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.

I ask a gentleman why the cathedral here is not filled with monuments like Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. He replies that it was twice sacked,-once by the Calvinists in 1566, and once by the French at the time of their Revolution.*

Among the persons at Madame Willems' was a young man, a painter, one of the competitors for the prize of Rome. He did not gain it, but with great good humor he spoke in high terms of the merit of the painting which had gained, and brought the successful competitor to dine with us. One year the competition is in painting, another in sculpture, a third in architecture. This year there were sixteen competitors, out of which number six were chosen, and given, as the subject of a painting, the return of the prodigal son. Each is shut up alone until he has made his sketch; then they may go where they please for three months, during which time they are to paint the picture. He who gains the prize receives five thousand francs a year for four years in order to visit Rome, and must send to the government every year a painting from that city.

It was on the day of the great festival that the Vaderland steamed away from the quay at Antwerp, and that I accompanied her, returning to my native land.

*See for a short account of the former Appletons' "Cyclopædia, article "Iconoclasts," and, for a longer one, Prescott's "Philip II.”

THE END.