is possible in half a dozen hurried
visits to a picture gallery at Antwerp or Brussels. Finally Hal, to
conclude our list of minor places, has a grand fourteenth-century
church, with a miracle-working Virgin, and a little red-brick town hall
of characteristically picturesque aspect.

The railway journey from Brussels to Antwerp traverses a typical bit of
Belgian landscape that is as flat as a pancake; and the monotony is
only relieved, first by the little town of Vilvoorde, where William
Tyndale was burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536, though not alive,
having first been mercifully strangled, and afterwards by the single,
huge, square tower of Malines (or Mechlin) Cathedral, which dominates
the plain from enormous distances, like the towers of Ely or Lincoln,
though not, like these last, by virtue of position on a hill, but
solely by its own vast height and overwhelming massiveness. Malines,
though certainly containing fewer objects of particular interest than
Bruges, and though certainly on the whole a less beautiful city,
strikes one as hardly less dead-and-alive, and altogether may fairly
claim second place among the larger Belgian cities (it houses more than
fifty thousand souls) in point of mediaeval character. The great
thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral of St. Rombaut has been the
seat of an archbishopric since the sixteenth century, and is still the
metropolitan church of Belgium. Externally the body, like the
market-hall at Bruges, is almost entirely crushed into insignificance
by the utterly disproportionate height and bulk of the huge west tower,
the top of which, even in its present unfinished state (one almost
hopes that it may never be finished), is actually three hundred and
twenty-four feet high. Boston "Stump" is only two hundred and eighty
feet to the top of the weather vane, but infinitely slimmer in
proportion; whilst even Salisbury spire is only about four hundred odd
feet. Immediately below the parapet is the enormous skeleton
clock-face, the proportions of which are reproduced on the pavement of
the market-place below. The carillons in this tower are an extravagant
example of the Belgian passion for chiming bells. Once safely inside
the church, and the monster tower forgotten, and we are able to admire
its delicate internal proportions, and the remarkable ornament of the
spandrels in the great main arcades of the choir. Unfortunately, much
of this interior, like that of St. Pierre at Lo