ose in the Paris gardens, only here, instead of
children, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemed
delighted with the sport. In the general Babel, everybody was
good-natured and jolly. Little things suffice to amuse the lower
classes, who do not have to bother their heads with elections and
mass meetings.

In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of
iron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of
whose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the
finest pictures of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens,
the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto
Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his
wife,--a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws one
to it with almost a passion of admiration. We had already seen "The
Descent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in
the cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, I
cannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted what
he saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in the
broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to his
house, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five years
ago. From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leads
into a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with a
summer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the very
stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet place, and fit
for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived the
life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.

AMSTERDAM

The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile.
After a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land to
live in I never saw. One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings
and Dutchmen to keep all this vast tract above water when there is so
much good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied. At Moerdjik we changed
from the cars to a little steamer on the Maas, which flows between
high banks. The water is higher than the adjoining land, and from
the deck we look down upon houses and farms. At Dort, the Rhine
comes in with little promise of the noble stream it is in the
highlands. Everywhere canals and ditches dividing the small fields
instead of fences; trees planted in straight lines, and occasionally
trained on a trellis in front of the houses, with