guilds--Le Renard, the house of the silk-mercers and haberdashers;
Maison Cornet, the house of the boatmen, or "batelliers"; La
Louvre, the house of the archers; La Brouette, the house of the
carpenters; Le Sac, the house of the printers and booksellers; the
Cygne, the house of the butchers; and other houses that need not
be specified at any greater length, of the tailors, painters, and
brewers--this is probably the completest and most splendid example
of an ancient city market-square that now remains in Europe, and
absolutely without rival even in Belgium itself, though similar
old guild-houses, in the same delightful Flemish fashion, may
still be found (though in this case with admixture of many modern
buildings) in the Grande Place at Antwerp. It was in this splendid
square at Brussels that the unhappy Counts of Egmont and Horn were
brutally done to death, to glut the sinister tyranny of Spanish
Philip, on June 5, 1568.

Also, in addition to these two superlative antiquities, two modern
buildings in Brussels, though for widely different reasons, can
hardly be passed over under plea of lack of space. Crowning the
highest point of the city, and towering itself towards heaven in a
stupendous pile of masonry, is the enormous new Palais de Justice,
probably the most imposing law courts in the world. English Law
undoubtedly is housed with much greater modesty, though not
without due magnificence, in the altogether humbler levels of the
Strand. Also in the High Town--which is the modern quarter of
Brussels, in contrast with the mediaeval Low Town, which lies in
the flat below--is the Royal Museum of Ancient Paintings, which
probably divides honours with the Picture Gallery at Antwerp as
the finest and most representative collection of pictures of the
Netherlandish school in the world. Here you may revel by the hour