s not
badly described by it. It is altogether too elaborate and florid, like
the sugar pinnacle of a wedding-cake.

This cathedral of Antwerp, however, though at the time that it was
built a mere collegiate church of secular canons, and only first
exalted to cathedral rank in 1559, is one of the largest churches in
superficial area in the world, a result largely due to its possession,
uniquely, of not less than six aisles, giving it a total breadth of one
hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two transepts respectively are
the two great pictures by Rubens--the "Elevation of the Cross" and the
"Descent from the Cross"--that are described at such length, and with
so much critical enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to
Flanders and Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens
in 1612, when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more
splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which the
artist has successfully ventured (what "none but great colourists can
venture") "to paint pure white linen near flesh." His Christ, continues
Sir Joshua, "I consider as one of the finest figures that ever was
invented: it is most correctly drawn, and I apprehend in an attitude of
the utmost difficulty to execute. The hanging of the head on His
shoulder, and the falling of the body on one side, gives such an
appearance of the heaviness of death, that nothing can exceed it."
Antwerp, of course, is full of magnificent paintings by Rubens, though
unfortunately the house in which he lived in the Place de Meir (which
is traversed by the tram on its way from the Est Station to the Place
Verte), which was built by him in 1611, and in which he died in 1640,
was almost entirely rebuilt in 1703. There is another great Crucifixion
by the master in the Picture Gallery, or Palais des Beaux Arts, which
illustrates his exceptional power as well as his occasional brutality."
The centurion, with his hands on the nape of his horse's neck, is
gazing with horror at the writhings of the impenitent thief, whose legs
are being broken with an iron bar, which has so tortured the unhappy
man that in his agony he has torn his left foot from the nail." It is
questionable whether any splendour of success can ever justify a man in
thus condescending to draw inspiration from the torture-room or
shambles.

One would gladly spend more time in this Antwerp gallery, which
exceeds, I think, in general magnificence the colle