base, and the slope of the sides, this mound when completed will be of the size of a considerable hill. Whilst I was standing near the laborers, who were engaged in excavating the earth to be conveyed in carts to the top of the mound, one of the workmen turned up a human skeleton with his shovel. He began diligently to extract the teeth, and immediately brought me a handful of them for sale. The guide observed to me that whilst the teeth were fresh and in good order, they formed a considerable article of trade to supply the English and French dentists. Several boys followed us with importunities to purchase cankered military brass buttons, and escutcheons of the same metal, once used as ornaments for helmets or caps. of the lads, supposing we were Englishmen, pressed us to purchase a six-pound cannon shot; and by way of enhancing the value of his merchandize, observed, as he held it out to us, that it had killed a Frenchman.

One

Mechlin. From Brussels to Antwerp, a distance of about thirty miles, the road is level, following the banks of a broad canal, that here seems to indicate from its course over flat lands that we have advanced to the border of the "Low Country." A drive on the banks of this canal is delightful in sultry weather, from the abundant shade furnished by fine rows of trees planted along its border. At Malines, or Mechlin, as it is known by its English name,* famous for its lace, every preparation appeared to be in readiness to celebrate a church festival, which, according to the account given of it by one of my fellow-passengers, resembles the sports of the carnival. The archbishop,

*The letters as well as the pronunciation of the names of many of the towns in this country are so different from those familiar to the eye and ear of an American or Englishman, that one is sometimes at a loss to know towns by their right names. An American of my acquaintance was several hours in Antwerp before he discovered that it was the same city as Anvers, by which appellation alone it is here recognised,

190

POPULAR SPORTS.-ANTWERP.

who resides in this town, has caused to be set up at regular intervals of one or two rods asunder, upon each side of the principal street, tall pieces of boards with pictures of men and vases painted upon them. The windows and doors of the houses also have a gay aspect with fluttering festoons of leaves and flowers. Such an army of painted figures, posted about the streets in stiff perpendicular attitudes, like sentinels on post, must have drawn largely on the funds of the projectors of this strange exhibition. The people who are here assembled to celebrate the festival, amuse themselves by shooting arrows at pigeons tied to the top of a tall mast, or at small blocks of wood, of the form and size of this bird, suspended dangling from a cross piece elevated high in the air. This sport must have been of very ancient origin, as it is described in the Æneid with which the anniversary of Anchises'

among the games

death was celebrated.

ANTWERP,

Antwerp is strongly fortified with ramparts and deep ditches filled with water; and the usual machinery of a drawbridge and portcullis and massy gates is to be put in motion before the traveller finds himself in the streets of the city. On passing all these fortified cities on the frontiers of France and of the Netherlands, one is constantly reminded of the vast amount of human labor which has been lavished on their construction in former ages. Had the same amount been expended in supporting free schools, instead of standing armies, and constructing roads and canals, instead of these immense lines of towering, long extended stone walls, the condition of the common people in this country, would have been very different from what it now is. England, owing to her insular position, has no cities to be guarded against the sudden

inroads of neighboring nations; but her resources are devoted to creating and sustaining her more perishable floating bulwarks.-On the continent, almost every frontier city of magnitude is fortified. Many of them have been the scenes of battles and sieges. The situation of the United States, in respect to ambitious and powerful neighboring nations, is peculiarly happy. Remote from the dangerous vicinity of European nations, no large standing army is required to protect her frontiers from sudden invasion; and no fortifications are raised, other than those intended to secure a few principal sea ports from naval attacks. The enterprise of the inhabitants of this youthful country, burthened by no load of taxation, is devoted to improvements in the useful arts, and to the augmentation of the comforts and enjoyments that tend to promote individual happiness.

Having procured one of the guides, or commissionaires, as they call themselves, who are always to be found ready in every city to conduct strangers without loss of time to view the principal objects of curiosity, and to point out whatever may serve to amuse or instruct the traveller of leisure, we proceeded to view some of the picture galle. ries and other curiosities of the city. Several of the most celebrated painters were born in Antwerp, and their works still continue to be the pride and ornament of the city. They are exhibited in the cathedral-churches, suspended upon the walls and exposed to the view of every person, however humble, without the exaction of fee or reward to doorkeepers-a liberality in the exhibition of works of art that forms an agreeable contrast with customs observable in England, where the stranger can scarcely visit any of the admirable productions of art, or even a beautiful solitary ruin of an old castle or abbey, without meeting a guard mounted in advance on the nearest crumbling fragments. The Academy of Fine Arts is open

192

ANCIENT PICTURES.

gratuitously to the public, and there are also several pri vate collections of paintings, to which the public have

access.

The subjects portrayed by most of the celebrated pictures are taken from scriptural scenes, particularly from those which attended the death of Christ on the cross. Some of the finest paintings do not attract the eye by the brilliancy of their coloring; but their peculiar beauty appears to consist in a certain mellowness of the blended shades, as if the objects were discerned distinctly, but with softened outlines, at the moment of approaching twilight. So numerous are the pictures which are hung around the walls of the Antwerp cathedrals, that they almost resemble show rooms; particularly when the costly sculptured marble altar-pieces and ornaments are taken into view. It must indeed require strong powers of mental abstraction, to confine the thoughts to the exercises of devotion in a temple where so many beautiful objects of art, so many curious master-pieces of human genius, meet the upturned eye, and divert the attention from the deeply engaging and holy occupation of prayer. On beholding the very picture of the crucifixion, indeed, the mind is absorbed in the contemplation of the elaborate skill of man displayed on the canvass, rather than affected by devotional sympathy at the sight of the depicted sufferings of Him who died on the cross.

Ancient Pictures. The sale of ancient and modern Flemish paintings is one of the staple articles of commerce in Antwerp. From the pencils of modern artists many pictures are annually produced, all bearing the stamp of antiquity, with well counterfeited smoky tints, as if they had survived as genuine perfected productions of the ancient masters. The cabinets of foreign connoisseurs, and the pockets of the artists, are thus simultaneously replenished. Some of these pictures may probably be found

TOWER OF ANTWERP CATHEDRAL.

193

suspended in the same apartments with the cabinets of Roman coins, from the modern mint of an ingenious Italian, who was discovered a few years since carrying on his operations in an old ruin near Rome, with bags of coin bearing "the image and superscription of Cæsar," and still glittering in all the newness of fresh metallic lustre. He was in the habit of dipping them in acids, by which he rapidly, but unclassically, produced the same effects, as are ascribed by poets to the corroding tooth of time, leaving the nearly illegible characters cankered, and covered by the "heavenly verdigris" of the antiquarian, and ready for market.*

Following the footsteps of all preceding travellers, imprinted in deeply worn furrows by frequent tread on the stone steps of the winding stairways, we ascended to the top of the spire of the great cathedral of Antwerp, which towers aloft above the humble roofs of the surrounding city, to the elevation of four hundred and sixty-six feet. This spire, although constructed entirely of hewn stone, is of admirably light workmanship, arches being piled above arches with so many open spaces, that it almost resembles lace work, and appears as if it might yield and be swept away by the first blast of wind that passes over it. It is, however, so strongly bound together by iron clamps, that it has withstood, unshattered, the storms of above three hundred years.

*The science of preparing articles to gratify the taste of the virtuosi begins to be already understood in the United States. A party of gentlemen, on a visit to a battle ground, there purchased of a lad some bullets, which he offered for sale as relics. One of the party expressing his regret that the lad's stock of relics was exhausted, was immediately consoled by the lad, who innocently and without forethought told him to wait only a few minutes, and he would make as many as he wanted.