richly-dressed priests, and acccompanied with the musical thunder of the pealing organ reverberating through the aisles; so that the whole effect was very striking. But, oh-to call this divine worship! some people were walking about; some crossing themselves at the receptacle for holy water; some gazing at the magnificent altars; others down on their knees praying by themselves, and appearing to have no sympathy with the general service. The church was crowded with military, who as they stood in their ranks down the nave, talked and laughed in the most unconcerned manner possible. It was truly a strange mixture of a holiday, with all the genuflexions, and bowings, and mummery of popery. The church was hung with pictures in tapestry; and the Bishop of Ghent, attended by a great number of his clergy, was present on the occasion, in his robes and mitre, as the great hierophant of these unmeaning ceremonies, which were also attended by the municipal authorities. We obtained a very good place, not far from the high altar, and had an excellent view of the whole affair, which was certainly showy enough ;-but as a religious service truly melancholy. When mass was over, the bishop passed down the aisle between the soldiers to give them his blessing; which, to judge from appearances, they did not very highly value. We were now at leisure to survey the church. which has no less than twenty-four side chapels, adorned with a profusion of pictures, and rich in brass and marble. The pulpit, of oak and white marble, is beautiful, and is supported by several large white marble figures of admirable expression: it cost, said the man who attended us, 120,000 florins, upwards of 10,000/-a goodly price for a pulpit, and one that might have sufficed for several apostolic churches! There are also, here, some fine tombs, especially that of Bishop Triest, who gave the four splendid candelabra near the altar :-the statue of the bishop is admirable.

Perhaps there are few incidents which convey to the mind a stronger impression of the absolute authority of the great modern autocrat-the deposer and maker of potentates and powers, civil and ecclesiastical, than the anecdote related of him by Mr. Boyce, in his 'Belgian Traveller.' The Prince of Broglio, Bishop of Ghent, had offended Napoleon; who, in consequence, imprisoned him, and supplied his place by a successor. The indignant clergy would not say mass with_the new bishop, nor in any way acknowledge his authority. The imperial autocrat, with his usual despatch, immediately ordered the ecclesiastics, to the number of two hundred and seventy, to be marched off to Antwerp, to work at the fortifications then going on at that place!-Who, in Europe, in the nineteenth century, could have ventured on such a command, but either the Czar of all the Russias, from his icy palace on the Neva;

or the Turk under the sanction of the scymitar and the holy crescent ;-or Buonaparte himself!

We visited the public library, formerly the church of a convent, and well adapted for the reception of ten thousand volumes: it is furnished with a curious machine for using a great many books together, and turning them, as convenience may require, with no danger of their falling off. The shades of the Botanic garden near the library, were very grateful after the intense heat of the town. On returning to the inn, we passed near the linen market, or Marché de Vendredi, the enormous cannon, eighteen feet long and three wide, which Charles V. placed here, to keep the citizens in awe. The town has grown up around the old castle in which this monarch was born: it has been a place of prodigious trade, and still carries on manufactures to a great extent.

LETTER II.

Road to Antwerp through the Pays de Waes. Traces of the siege of 1832. Changed feeling towards Catholic clergy, and remark of Bishop Hall. Tête de Expense of travelling. Passage across the Scheldt from Flandre. Antwerp. Hotel d'Antoine. Former vast trade, and wealth. Cathedral. Quintin Matsys. Church of the Dominicans, and its Calvary, and Purgatory. Church of the Jesuits. Museum. Citadel. Bombardment of the city by the Dutch in 1830. Siege and capture of the citadel by the French in 1832. Impressive effect of contrast. Waelham. Mechlin. Cathedral; its massy pulpit. Vilvorde. William Tyndale. Anticipations from the rail-road system. Brussels. Hotel de Brabant. Passport, Town-house. St. Gudule. Extraordinary pulpit. Jubilee of two hundred and fifty years in honor of the Très-Saint Sacrement de Miracle; and the origin of this festival. Ignorance. Manner in which devotions are sometimes performed. Notre Dame. St. Jacques. Park. Peter the Great. Palace of the Prince of Orange. Palace of the States General Museum. Université Libre de Belgique.

MY DEAR FRIEND: On leaving the great and important city of Ghent, we passed through the towns of Lokeren and St. Nicholas, to Antwerp. This country which is called the PAYS De Waes, is famed as a complete model of agricultural industry. Every part is in the highest state of cultivation, and bears traces of the immense and unwearied labor, which has overcome the natural sterility of the sandy soil, and has rendered this tract a continued garden; it is scattered over with houses, and occasionally a handsome château presents itself. roads are paved, in consequence of the looseness of the soil, The country is much which occasions a great deal of dust. enclosed, and there is an abundance of hemp and flax. Some

The

lace-makers sitting at their doors at work on the pillow, rẻ. minded us of some parts of England. As we approached Antwerp the scene entirely changed; large tracts being covered with sand, and the inundations which remain, presenting a gloomy contrast of the wasting effects which have followed in the train of war, to the cheerful results of human industry; for these desolations, having the appearance of widely-extended lakes and marshes, were occasioned by the Dutch cutting through the dykes, during the late siege, in order to lay the country under water.

We had three or four priests, as fellow-travellers, in another part of the diligence, each with a book under his arm, and looking very clerical; every time the diligence stopped they immediately got down, and went into the inn; and on inquiring the cause which, in perfect simplicity, we thought might be some Romish errand, we were amused at the reply of a lady who travelled with us, in the interior, Ah Monsieur, les prêtres ont toujours soif! The public feeling towards the priests, even in this favorite land of popery, is changed since the time when, upwards of two centuries ago, good Bishop Hall thought himself in danger, at Antwerp, in gazing on a procession of holy fathers, in consequence of his willing unreverence;' had not, as he says, 'the hulk of a tall Brabanter* shadowed' him from notice. As a specimen of the travelling charges, by diligence, in this country, it may be stated that we paid twenty-two francs, in the intérieur, or about four and sixpence each; the distance is thirty-two miles. The most disagreeable part of this journey was crossing the Scheldt, in a small and crowded boat, from the Tête de Flandre to Antwerp, which in rough weather, must be a great inconvenience, as the distance is nearly half a mile. The lofty tower of the cathedral, rearing itself to heaven in solitary pre-eminence, has a remarkable effect across the water. The magnificent Hotel d'Antoine in the Place Verte received us. At the table d'hôte some very free remarks were made respecting Leopold; and the impression appeared to be that he was not very firmly seated on the throne-but time will prove ;-his alliance with France is certainly his palladium.

ANTWERP is a most imposing city; the quays and basin are grand works, constructed by Napoleon: the Place de Mer, in which is a royal mansion, is considered one of the most magnificent streets in Europe; and the stately, antique edifices, which here and elsewhere rear themselves, as the representatives of ages that are past, have a solemn and impressive effect, and silently record the story of departed greatness. But the general appearance of the city is much injured by the inter

* Jones's Life of Bishop Hall.

mixture of sumptuous buildings with inferior houses; and the want of pavement is greatly felt here, as is the case in many continental towns. The splendid Town-House, in the great market-place, may be regarded as the tomb of Antwerp's glory;-for its date, of the latter part of the sixteenth century, is coeval with that of the decay of the commerce of what was once the paragon of cities. The Exchange, which furnished the model of that of London, was built at the beginning of the same century.

When the trade of Bruges declined, Antwerp rose at the expense of the sister emporium; the Italian, Hanseatic, and English merchants, were now seen to frequent the Scheldt; and in the time of Charles V. this city became the liveliest, the most commercial, and the most splendid in Europe. From the waters that paid their homage to its renown, the fruits of Flemish industry found their way to Arabia and the East; the productions of both the Indies, of Turkey, and of all trading countries from north to south, might be seen in its vast magazines, and its crowded markets; and Flemish bills were accepted in every quarter of the globe. In the middle of the 16th century, the Scheldt often bore on its bosom, at the same time, two thousand sail of merchantmen; and it was not uncommon for five hundred, daily, to enter and leave the port; while the weekly arrivals of carts and wagons, from various parts of the continent, were prodigious, and almost surpassing belief. The fortunes of the Antwerp merchants were such as kings might envy; and it is related that when Charles V. had accepted an invitation to dine with one of them, of whom he had borrowed nearly a million sterling, the citizen-Croesus threw the security into the fire, saying, that the honor his imperial guest had done him was equal to the value of the bill. But Antwerp was destined to see the wane of her glory: civil despotism, and ecclesiastical oppression, under the galling yoke of Rome-ridden Spain, combined with the scourge of war, destroyed her immense trade; and she has been for centuries but the shadow of her former self.

The cathedral is a magnificent gothic pile, of vast dimensions, with a tower of exquisite proportion and beauty, and the loftiest but one in Europe; from which, on a former visit to this place, on the way to Holland, I enjoyed a view, to an immense extent, of a very flat, highly cultivated, and populous country. The nave of this church is considered to be unrivalled in Belgium; and as there is no screen, the view is uninterrupted, and on entering, the fine effect of the spacious interior is at once felt. An immense number of vaulted arcades are supported by massive pillars, to form the aisles, which are more numerous than in most of the cathedrals in Christendom. The absence of showy ornament adds much to

the impression, which, as you enter at the west door, is chiefly that of simple majesty and grandeur. Here are Rubens's celebrated pictures, the Elevation of the Cross, and the Descent. The painting of the Descent from the Cross, in the north transept, attracts all eyes: the ghastly but superhuman countenance of the dead Saviour, and the deeply impressive effect of the whole scene, strongly arrest the amateur, whatever defects the professional connoisseur may detect in this master-piece. The Ascension of the Virgin, also by Rubens, adorns the high altar. There are some other beautiful pieces by the same and other hands, among which is a head of Christ, in the chapel of the Virgin, painted on marble by Vandyke. The superb organ; the pulpit; the marble pavement of the choir; the admirable imitation of bas-relief, in painting, at the back of the high altar; the exquisitely-sculptured tomb of Bishop Ambrose Capello, by Verbruggen; the altar-piece: the candelabra, and the supporters of the cross, at the altar; a picture of the agony in the garden, in a side chapel, with a striking expression of resignation; some relics of saints; and, to crown the whole, the figure of the Virgin as large as life, holding in her hand a large doll, representing the child Jesus, both being dressed in a very costly manner with candles burning before them, were the principal remaining objects that attracted our attention, in surveying this proud and spacious temple of error. Near the west front of the church, is the ornamental iron pump, made by the famous blacksmith, Quintin Matsys, before his love for the daughter of Flors made him a painter, in order to conciliate the good-will of her father, himself an artist. The tomb of Matsys, near the same spot, bears the inscription, Connubialis amor de Mulcibre fecit Apellem.

The church of the Dominicans is exceedingly handsome; and the orange-trees which were placed regularly under the arches had a very pleasing effect. Here was an immense and magnificent organ, many pictures of scenes in the life of Christ, splendid confessionals, all supported by saints and angels in carved wood, beautifully executed; some fine statues; a figure of St. Eligius with his unapostolic mitre, and living devotees bowing before him; and everywhere money-boxes: one of the figures which support the pulpit had an aperture, oddly enough, cut in his breast to receive contributions. The outside of this church, and the backs of a number of houses, form an open space, which is the most popular resort of superstition in Antwerp; being a very remarkable specimen of those contrivances called Calvaries. In the corner of the area or court, at the end of the path leading across it, rock upon rock is piled up to a great height, in rude and striking, though artificial grandeur; and the whole place is crowded with statues of scriptural, legendary, and angelic per