As we look over this field from our height and try to realize what mighty fortunes were here at stake, we note that the mementoes of that day are few.  A Corinthian column and an obelisk are seen at the roadside as memorials of the bravery of two officers.  This Lion’s Mound, two hundred feet high and made from earth piled up by cart loads, commemorates the place where a prince was wounded.  Colossal in size, the lion was cast from French cannon captured in the fight.  On this broad plain upward of 50,000 men, who had mothers, sisters, and wives at home, gave up their lives.  Poplar trees sigh forth perpetually their funeral dirge.  Grass grows where their blood was poured out.  Modern Europe can show few scenes of more sublime tragedy.  Our visiting day, with its chilling air and penetrating rain, has been a fit day for seeing Waterloo.  The old woman who served me with breakfast spoke English easily.  It was well—­doubly well.  No other language than English should be spoken on the field of Waterloo.  I passed a few French words with the boy who called off the dogs, but was afterward sorry for having done so.

ANTWERP[A]

[Footnote A:  From “The Cathedrals and Churches of Belgium.”  Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY T. FRANCIS BUMPUS

Byzantium—­Venice—­Antwerp, these are the centers around which the modern world has revolved, for we must include its commercial with its social progress, and with those interests which develop with society.  Indeed, the development of the arts has always run concurrently with commerce.  One could wish to add that the converse were equally true.

Antwerp—­the city on the wharf—­became famous at the beginning of the sixteenth century under the reign of the enterprising Charles V.  “Antwerp was then truly a leading city in almost all things, but in commerce it headed all the cities of the world,” says an old chronicler.  Bruges, the great banking center yielded her position, and the Hanseatic merchants removed to the banks of the Scheldt.  “I was astonished, and wondered much when I beheld Antwerp,” wrote an envoy of the Italian Republic, “for I saw Venice outdone.”

In what direction Venice was outdone is not recorded.  Not in her architecture, at least; scarcely in her painting.  We can not concede a Tintoretto for a Rubens.  Yet, as Antwerp was the home of Matsys, of Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Teniers, the home also of Christopher Plantin, the great printer, her glory is not to be sought in trade alone.  She is still remembered as a mother of art and letters, while her mercantile preeminence belongs to a buried past.

It must, however, be confest that the fortunes of Antwerp as a city, prospering in its connection with the Hanseatic League, were anything but advantageous to the student of architectural history.  Alterations and buildings were the order of the day, and so lavish were the means devoted to the work that scarcely a vestige of architecture in the remains is of earlier date than the fourteenth century.