yourself a majestical Spaniard, or an oppressed and patriotic Dutchman
at your leisure. You enter the inn, and the old Quentin Durward
court-yard, on which the old towers look down. There is a sound of
singing--singing at midnight. Is it Don Sombrero, who is singing an
Andalusian seguidilla under the window of the Flemish burgomaster's
daughter? Ah, no! it is a fat Englishman in a zephyr coat: he is
drinking cold gin-and-water in the moonlight, and warbling softly--

"Nix my dolly, pals, fake away,
N-ix my dolly, pals, fake a--a--way."*


* In 1844.

I wish the good people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral
spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the
first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little
round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no
doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set
upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King"
ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately,
elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal
Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have
given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of
the early fifteenth century, in which it was begun.

This style of criticism is base and mean, and quite contrary to the
orders of the immortal Goethe, who was only for allowing the eye to
recognize the beauties of a great work, but would have its defects
passed over. It is an unhappy, luckless organization which will be