But this is not all.  Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them?  Your house was my house when I had no other.  The very money with which I bought my wedding-ring, and paid my marriage fees, was supplied by you.  It was with your sisters I left Edith during my six months’ absence, and for the six months after my return it was from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I was enabled to live by other means.  It is not the settling of a cash account that can cancel obligations like these.  You are in the habit of preserving your letters, and if you were not, I would entreat you to preserve this, that it might be seen hereafter.  Sure I am, there never was a more generous or a kinder heart than yours; and you will believe me when I add, that there does not live that man upon earth, whom I remember with more gratitude and more affection.  My heart throbs and my eyes burn with these recollections.  Good night! my dear old friend and benefactor.

TO JOHN MAY

Waterloo

Liege, 6 Oct. 1815.  Six p.m.

My dear friend,

I have a happy habit of making the best of all things; and being just at this time as uncomfortable as the dust and bustle, and all the disagreeables of an inn in a large filthy manufacturing city can make me, I have called for pen, ink, and paper, and am actually writing in the bar, the door open to the yard opposite to this unwiped table, the doors open to the public room, where two men are dining, and talking French, and a woman servant at my elbow is lighting a fire for our party.  Presently the folding-doors are to be shut, the ladies are to descend from their chambers, the bar will be kept appropriated to our house, the male part of the company will get into good humour, dinner will be ready, and then I must lay aside the grey goose-quill.  As a preliminary to these promised comforts, the servant is mopping the hearth, which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) of little bricks about two inches long by half an inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame.  The fuel is of fire-balls, a mixture of pulverized coal and clay.  I have seen a great deal and heard a great deal,—­more, indeed, than I can keep pace with in my journal, though I strive hard to do it; but I minute down short notes in my pencil-book with all possible care, and hope, in the end, to lose nothing....

Flanders is a most interesting country.  Bruges, the most striking city I have ever seen, an old city in perfect preservation.  It seems as if not a house had been built during the last two centuries, and not a house suffered to pass to decay.  The poorest people seem to be well lodged, and there is a general air of sufficiency, cleanliness, industry, and comfort, which I have never seen in any other place.