Spiers: Memoranda of an autumn tour in 1836

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CONT. AUG. 16. TUES.

- journal on the contt speaks of a cur who snapped at his heels somewhere in this part of the country & of which he says - "I gave him such a sincere hearty undisguised kick in the belly that he had the sense to take it as it was meant."

The old farm houses in nearly all the country thro' which we have passed, look like fortified buildings; may not this have been in former times when Flanders was not only the seat of war for many nations of Europe, but of much civil ?intestine broiling. - The chateaux also appear to partake of the same character, & are vastly unlike our ideas ?sur villa architecture.

The road gets more & more coal like on approaching Liège, nay so attached are the country gentlemen to its appearance that they use it for their garden walks instead of gravel. It looks remarkably ugly. - I was agreeably deceived in Liège; from descriptions I had read of its dirty atmosphere and from Inglis' acct of it in which he says, "They talk of smoke, and black towns in England - Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds & others; but Liège is the blackest of all the black towns that ever consumed coal," I feared that I should find it a city to abhor, for dirt is an abhorrence I utterly revolt at. Instead of which I saw no smoke, I saw no dirty manufacturing inhabitants: I saw only a nice boulevard on entering, a broad river, a quay with gardens to the water's edge on one side & a nice walk with good houses on the other, a church up on high, a flourishing town below, 3 or 4 noble squares, and everything to admire. I cannot tell whether it was the season of summer or that the grand fête had induced cleanliness in the inhabitants or their atmosphere by giving a holiday to its furnaces, but my recollections of Liège are all clean & cheerful & pleasant. It is a most flourishing town; its shops are good, its pistols, of which I bought some, are beautiful, its Cathedral has some fine painted glass, the first I have seen in Belgium, a painted roof and a chapel to which

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