Spiers: Memoranda of an autumn tour in 1836

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CONT. AUG. 16. TUES.

all painted with flowers and a fine large marygold window at one end & 3 lofty arched windows behind the altar at the opposite end of its long vaulted aisle. But the carving of Northern Belgium was lost. - From the bridge there is a pretty view as there always must be indeed & we reclined on its parapet a long time waiting for the arrival of the diligence. We should have visited the fortress but that we were told the diligence would not give us time & we did not attempt therefore to see it further than the entrance 60 or 80 yards up the rock. As it fell out we had much more time than it would have required but the risk of losing our places was too great to venture on. - The road to Liège crosses the river - the valley continues to increase in width "the river widens, forming itself into lakes, and having green and wooded islands, and bearing on its glassy breast numerous barks & boats: the country swells into knolls, richly variegated with gardens & orchards and coarsed with smiling habitations; and far away, rising as if from the broad river, the city of Liège stands in pinnacled grandeur."

We had other sources of amusement in our fellow passengers who were in the cabriolet while we were among the luggage behind. The conducteur's little dog was perched on the top of the cabriolet and obliged them with more proof of his being there than they required. By the bye, the dogs throughout Belgium are generally speaking a most illegitimate sort of breed excepting in one particular that they all rejoice in curly tails. These tails they cock over their backs with a pertness which makes them ridiculous & they bark at one's heels, coming out of their way across a field of corn or a square for the pleasure they appear to experience in it. I wished often for a whip with a long lash to have changed their unlasting note, they took care to keep just out of the range of our sticks. There are an immense number of them too for there seem few houses without one. I recollect that Hogg in his

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