It is a very pleasant thing to get one's passport _vised_ (even though a
pretty good fee is demanded for it,) and to make preparations for
leaving London, at almost any time; but it is particularly so when the
weather has been doing its worst for a fortnight, and the atmosphere is
so "thick and slab" that to compare it to pea-soup would be doing that
excellent compound a great injustice. It is very pleasant to think of
getting out from under that blanket of smoke and fog, and escaping to a
land where the sun shines occasionally, and where the manners of the
people make a perpetual sunshine which renders you independent of the
weather. If there ever was a day to which that expressive old Saxon
epithet _nasty_ might be justly applied, it was the one on which I left
the greasy pavements of London, and (after a contest with a cabman,
which ended, as such things generally do, in a compromise) found myself
on board one of the fast-sailing packets of the General Steam Navigation
Company, at St. Catharine's Wharf, just below the esplanade of the
Tower. The beautiful banks of the river below the city, the fine pile of
buildings, and the rich foliage of the park at Greenwich, seemed to have
laid aside their charms, and shrouded themselves in mourning for the
death of sunshine. The steamer was larger than most of those which ply
in the Channel; but the crowded cabins and diminutive state-rooms made
me think with envy of the passengers from New York to Fall River that
afternoon. And there was a want of attention to those details which
would have improved the appearance of the boat greatly--which made me
wish that her commander might have served his apprenticeship on Long
Island Sound or on the Hudson.
The company was composed of about the usual admixture of English and
foreign beauty and manliness; and the English, French, Dutch, and German
languages were confounded in such a manner as to bring to mind the
doings of the committee on the construction of public works recorded in
Genesis. Among the crowd of young Cockneys in jockeyish-looking caps,
with travelling pouches strapped to their sides, there was a rather tall
gentleman in a clerical suit, with his throat covered with the usual
white bandages. His highly respectable look, and the eminently
"evangelical" expression of the corners of his mouth, made me feel quite
sure that I had found a character. He had three little boys with him;
and as far as appearance went, he might have been Dickens's model for
Dr. Blimber, (the principal of that celebrated academy where they had
mental green peas and intellectual asparagus all the year round,) for he
had the eye of a pedagogue "to threaten and command," and his fixed look
was the one which my old schoolmaster's face wore when he turned up his
wristbands, and, taking his ruler, said, "I am very sorry, Andrew; but
you know that it is for your good." His conversation savoured so
strongly of the dictionary, that, even if I had been blind, I should
have said that the speaker had spent years in correcting the
compositions of ingenuous youth. I shall not forget his look of wonder
when he asked one of the engineers what was the matter with a dog that
was yelping about the deck, and received for a reply that he tumbled off
the quarter deck, and was _strained in the garret_. However, I enjoyed
two or three hours' conversation with him very much--if it could be
called conversation when he did all the talking.
Towards evening, when we found ourselves in the open sea, the
south-westerly swell rolled up finely from the Goodwin Sands, and
produced a scene to remind a disinterested spectator of Punch's touching
pictorial representation of the commencement of the continental tour of
Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson. I soon perceived that a conspicuous
collection of white bowls, which adorned the main saloon, was not a mere
matter of ornament. The amount of medicine for the prevention or cure of
seasickness, which was taken by my fellow-voyagers from flat bottles
covered with wicker-work, would have astonished the most ardent upholder
of the old allopathic practice. But all the pitching and rolling of the
steamer, and the varied occupations of the passengers, did not interfere
with my repose. I slept as soundly in my narrow accommodations as if I
had been within hearing of the rattling of the omnibuses of my native
city.
The next morning I was out in good season; and though I do not consider
myself either "remote," "unfriended," "melancholy," or "slow," I found
myself upon the "lazy Scheldt," with Antwerp's heaven-kissing spire
climbing up the hazy perspective. The banks of the Scheldt are not very
picturesque; indeed, a person of the strongest poetical susceptibilities
might approach Flanders without the slightest apprehension of an attack
of his weakness. I could not help congratulating myself, though, on
having been spared to see the country which was immortalized by the
profanity of a great military force.
We Americans usually consider ourselves up to the times, and are prone
to sneer at Russia for being eleven days behind the age; but we do not
yet "beat the Dutch" in progress, for they are half an hour in advance,
as I found, very soon after landing, that all the church clocks, with a
great deal of formality and precision, struck nine, when the hands only
pointed to half past eight; and I noted a similar phenomenon while I was
taking breakfast an hour after. Antwerp is a beautiful old city, and its
quiet streets are very pleasant, after the tumult and roar of London;
but--there is one drawback--it is too scrupulously clean. I almost
feared to walk about, lest I should unknowingly do some damage; and
every door-handle and bell-pull had a most unhospitable polish, which
seemed to say with the placards in the Crystal Palace, "Please not to
handle." Cleanliness is a great virtue; but when it is carried to such
an extent that you cannot find your books and papers which you left
carefully arranged yesterday on your table,--when it gets to be a
monomania with man or woman,--it becomes a bore. How strangely the first
two or three hours in a Dutch town strike a stranger!--the odd,
high-gabled houses, the queer head-dresses, (graceful because of their
very ungracefulness,) the wooden shoes, and the language, which sounds
like English spoken by a toothless person. But one very soon gets
accustomed to it. It is like being in an Oriental city, where the great
variety of costumes and languages, and the different manners of the
people, make up an _ensemble_ which a stranger thinks will be a lasting
novelty; but on his second day he finds himself taking about as much
notice of a Persian caravan as he would of a Canton Street or Sixth
Avenue omnibus.
I might here indulge in a little harmless enthusiasm about this grand
old cathedral of Antwerp. I might talk about the "long-drawn aisle and
fretted vault," and give an elaborate description of it,--its enormous
dimensions and artistic glories,--if I did not know that any reader who
desires such things can find them set down with greater exactness than
becomes me, in any of the guide books for Belgium. I spent the greater
proportion of my waking hours in Antwerp under the solemn arches of that
majestic old church. I wonder, shall we ever see any thing in America to
remind us even faintly of the glories of Antwerp, Cologne, Rouen,
Amiens, York, or Milan? I fear not. The ages that built those glorious
piles thought less of fat dividends than this boastful nineteenth
century of ours, and their religion was not the mere
one-day-out-of-seven affair that the improved Christianity of to-day is.
The architects who conceived and executed those marvels of sublimity
never troubled themselves with our popular query, "Will it pay?" any
more than Dante interrupted the inspiration of his _Paradiso_, or
Beethoven the linked harmony of his matchless symphonies, with their
solicitude about the amount of their copyright. No; their work inspired
them, and while it reflected their genius, it imparted to them something
of its own divine dignity. Their art became religion, and its laborious
processes acts of the most fervent devotion. But we have reformed all
that, and now inspiration has to give way to considerations of the
greatest number of "sittings," that can possibly be provided, and if the
expenses of the sacred enterprise can be lessened by contriving
accommodation for shops or storage in the basement, who does not
rejoice? There are too many churches nowadays built upon the foundation
of the _profits_, leaving the apostles entirely out of the question.
But while I lament our want of those wonderful constructions whose very
stones seem to have grown consciously into forms of beauty, I must
record my satisfaction at the improvement in architectural taste which
is visible in most of our cities at home. If we must have banks, and
railway stations, and shops, it is some compensation to have them made
pleasant to our sight. Buildings are the books that every body
unconsciously reads; and if they are a libel on the laws of
architecture, they will surely vitiate in time the taste of those who
become familiarized to their deformity. Dr. Johnson said, that "if a
man's hands were dirty, his thoughts would be dirty"; and it may be
declared, with much more reason, that those who are obliged to look, day
after day, at ungraceful, mean, and unsubstantial objects, lose, by
degrees, their sense of the beautiful and the harmonious, and set forth,
in the poverty of their minds, the meanness of their surroundings.
On one account I have again and again blessed the star that guided me to
Antwerp,--that is, for the pleasure afforded me by its treasures of art.
I have, in times past, fed fat my appetite for the beautiful in the
galleries of Italy, and therefore counted but little on the contents of
the museum and churches of this ancient city. Do not be frightened,
beloved reader; I am not going to launch out into the muddy stream of
artistic criticism. I despise most of that which passes current under
that dignified name, as heartily as you do. Even the laurels of Mr.
Ruskin cannot rob me of a moment's repose. I cannot if I would, nor
would I if I could, talk learnedly about pictures. So I can safely
promise not to bore you with any "breadth of colouring," and to keep
very "shady" about _chiaro 'scuro_. I only wish to say that he who has
never been in Antwerp does not know who Rubens was. He may know that an
industrious painter of that name once lived, and painted (as I used to
think, judging from most of his works that I had seen elsewhere) a
variety of fat, flaxen-haired women; but of Rubens, the great master,
the painter of the Crucifixion, and the Descent from the Cross, he is as
ignorant as a fourth-form boy in the public schools of Patagonia. It is
worth a month of seasick voyaging to see the works of Rubens and Vandyck
which Antwerp possesses; and the only regret connected with my visit
there has been, that I could not give more days to the study of them
than I could hours.
It is but fifteen miles from Antwerp to Mechlin, or Malines, (as the
people here, in the depths of their ignorance, insist upon calling it,)
and as a representative of a nation whose sole criterion is success, and
whose list of the cardinal virtues is headed by Prosperity, I felt that
it would be a grievous sin of omission for me not to stop and visit that
thriving old town. It did not require much time to walk through its
nice, quiet streets, and look at the pictures and wood carvings in its
venerable churches. The white-capped and bright-eyed lace-makers sat in
windows and doorways, their busy fingers forming fabrics, the sight of
which would kindle the fire of covetousness in any female heart. Three
hours in Mechlin sufficed to make me about as well acquainted with it as
if I had daily waked up its echoes with the creaking of my shoes, until
their thick soles were worn out past all hope of tapping. Selecting one
of the numerous railways that branch out from Mechlin, like the reins
from the hand of a popular circus rider in his favourite
"six-horse-act," the "Courier of St. Petersburg," I took a ticket for
Brussels, and soon found myself spinning along over these fertile
plains, whose joyous verdure I had not sufficient time to appreciate
before I found myself in the capital of Belgium.
And what a charming place this city of lace and carpets is! Clean as a
parlour, not a speck nor a stain to be seen any where, with less of
Dutch stiffness and more of French ease, so that you do not feel so much
like an intruder as in most other strange cities. Brussels is a kind of
vestibule to Paris; its streets, its shops, its public edifices are all
reflections in miniature of those of the French metropolis. It has long
seemed to me so natural a preparation for the meridian splendours of
Paris, that to go thither in any other way than through Brussels, is as
if you should enter a saloon by a back window, rather than through the
legitimate front door. In one respect I prefer Brussels to Paris; it is
smaller, and your mind takes it all in at once. In the French capital,
its very vastness bewilders you. You are in the condition of the
gentleman whose wife was so fat that when he wished to embrace her, he
was obliged to make two actions of the feat, and use a bit of chalk to
insure the proper distribution of his caress. But in Brussels every
thing is so harmoniously and compactly combined, that you can enjoy it
all at once. How does one's mind treasure up his rambles through these
fair streets and gay arcades, his leisurely walks on these spacious
boulevards, or under the dense shade of this lovely park, his musings in
this fine old church of Ste. Gudule, whose gorgeous windows symbolize
the heavenly bow, and whose air of devotion is eloquent of the undying
hope which abides within its consecrated precincts! How one looks back
years after leaving Brussels, and conjures up, in his memory, its public
monuments, from that exceedingly diminutive and peculiar statue near the
Hotel de Ville, which has pursued its useful and ornamental career for
so many centuries, to the heroic equestrian figure of Godfrey of
Bouillon, in the Place Royale! How vividly does one remember the old
Gothic hall, which has remained unchanged during the many years that
have passed since the Emperor Charles V. there laid down the burden of
his power, and exchanged the throne for the cloister.
One of the most delightful recollections of my term of residence in
Brussels, is of a bright summer day, when I made an excursion to the
field of Waterloo. Some Englishmen have established a line of coaches
for the purpose--real old fashioned coaches, with a driver and a guard,
which latter functionary performed Yankee Doodle most admirably on his
melodious horn as we rattled out of town. The roadside views cannot have
changed much since the night when the pavement shook beneath the heavy
artillery and thundering tramp of Wellington's army. The forest of
Soignies (or, to use its poetical name, Arden) looked as it might have
looked before it was immortalized by a Tacitus and a Shakspeare; and its
fresh foliage was "dewy with Nature's tear-drops," over our two coach
loads of pleasure-seekers, just as Byron describes it to have been over
the "unreturning brave," who passed beneath it forty years ago. Our
party was shown over the memorable field by an old English sergeant who
was in the battle; a fine bluff old fellow, and a gentleman withal, who,
though his head was white, had all the enthusiasm of a young soldier. It
was the most interesting trip of the kind that I ever made, far
surpassing my expectations, for the ground remains literally _in statu
quo ante bellum_. No commissioners of highways have interfered with its
historical boundaries. It remains, for the most part, under cultivation,
as it was before it became famous, and the grain grows, perhaps, more
luxuriantly for the chivalric blood once shed there. There they are,
unchanged, those localities which seem to so many mere inventions of the
historian, Mont St. Jean, the farm of La Haye Sainte, the chateau of
Hougoumont, the orchard with its low brick wall, over which the chosen
troops of France and England fought hand to hand, and the spot where the
last great charge was made, and the spell which held Europe in awe of
the name of Napoleon, and made that name his country's watchword, and
the synonyme of victory, was broken forever. Perhaps I err in saying
forever, for France is certainly not unmindful of that name even now.
That showery afternoon, when the great conqueror saw his veterans,
against whom scores of battle fields, and all the terrors of a Russian
campaign, proved powerless, cut to pieces and dispersed by a superior
force, to which the news of coming reenforcements gave new strength and
courage,--that very afternoon a boy, without a thought of battles or
their consequences, was playing in the quiet grounds of the chateau of
Malmaison. If Napoleon could have looked forward forty years, if he
could have foreseen the romantic career of that child, and followed him
through thirty years of exile, imprisonment, and discouragement, until
he saw him reestablish the empire which was then overthrown, and place
France on a higher pinnacle of power than she ever knew before, how
comparatively insignificant would have seemed to him the consequences of
that last desperate charge! If he could have seen that it was reserved
to his nephew, the grandchild of his divorced but faithful Josephine, to
avenge Waterloo by an alliance more fatal to England's prestige than any
invasion could be, and that the armies which had that day borne such
bloody witness to their unconquerable daring, would forty years later be
united to resist the encroachments of the power which first checked him
in his career of victory, he would have had something to think of during
that gloomy night besides the sad events that had wrought such a fearful
change in his condition.
I returned to Brussels in the afternoon, meditating on the scenes I had
visited, and repeating the five stanzas of Childe Harold in which Byron
has commemorated the battle of Waterloo. In the evening I read, with new
pleasure, Thackeray's graphic Waterloo chapter in Vanity Fair, and
dreamed all night of falling empires and "garments rolled in blood." And
now I turn my face towards Italy.