century church, with a miracle-working Virgin, and a little red-
brick town hall of characteristically picturesque aspect.

The railway journey from Brussels to Antwerp traverses a typical
bit of Belgian landscape that is as flat as a pancake; and the
monotony is only relieved, first by the little town of Vilvoorde,
where William Tyndale was burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536,
though not alive, having first been mercifully strangled, and
afterwards by the single, huge, square tower of Malines (or
Mechlin) Cathedral, which dominates the plain from enormous
distances, like the towers of Ely or Lincoln, though not, like
these last, by virtue of position on a hill, but solely by its own
vast height and overwhelming massiveness. Malines, though
certainly containing fewer objects of particular interest than
Bruges, and though certainly on the whole a less beautiful city,
strikes one as hardly less dead-and-alive, and altogether may
fairly claim second place among the larger Belgian cities (it
houses more than fifty thousand souls) in point of mediaeval
character. The great thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral
of St. Rombaut has been the seat of an archbishopric since the
sixteenth century, and is still the metropolitan church of
Belgium. Externally the body, like the market-hall at Bruges, is
almost entirely crushed into insignificance by the utterly
disproportionate height and bulk of the huge west tower, the top
of which, even in its present unfinished state (one almost hopes
that it may never be finished), is actually three hundred and
twenty-four feet high. Boston "Stump" is only two hundred and
eighty feet to the top of the weather vane, but infinitely slimmer
in proportion; whilst even Salisbury spire is only about four
hundred odd feet. Immediately below the parapet is the enormous