omb pervaded the air, though a summer sun
beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose
all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches
where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast
length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the
grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the
walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of
saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim
distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the
stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before
the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a
moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a
stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant
they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the
drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
followed him.

After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coff