Up to Antwerp toward evening.  All the country flat as the flattest part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals, picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in rows.  It has been all day hot and dusty.  The country everywhere seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is sharply defined against the red western sky.

Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, very strongly.  It is still the home of wealth.  It has stately buildings, splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charms more than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.  It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which the broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of the unstable state of Europe.  While Berlin is only a vast camp of soldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call its muster-roll.  From the tower here one looks upon the cockpit of Europe.  And yet Antwerp ought to have rest:  she has had tumult enough in her time.  Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old, comparative splendor can never come back.  In the sixteenth century there was no richer city in Europe.

We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in the richest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into an exquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.  What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when two thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, and the commerce of Europe found here its best mart.  Along the stream now is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is lined with beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childish amusements.  There is an odd liking for the simple among these people.  In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instruments played in bewildering discord.  Actors in paint and tights stood without to attract the crowd within.  On one low balcony, a copper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress of the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black man stood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl, making an earnest speech to the crowd.  In another place, where a crazy band made furious music, was an enormous “go-round” of wooden ponies, like those 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.