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presently, Mr. Hunsden—to-morrow, if all be
well: I'll not stay a day longer in X— than I'm obliged."
    "Very good—but it will be decent to make due acknowledgment for
the assistance you have received; be quick! It is just going to
strike seven: I'm waiting to be thanked."
    "Just stand out of the way, will you, Mr. Hunsden: I want a key
there is on the corner of the mantelpiece. I'll pack my
portmanteau before I go to bed "
    The house clock struck seven.
    "The lad is a heathen," said Hunsden, and taking his hat from a
sideboard, he left the room, laughing to himself. I had half an
inclination to follow him: I really intended to leave X— the
next morning, and should certainly not have another opportunity
of bidding him good-bye. The front door banged to.
    "Let him go," said I, "we shall meet again some day."

Chapter VII
*
    READER, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don't know
the physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments
defined upon your memory, as I have them on mine?
    Three—nay four—pictures line the four-walled cell where are
stored for me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that
picture is in far perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly
coloured, green, dewy, with a spring sky, piled with glittering
yet showery clouds; for my childhood was not all sunshine—it had
its overcast, its cold, its stormy hours. Second, X—, huge,
dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked; a yellow sky, sooty clouds;
no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs blighted and
sullied—a very dreary scene.
    Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the
fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or
may not, as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for
the present it must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic
and unpoetic, yet name that whenever uttered has in my ear a
sound, in my heart an echo, such as no other assemblage of
syllables, however sweet or classic, can produce. Belgium! I
repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. It stirs my
world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves
unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that
slept, are seen by me ascending from the clods—haloed most of
them—but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to
ascertain definitely their outline, the sound which wakened them
dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist,
absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments.
Farewell, luminous phantoms!
    This is Belgium, reader. Look! don't call the picture a flat or
a dull one—it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first
beheld it. When I left Ostend on a mild February morning, and
found myself on the road to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to
me. My sense of enjoyment possessed an edge whetted to the
finest, untouched, keen, exquisite. I was young; I had good
health; pleasure and I had never met; no indulgence of hers had
enervated or sated one faculty of my nature. Liberty I clasped in
my arms for the first time, and the influence of her smile and
embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind. Yes, at
that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that
from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise;
what if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not;
his eyes are fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and
gilded, and having gained it he is certain of the scene beyond.
He knows that the sun will face him, that his chariot is even now
coming over the eastern horizon, and that the herald breeze he
feels on his cheek is opening for the god's career a clear, vast
path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl and warm as flame.
Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained by energy,
drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot no
hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the
crimson