gs.

In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of iron-work,
by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of whose pictures we
saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the finest pictures
of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens, the "Christ on the
Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto Vennius, Albert Cuyp,
and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his wife,--a picture whose sweet
strength and wealth of color draws one to it with almost a passion of
admiration. We had already seen "The Descent from the Cross" and "The
Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in the cathedral. With all his power
and rioting luxuriance of color, I cannot come to love him as I do
Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted what he saw; and we still find the
types of his female figures in the broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of
Antwerp. We walked down to his house, which remains much as it was two
hundred and twenty-five years ago. From the interior court, an entrance
in the Italian style leads into a pleasant little garden full of old
trees and flowers, with a summer-house embellished with plaster casts,
and having the very stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet
place, and fit for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city,
and lived the life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.

AMSTERDAM

The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile. After
a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land to live in I
never saw. One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings and Dutchmen
to keep all this vast tract above water when there is so much good solid
earth elsewhere unoccupied. At Moerdjik we changed from the cars to a
little steamer on the Maas, which flows between high banks. The water
is higher than the adjoining land, and from the deck we look down upon
houses and farms. At Dort, the Rhine comes in with little promise of
the noble stream it is in the highlands. Everywhere canals and ditches
dividing the small fields instead of fences; trees planted in straight
lines, and occasionally trained on a trellis in front of the houses,
with the trunk painted white or green; so that every likeness of nature
shall be taken away. From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same. The
Dutchman spends half his life, apparently, in fighting the water. He has
to watch the huge dikes which keep the ocean from overwhelming him,
and the river-banks, which may break,