The
Grouping Is Happy, The Expression And Action Skillfully Varied - The
Coloring, So Far As I Could Judge In The Present State Of The Picture,
Agreeable.
"Eight or ten weeks hard work," said the artist, "will complete
it." It is Vanderlyn's intention to finish it, and take it to the United
States in the course of the autumn.
Letter XXVIII.
A Journey through The Netherlands.
Arnheim, Guelderland, _August_ 19, 1848.
After writing my last I was early asleep, that I might set out early the
next morning in the diligence for Brussels. This I did, and passing
through Compeigne, where Joan of Arc was made prisoner - a town lying in
the midst of extensive forests, with here and there a noble group of
trees; and through Noyon, where Calvin was born, and in the old Gothic
church of which he doubtless worshiped; and through Cambray, where Fenelon
lived; and through fields of grain and poppy and clover, where women were
at work, reaping the wheat, or mowing and stacking the ripe poppies, or
digging with spades in their wet clothes, for it had rained every day but
one during the thirteen we were in France, we arrived in the afternoon of
the second day at the French frontier. From this a railway took us in a
few hours to Brussels. Imagine a rather clean-looking city, of large
light-colored buildings mostly covered with stucco, situated on an
irregular declivity, with a shady park in the highest part surrounded by
palaces, and a little lower down a fine old Gothic cathedral, and still
lower down, the old Town Hall, also of Gothic architecture, and scarcely
less venerable, standing in a noble paved square, around which are white
and stately edifices, built in the era of the Spanish dominion; - imagine
handsome shops and a good-looking people, with a liberal sprinkling of
priests, in their long-skirted garments, and throw in the usual proportion
of dirt and misery, and mendicancy, in the corners and by-places, and you
have Brussels before you.
It still rained, but we got a tilbury and drove out to see the
battle-ground of Waterloo. It was a dreary drive beside the wood of
Soignes and through a part of it, - that melancholy-looking forest of
tall-stemmed beeches - beech, beech, nothing but beech - and through the
Walloon villages - Waterloo is one of them - and through fields where wet
women were at work, and over roads where dirty children by dozens were
dabbling like ducks in the puddles. At last we stopped at the village of
Mont St. Jean, whence we walked through the slippery mud to the mound
erected in the midst of the battle-field, and climbed to its top,
overlooking a country of gentle declivities and hollows. Here the various
positions of the French and allied armies during the battle which decided
the fate of an empire, were pointed out to us by a young Walloon who sold
wine and drams in a shed beside the monument.
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