present for the silver wedding. One woman is to go from Madame H. herself is fine-looking. She

each commune.

She shows me a picture of

sister of the noble lady

seems to admire the nobility. mademoiselle the Countess of whose picture I saw at the curé's. I also see a picture of the latter lady's daughter, who is married to Mr. the Baron of, a man of the right kind!-comme il faut! With what an air our hostess adds, "These are nobles!" She has the pictures of the father, mother, and little son; the last having a sword in front of him, about as long as himself.

At Madame H.'s house, the manure-heap occupies a good part of the yard upon which the house opens, and seven or eight hogs are in the yard. In the hall and kitchen is a neat pavement of square stones, but in the best room and bedroom there are tiles or bricks. My bed has two good wool mattresses, and a straw bed beneath. Mrs. Willems will not sleep with me, but with her friend Madame H., with whom she made her first communion.

Lands here are at over six hundred dollars the acre, and sometimes over seven hundred and fifty. Madame H.'s son tells me that last year half of their potatoes rotted. The rot has appeared here this year also, worse than before, it is said. A good woman-servant gets two hundred francs a year, or even two hundred and fifty (about fifty dollars), and works in the field when she has time. A man gets as high as four hundred francs.

In these small communes the burgomaster is at the head of the police. He has two aids, called échevins, and there are four members of council. To vote for these, I repeat, you must pay a tax of ten francs, but as in one of the communes which we have just visited there are not enough voters to elect them (the law requiring twenty-five), the law

allows the twenty-five highest taxpayers to be electors. The only lawful marriage is that by the burgomaster; this law dates from 1804; doubtless from the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Madame H. entertains us at supper and breakfast. We have bread and butter and tea for supper, and bread and butter and coffee for breakfast. I think it is she who inquires whether we have cream in my country. At this season of the year her son tells me that they rise at three, to take care of the animals. Speaking of potatoes, I tell them that our crop at my home failed lately, but that we have so many other things,-wheat, Indian corn, and turnips, that we do not mind the loss of them much.

I tell them of one of my countrymen who said, "Go West, young man; go West!" and Mrs. Willems adds, "That is what we say here, go to the United States." This morning we return to Antwerp, Mrs. W. being in haste to get home.

A young lady in Antwerp, familiar with peasant life in the Walloon country, thus describes to me the manner of living among persons who possess a little land, a couple of cows, and so on: Formerly, she says, the bread was almost entirely of rye, so that it was difficult to find a slice of white bread; but by degrees that has changed, so that white bread prevails. The morning meal is coffee and slices of bread and butter, except among those who are not always rich enough to have butter, when the fat of pork will be spread as already described, perhaps with the addition of a little stewed apple, or sometimes white cheese is used, made from sour milk. At dinner they have potatoes stewed with carrots or other vegetables, and followed by some slices of fried pork. At four o'clock they take coffee again, with the tartine, or spread-slice before described. At eight o'clock potatoes, perhaps with a salad on top and a vinegar

sauce over all; or perhaps a green soup made thus: Take half a slice of bacon and fry it, and when it is brown add water, sweet herbs cut fine, and many potatoes; this should cook for an hour or two. Or sometimes in place of the soup they take buttermilk. Occasionally they drink beer. (I infer that these four meals are the summer custom.)

When Mrs. W. and I are returning, we again change cars at Louvain, and the language has changed from Walloon back to Flemish. I have spoken of railroad travelling being cheap here. In a third-class car it cost eight sous lately for two of us to ride three miles. Probably the abundance of coal makes travelling cheaper. Private persons at Antwerp pay about four cents for the cubic yard of gas. I hear Mrs. W. telling of six burners costing two sous an hour. On our homeward journey I observe at one spot that the ground is divided into little grass-fields, surrounded by ditches, and one or both banks planted with trees, for we have got again into the wooded country. In looking off at a distance, there seems to be a great deal of wood when lands are thus divided. And again we have got where the fields are thrown up into rounded divisions, about two yards wide, with little courses between for the water. On a simple low fence along the railway appletrees are trained very short, never intended to grow high. We are prohibited from walking on the track here; we must cross and take a path.

On our return to Antwerp I tell a liberal gentleman what the village curé had said and how he is deprived of a vote. The gentleman says that the house is not the cure's, but a government property, and that the law which thus operates against the village priests operates equally against public school-teachers, which he admits is a pity. He tells me that the regular clergy are bons diables, an expression which

surprises me, but he translates it into English, good fellows. He adds that if the regular clergy were married they could get along with them; but it is religious societies like the Jesuits that they fear more. Universal suffrage he declares to be the remedy for these troubles, and as soon as the people can read and write he is willing or desirous to extend the suffrage; but to do so requires a change in the constitution, and I have before stated that the liberals are afraid to touch the constitution, lest it should be made less liberal than it now is. Something is said to this gentleman about a curé who has a red face. He seems to sympathize with the curé in his solitude, but he says that wine-drinking is the least of the vices of the clergy. A regulation has been passed forbidding their having women-servants under thirty or thirty-five years of age.

Mrs. Willems' house is near the great cathedral at Antwerp, where is kept Rubens' celebrated picture of the Descent from the Cross. The cathedral is being bedecked for the great coming festival. The big bell goes boom! boom! the little bells chime the quarters, and I was never in a city that was so berung before. The four-hundredyear-old image has a stiff dress, and is to be carried in procession. In one aisle of the cathedral I see six men at prayer at one time, and that when there is no service. One has a low chair in the middle of the aisle: he kneels upon the edge of this chair, and his feet rest on the pavement. From time to time he moves his chair along to face the different pictures on the wall, which are scenes from the crucifixion, probably what are called the stations of the

cross.

He looks at his book and looks at the pictures. Is this public display a penance? What has he done?

I see here in the cathedral what I never remember seeing before, namely, a man confessing. One scene in this great

church was where several of the clergy were leaving the main apartment, the first being a conspicuous person in a scarlet dress and a ring on his finger, with a great violet stone. He was putting out his hands to bless the people who stood in his way. It is the primate of Belgium, Cardinal Deschamps.

Some of the faces in the cathedral would be a study for Doré. One scene was kissing a small metallic plate. The priest handed it round and wiped it, and after him was a little fellow, perhaps of seven (in a white robe that had been whiter), carrying a box into which about every second or third person dropped something. It seemed strange to me to see grown men in this crowd. I think that some one spoke of there being a relic in the little metallic thing which they kissed.

Another little scene in the cathedral struck me; it was on the day before the beginning of the great festival. A man in a black robe and white half robe enters the main part from an adjoining room, where I infer that the clergy have been taking refreshment after high mass. As the robed individual comes in, a man in citizen's dress is going out. The citizen winks: both stop; the ecclesiastic puts his left hand into his robe, takes out a snuff-box, and presents it to the other. The hospitable village curé, whom we visited, had a silver snuff-box, but he hesitated about presenting it.

In the cathedral there is a monument with carved figures, -a person being seized by Death, who, in the form of a skeleton, is laying his hand upon him. This ghastly evidence of mortality belongs to the same class as the yellow figures on the black hearse of which I have spoken. I do not remember seeing such in London or Paris. The traveller will not fail to observe a realism, a grossness, in Belgium.