talls at Amiens, or like those in half a
hundred churches in our own land. Much, in fact, of these splendid
fittings is more or less contemporary with the noble masterpieces of
Rubens and Vandyck, and belongs to the same great wave of artistic
enthusiasm that swept over the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.
Belgian pulpits, in particular, are probably unique, and certainly, to
my knowledge, without parallel in Italy, England, or France. Sometimes
they are merely adorned, like the confessionals at St. Charles, at
Antwerp, and at Tirlemont, with isolated figures; but often these are
grouped into some vivid dramatic scene, such as the Miraculous Draught
of Fishes, at St. Andrew's, at Antwerp, or the Conversion of St.
Norbert, in the cathedral at Malines. Certainly the fallen horseman in
the latter, if not a little ludicrous, is a trifle out of place.

From Furnes to Ypres it is a pleasant journey across country by one of
those strange steam-trams along the road, so common in Belgium and
Holland, and not unknown in France, that wind at frequent intervals
through village streets so narrow, that you have only to put out your
hand in passing to touch the walls of houses. This is a very leisurely
mode of travelling, and the halts are quite interminable in their
frequency and length; but the passenger is allowed to stand on the open
platform at the end of the carriage--though sometimes nearly smothered
with thick, black smoke--and certainly no better method exists of
exploring the short stretches of open country that lie between town and
town. Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground--you are
hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out of
Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of Europe,
perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you find so many
big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of country that lie
between, though often intolerably dull, are (unlike the strips in
Yorkshire) intensely rural in character. Belgian towns do not sprawl in
endless, untidy suburbs, as Sheffield sprawls out towards Rotherham,
and Bradford towards Leeds. Belgian towns, moreover--again unlike our
own big cities in England--are mostly extremely handsome, and generally
contrive, however big, to retain, at any rate in their heart, as at
Antwerp, or in the Grande Place at Brussels, a striking air of
antiquity; whilst some fairly big towns, such as Malines and Bruges,
are med