in a candlelight effect by Gerard Dow; in the poultry of Melchior
d'Hondecoeter; in a pigsty of Paul Potter's; in landscapes by
Meindert Hobbema; in a moonlight landscape of Van der Neer's; in a
village scene by Jan Steen; in the gallant world of Teniers; and
in the weird imaginings of Pieter Brueghel the younger. The
greatest pictures in the whole collection, I suppose, are those by
Rubens, though he has nothing here that is comparable for a moment
with those in the Picture Gallery and Cathedral at Antwerp. Very
magnificent, however, is the "Woman taken in Adultery," the
"Adoration of the Magi," the "Interceder Interceded" (the Virgin,
at the prayer of St. Francis d'Assisi, restrains the angry Saviour
from destroying a wicked world), and the "Martyrdom of St.
Livinius." This last, however--like the "Crucifixion" in the
Antwerp Gallery; like Van Dyck's picture in this collection of the
drunken Silenus supported by a fawn; and like Rubens' own
disgusting Silenus in our National Gallery at home--illustrates
unpleasantly the painful Flemish facility to condescend to
details, or even whole conceptions, the realism of which is
unnecessarily deliberate and coarse. Here, in this death of St.
Livinius, the executioner is shown in the act of presenting to a
dog with pincers the bleeding tongue that he has just cut out of
the mouth of the dying priest.

Brussels itself, as already intimated, is an exceedingly pleasant
city for a more or less prolonged stay; and, owing at once to the
admirable system of "Rundreise" tickets that are issued by the
State railways at an uncommonly low price, to the rather dubious
quality of the hotels in some of the smaller towns, and to the
cardinal fact that Brussels is a centre from which most of the
other great cities of Belgium--Malines, Ghent, Antwerp, and Liege,