This is a dismal heavy looking town—so melancholy! the Scheld shut up! the grass growing in the streets! those streets so empty of inhabitants! and it was so famous once. Atuatum nobile BrabantiÆ opidum in rip Schaldis flu. EuropÆ nationibus maximÈ frequentatum. Sumptuosis tam privatis quam publicis nitet Ædificiis[54], say the not very old books of geography when speaking of this once stately city;

And surely if the empire of Rome is actually fled away into air like a dream, the opulence of Antwerp may well crumble to earth like a clod. What defies time is genius; and of that, many and glorious proofs are yet left behind in this place. The composition of a picture painted to adorn the altar under which lies buried that which was mortal of its artist, is beyond all meaner praise. The figure of St. George might stand by that of Corregio, and suffer no diminution of one’s esteem. The descent from the cross too!—Well! if Daniel de Volterra’s is more elegantly pathetic, Rubens has put his pathos in a properer place.—The blessed Virgin Mary ought to be but the second figure certainly in a scene which represents our almighty Saviour himself completing the redemption of all mankind. But here is another devotional piece, highly poetical, almost dramatic, representing Christ descending in anger to consume a guilty world. The globe at a distance low beneath his feet, his pious mother prostrate before him, covering part of it with her robe, and deprecating the divine wrath in a most touching manner. St. Sebastian shewing his wounds with an air of the tenderest supplication; Carlo BorromÆo beseeching in heaven for those fellow-creatures he ceased not loving or serving while on earth; and St. Francis in the groupe, but surely ill-chosen; as he who left the world, and planned only his own salvation by retirement from its cares and temptations, would be unlikely enough to intreat for its longer continuance: his dress however, so favourable to painters, was the reason he was pitched upon I trust, as it affords a particularly happy contrast to the cardinal’s robes of St. Carlo.

I will finish my reflections upon painting here, and apologize for their frequency only by confessing my fondness for the art; and my conviction, that had I said nothing of that art in a journey through Italy and Germany, where so much of every traveller’s attention is led to mention it, I should have been justly blamed for affectation; while being censured for impertinence disgusts me less of the two. What I have learned from the Italians is a maxim more valuable than all my stock of connoisseurship: Che c’È in tutto il suo bene, e il suo male—that there is much of evil and of good in every thing: and the life of a traveller evinces the truth of that position perhaps more than any other. So persuaded, we made a bold endeavour to cross the Scheld; but the wind was so outrageously high, no boat was willing to venture till towards night: at that hour “Unus, et hic audax[55],” as Leander says, offered his service to convey us; but the passage of the Rhine had been so rough before, that I felt by no means disposed to face danger again just at the close of the battle.

When we find a disposition to talk over our adventures, the great ice islands driving down Rhenus ferox, as Seneca justly calls it, and threatening to run against and destroy our awkward ill-contrived boat, may divert care over a winter’s fire, some evening in England, by recollection of past perils. I thought it a dreadful one at the time; and have no taste to renew a like scene for the sake of crossing the Scheld, and arriving a very few moments sooner than returning through Brussels will bring us—a la Place de