What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard!  I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say.  I have been hearing it constantly ever since.  And this house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Antwerp.  And it is a week off; and there is the bell still jangling its shadow dance out of Dinorah.  An audible shadow you understand, and an invisible sound, but quite distinct; and a plague take the tune!

Under the bells.—­Who has not seen the church under the bells?  Those lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that cumbersome pulpit with its huge carvings, that wide gray pavement flecked with various light from the jewelled windows, those famous pictures between the voluminous columns over the altars, which twinkle with their ornaments, their votive little silver hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of sham roses, and what not?  I saw two regiments of little scholars creeping in and forming square, each in its appointed place, under the vast roof; and teachers presently coming to them.  A stream of light from the jewelled windows beams slanting down upon each little squad of children, and the tall background of the church retires into a grayer gloom.  Pattering little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great nave.  They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slanting sunbeams.  What are they learning?  Is it truth?  Those two gray ladies with their books in their hands in the midst of these little people have no doubt of the truth of every word they have printed under their eyes.  Look, through the windows jewelled all over with saints, the light comes streaming down from the sky, and heaven’s own illuminations paint the book!  A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of the little children assembled in this immense temple, which has endured for ages, and grave teachers bending over them.  Yes, the picture is very pretty of the children and their teachers, and their book—­but the text?  Is it the truth, the only truth, nothing but the truth?  If I thought so, I would go and sit down on the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson with all my heart.

Beadle.—­But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is the intrusion and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric—­the officer who answers to the beadle of the British Islands, and is pacing about the church with an eye on the congregation.  Now the boast of Catholics is that their churches are open to all; but in certain places and churches there are exceptions.  At Rome I have been into St. Peter’s at all hours:  the doors are always open, the lamps are always burning, the faithful are for ever kneeling at one shrine or the other.  But at Antwerp not so.  In the afternoon you can go to the church, and be civilly treated; but you must pay a franc at the side gate.  In the forenoon the doors are open, to be sure, and there is no one to levy an entrance fee.  I was