historical recollections were brought to bear upon it?

ANTWERP.

As many hundreds of thousands of English visit this city (I have met
at least a hundred of them in this half-hour walking the streets,
"Guide-book" in hand), and as the ubiquitous Murray has already depicted
the place, there is no need to enter into a long description of it,
its neatness, its beauty, and its stiff antique splendor. The tall
pale houses have many of them crimped gables, that look like Queen
Elizabeth's ruffs. There are as many people in the streets as in London
at three o'clock in the morning; the market-women wear bonnets of
a flower-pot shape, and have shining brazen milk-pots, which are
delightful to the eyes of a painter. Along the quays of the lazy Scheldt
are innumerable good-natured groups of beer-drinkers (small-beer is the
most good-natured drink in the world); along the barriers outside of
the town, and by the glistening canals, are more beer-shops and more
beer-drinkers. The city is defended by the queerest fat military. The
chief traffic is between the hotels and the railroad. The hotels give
wonderful good dinners, and especially at the "Grand Laboureur" may be
mentioned a peculiar tart, which is the best of all tarts that ever a
man ate since he was ten years old. A moonlight walk is delightful. At
ten o'clock the whole city is quiet; and so little changed does it seem
to be, that you may walk back three hundred years into time, and fancy
yourself a majestical Spaniard, or an oppressed and patriotic Dutchman
at your leisure. You enter the inn, and the old Quentin Durward
court-yard, on which the old towers look down. There is a sound of
singing--singing at midnight. Is it Don Sombrero, who is singing an
Andalusian seguidilla under the window of the Flemish burgomaster's
daughter? Ah, no! it is a fat Englishman in a zephyr coat: he is
drinking cold gin-and-water in the moonlight, and warbling softly--

"Nix my dolly, pals, fake away,
N-ix my dolly, pals, fake a--a--way."*

* In 1844.

I wish the good people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral
spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the
first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little
round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no
doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set
upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King"