where his merits soon gained the favour of King Philip the Fourth, who conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. He married on his return to his own country, became burgomaster of Deventer, and died in the year 1681. Many of his best pictures may be seen in private galleries of this country. Dr. Waagen confers upon this artist the following high eulogy;-" Terburg is the real founder of the art of painting conversational pieces, and at the same time the most eminent master in this style. In delicacy of execution he is inferior to none, and in a certain tender fusion of the colours he excels all others; but none can be compared with him in the enchanting harmony, and silvery tone, and the observance of the aërial perspective. His figures, which are well drawn, have an uncommon ease of refinement, and are frequently very graceful."

MODESTY AND VANITY.

"THERE is positively no bearing it," said Arthur Beverton, a young and dashing captain in one of her majesty's crack regiments, to his friend, as they left the garden, the open gate of which allowed a glimpse of two fair forms within: "by Heavens! I will not bear it any longer: to waste my time upon an ungrateful girl, that thinks her fine eyes were only given her to tell the colour of the ground she walks on! I don't think she looked me in the face once the whole evening; and as for conversation, she was as silent as if she was the grand-daughter of Pythagoras. Ah! Charles, you're a happy man; what a pleasant chat you had with her sister Harriet:" and the captain looked as if he thought his uniform had been insulted.

"I, a pleasant chat with Harriet! you were never more mistaken in your life," said his more sedate companion, Charles Lisford, who was in training to represent the majesty of Britain with true diplomatic dignity at foreign courts. "She would not let me say a word; but went on singing, laughing, playing with her lap-dog, her flowers, and fan, with such bewitching grace, that I almost forgot my anger in my very admiration. What a pity she has not a little of the cheerful seriousness of her sister Rosa!"

"Cheerful seriousness! don't talk such nonsense, Charles. If to dress like a nun in a black veil, which she draws so confoundedly close as if the breath of the slightest zephyr would spoil her complexion; to speak like a girl that has not got beyond her words with two letters; if this deserve your epithet of' cheerful,' I admire your taste prodigiously. When she's my wife it shall be otherwise, trust me for it;

for have me she must and shall." And the two young men mounted their horses and rode towards town for some time in silence.

At last the mercurial captain suddenly exclaimed, "I think we shall catch them at last. I have a capital plan, and it shall be executed this very night. Come home with me, and we will concoct it together. It must succeed." And, putting spurs to their horses, they galloped out of sight in a moment.

Two or three days afterwards, old Squire Sedley, of Sedley Park, was sitting with his daughters Rosa and Harriet, when the servant brought two letters. Harriet took instant possession of them, exclaiming, "Dear papa, I'll read them to you directly;" and, humming a tune and giving a glance at the glass as she arose, which rendered some little adjustment of her shawl necessary, she drew her chair to her father's. Oh, the curiosity of the sex!" said the old man, smiling; "if I had my spectacles here, I would keep the news to myself. But give the letters to your sister. One might as well run a race with a locomotive as keep up with you. Why, I should not understand half of what you read. Rosa, my dear, open the letters, and let us hear what they contain."

66

Rosa obeyed her father's commands, broke the seal of the first letter. It was from Captain Arthur Beverton, and ran thus :

"MY DEAR SIR,-I write these few lines to inform you that our regiment has received sudden orders to prepare to go abroad. As we have been some time in England, it is not improbable that our absence may be of some years' duration. I shall be glad to see a little more active service than I could have hoped for at home. I have no relations; and the only regret I experience is at losing the society of your kind and hospitable circle. It would give me the greatest pleasure to bid you a personal farewell; but I am afraid that the preparations for our departure will hardly admit of this. With many thanks for your past kindnesses, allow me to remain, "Dear Sir, yours most truly,

"P. S. My adieus to the young ladies."

"ARTHUR BEVERTON."

"What! Arthur Beverton going abroad! I am sorry for it," said the good old man; "but it's what a soldier must expect-here to-day and gone to-morrow :" for the squire was a bit of a moralist. "What's in the other letter?" But Rosa, although in a studious, was in no reading mood. Harriet closed her fan, and with an arch smile proceeded to act as her substitute. The second letter was, as the reader rightly conjectures, from our young diplomatist. The fair reader glanced hastily at the signature, and slightly blushed as she read as follows:

"MY DEAR SIR,-You will be glad to learn that I am now about to commence my career as attaché to the British embassy at the court of the Grand Duke of Nirgendheim. As the situation has been some time vacant, it is the wish of the minister that I should lose no time in setting out for Germany; but I hope to find leisure enough to pay my respects to you and your fair daughters before my departure.

"Believe me, my dear Sir,

"Yours most obedient,

"CHARLES LISFORD."

The old gentleman was about to make his comments upon this second epistle, but his daughters had already disappeared; and a report, which seems to have come from the housekeeper's room, asserts that neither the lady's maid nor the lapdog were particularly charmed with the deportment of Miss Harriet on the morning in question. The latter felt himself most unjustifiably neglected, and the former vowed she had never known her young lady so hard to please.

Towards evening the sisters strolled together on the terrace, their favourite walk. But the beauties of the scene before them were unheeded; each seemed absorbed by her own thoughts, when the rapid sounds of horses' feet met their ear, and soon after Captain Arthur Beverton and Charles Lisford unexpectedly advanced from the house through the garden. The sisters, who had been standing arm-in-arm, in striking contrast, although a stranger might have read their relationship in their countenances, withdrew instinctively; but their lovers begged for a few short moments of sweet converse. The arguments which they advanced remain a profound secret. Miss Rosa kept her eyes on the ground as undeviatingly as ever, but the captain seemed not so irate at this circumstance as when it occurred on his preceding visit; her words were not more eloquent than before, yet the son of Mars seemed to bear the want of conversation with cheerful philosophy. The happy pair returned to the saloon, where the good old squire sat in silent solitude, for we can hardly call the decanters society. Charles and Harriet followed, and our embryo envoy seemed to find no difficulty in bringing in a word to-night, for his companion seemed to have borrowed her sister's silent tongue.

The father willingly gave his consent; the lovers, proud of their success, confessed their stratagem, which seems to have produced a most beneficial change in the character of the sisters. Rosa's modesty is less prim, but more natural; Harriet's love of admiration more subdued; in short, they both exhibit that union of modesty and vanity which renders them most captivating to our sex, and most agreeable to their own, for they make no display of that superior excellence which women are so seldom disposed to forgive.

VOL. II.

2 K

THE TOWN-HALL OF GHENT.

GHENT, the capital of the Belgian province of East Flanders, (formerly of the whole province of Flanders,) is situated at the confluence of the Lys, Lieve, and More, into the Scheldt. The city is built in the form of a triangle, and divided by canals, some of them navigable, into twenty-six islands, which are united by innumerable bridges. It is about ten, other writers say fifteen, miles in circumference, of which, however, one half is occupied by gardens, bleaching-grounds, and corn-fields. Ghent contains 82,000 inhabitants, eighteen gates, thirteen squares, and fifty-five churches. Of the Cathedral of St. Bavon's, with its famous pictures by Van Eyck, we have given an account in a former number. This city is the seat of a court and chamber of commerce, a university, an Athenæum, a seminary, an academy of painting, and a conservatory of music; it likewise contains twenty-four hospitals, several orphan asylums, and a house of Beguins, which was founded in 1230. Although it has fallen from the high rank which it had attained in the fifteenth century, it can still boast of many extensive manufactories and commercial establishments. Ghent is likewise celebrated for its cultivation of flowers, which forms an important article of trade, and the exhibitions in the four hundred greenhouses of this city place it in the very first rank in the department of floriculture.

This city is of great antiquity, mention of it being made as early as the seventh century. To protect it against the counts of Flanders, the emperor, Otto the Great, constructed a citadel; (949;) but about the end of the tenth century, the counts, whose power was on the increase, expelled the Imperial Burggraves. Under their dominion the power of the city greatly augmented; in the times of Philip of Valois and Charles the Sixth of France, it was able to bring fifty thousand men into the field. The proud citizens, confiding in their numbers, often defended their civic rights, or what they conceived to be such, against their sovereigns by force of arms. In 1415, when Duke Philip of Burgundy laid a new impost upon salt, his subjects rose against him with an army of thirty thousand men, destroyed three hundred villages, and kept the field for four years, until at last they were defeated at the battle of Aalst. When Mary of Burgundy, who resided in Ghent, after the death of her father, Charles the Bold, had sent her chancellor and Imbercourt to Louis XI., to treat for peace, her rebellious subjects seized upon the two nobles on their return from France, condemned them to death for undertaking the mission, and beheaded them in presence of the princess, who in vain sued to her subjects for mercy to her counsellors. This scene is doubtless familiar to many of our readers from Mr. James's