or 8d a pair, it would be strange if any should be without. We saw the second mendicant today. This looks well for a catholic country.

At Namur, the principal traces of the Brabant architecture on the houses which had so much pleased us seemed to be lost. Much did we regret this & in looking over Paul's letters to his kinsfolk I found so excellent a reason for the preference we awarded it that I will copy it at length. "It is in the streets of Antwerp & Brussels that the eye still rests upon the forms of architecture which appear in the pictures of the Flemish school, - those fronts richly decorated with various ornaments and terminating in roofs, the slope of which is concealed from the eye by windows and gables still more highly ornamented; the whole comprising a general effect which from its grandeur and intricacy, at once amuses and delights the spectator. In fact, this rich intermixture of towers and battlements and projecting windows, highly sculptured, joined to the height of the houses, and the variety of ornaments upon their fronts, produce an effect as superior to those of the tame uniformity of a modern street, as the casque of the warrior exhibits over the slouched broad

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