If You Would See A City Wholly Flemish In Its Character, You Should Visit
Antwerp, To Which The Railway Takes You In An Hour And A Half.
The
population here is almost without Walloon intermixture, and there is
little to remind you of what you have seen in France, except the French
books in the booksellers' windows.
The arts themselves have a character of
their own which never came across the Alps. The churches, the interior of
which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded
with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish
artists, in centuries gone by - oaken saints looking down from pedestals,
and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting,
by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought
pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever
space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the
Cross, by Rubens, which proves, what one might almost doubt who had only
seen his pictures in the Louvre, that he was a true artist and a man of
genius in the noblest sense of the term.
We passed two nights in Antwerp, and then went down the Scheldt in a
steamer, which, in ten hours, brought us to Rotterdam, sometimes crossing
an arm of the sea, and sometimes threading a broad canal. The houses on
each side of these channels, after we entered Holland, were for the most
part freshly painted; the flat plains on each side protected by
embankments, and streaked by long wide ditches full of water, and rows of
pollard willows.
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