In the bright avenue of elms, called the Long Walk, which connects the home park with the Great Park of Windsor, Master Lewis told the boys the story of the lamented Princess Amelia and her unhappy father, who became insane from his loss, when she died. The pathetic story made a great impression on the minds of the party, and it was several hours before they resumed their accustomed air of gayety and enjoyment. They returned to London in the late evening twilight, and the next day the party separated. George Howe and Leander Towle remained in London until the sailing of the next steamer for America; and Master Lewis and the boys under his own care took a steamer for Antwerp.
CHAPTER XIII.
BELGIUM.
Belgium.—Dog-carts.—Waterloo.—Aix-la-Chapelle and Charlemagne.—Story of Charlemagne.—Ghent and James van Artevelde.—Bruges.—Story of Charles the Rash.—Longfellow’s “Belfry of Bruges.”—French Diligences.—Normandy.—A Story-telling Driver.—Story of the Wild Girl Of Songi.
ANVERS!” By this name is Antwerp known in Belgium, of which it is the chief commercial port.
The Class stopped here only long enough to visit the Cathedral, where are to be seen two of Rubens’ most celebrated pictures, the Elevation of and the Descent from the Cross. The boys climbed up to the belfry of the famous spire, whose bells make the air tremble for miles with the melody of their chimes.
It was Master Lewis’s plan to travel through the lower part of Belgium and through Normandy by short journeys near the coast, but he made a détour from Antwerp to Brussels that the boys might visit the battlefield of Waterloo.
The landscape along the route to Brussels was dotted with quaint windmills, reminding one of the old pictorial histories, in which Holland is illustrated by cuts of these workshops of the air.
The boys entered the city in the morning and passed in view of the great market square and its contiguous streets.