beside the monument. The two races which make up
the population of Belgium are still remarkably distinct, notwithstanding
the centuries which have elapsed since they occupied the same country
together. The Flemings of Teutonic origin, keep their blue eyes and fair
hair, and their ancient language--the same nearly as the Dutch of the
sixteenth century. The Walloons, a Celtic race, or Celtic mixed with
Roman, are still known by their dark hair and black eyes, and speak a
dialect derived from the Latin, resembling that of some of the French
provinces. Both languages are uncultivated, and the French has been
adopted as the language of commerce and literature in Belgium.

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. Windmills by scores, some grinding corn, but most of them
pumping water out of the meadows and pouring it into the channel, stood on
the bank and were swinging their long arms madly in a high wind.

On arriving at R