Seven Weeks in Belgium, Switzerland, Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. OSTEND. May 10. Though I had only slept some three or four hours, and, on the night preceding, much less, I awoke quite refreshed. It is astonishing how little sleep a person seems to require under the influence of travelling excitements. Of this fact I had abundant proof, especially towards the latter part of our journey. "Boots" was astir; and, seeing he was a somewhat facetious sort of personage, sufficiently impressed with a sense of his own importance, I took the opportunity of inquiring, whilst he was performing the offices usually done at home by one's valet, --"How do you like your new king?" "Oh, very good." "When will you want another?" Here he looked up, as though to ascertain the drift of my inquiry. I did not give him any clue, and he replied tartly, --"We don't want another." "Not yet perhaps;--but I reckon you will want the old one back, ere long." The ire of our pedal functionary was hardly to be restrained. The impotent anger flashing from his pale grey eyes, he exclaimed, "Never We don't want him --We will not have him --He's a bad king for us entirely." "He was only too good: had he treated you according to your deserts, you would have thought better of him." Here I suddenly recollected my imprudence--so fresh from our free, if not happy, country, where every man can speak his opinion without fear of spies and gens d'armes. I had forgotten that such persons as the one before me are very generally in the pay of the police; and that I might chance to find myself in confinement some cool morning, ere long, for this freedom of speech. Such are the boasted effects of "liberal institutions," and the splendid achievements of that " liberty and equality" which usually ends in the worst, the most odious, forms of tyranny and oppressio...