is not of this category. Architecturally, perhaps, the best
feature of the whole church is the lofty spire (over four hundred
feet), which curiously resembles in general outline that of the
Hotel de Ville at Brussels (three hundred and seventy feet), and
dates from about the same period (roughly the middle of the
fifteenth century). As usual in Belgium, it is quite out of scale;
it is lucky, indeed, that the corresponding south-west tower has
never been completed, for the combination of the two would be
almost overwhelming. It is curious and interesting as an example
of a tower tapering upwards to a point in a succession of
diminishing stages, in contrast with tower and spire. France has
something like it, though far more beautiful, in the thirteenth-
century tower at Senlis; but England affords no parallel. I am not
sure who invented the quite happy phrase, "Confectioner's Gothic,"
but this tower at Antwerp is not badly described by it. It is
altogether too elaborate and florid, like the sugar pinnacle of a
wedding-cake.

This cathedral of Antwerp, however, though at the time that it was
built a mere collegiate church of secular canons, and only first
exalted to cathedral rank in 1559, is one of the largest churches
in superficial area in the world, a result largely due to its
possession, uniquely, of not less than six aisles, giving it a
total breadth of one hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two
transepts respectively are the two great pictures by Rubens--the
"Elevation of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross"--that
are described at such length, and with so much critical
enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to Flanders and
Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens in 1612,
when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more