Vander Bosch, the first organist of the place, who very kindly
permitted me to sit next him in his gallery during the celebration of
high mass. The service ended, I strayed about the aisles, and
examined the innumerable chapels which decorate them, whilst Mynheer
Vander Bosch thundered and lightened away upon his huge organ with
fifty stops.

When the first flashes of execution were a little subsided, I took an
opportunity of surveying the celebrated "Descent from the Cross,"
which has ever been esteemed one of Rubens's chef d'oeuvres, and for
which they say old Lewis Baboon offered no less a sum than forty
thousand florins. The principal figure has, doubtless, a very
meritorious paleness, and looks as dead as an artist could desire;
the rest of the group have been so liberally praised, that there is
no occasion to add another tittle of commendation. A swinging St.
Christopher, fording a brook with a child on his shoulders, cannot
fail of attracting your attention. This colossal personage is
painted on the folding-doors which defend the capital performance
just mentioned from vulgar eyes; and here Rubens has selected a very
proper subject to display the gigantic coarseness of his pencil.

Had this powerful artist confined his strength to the representation
of agonizing thieves and sturdy Barabbases, nobody would have been
readier than your humble servant to offer incense at his shrine, but
when I find him lost in the flounces of the Virgin's drapery, or
bewildered in the graces of St. Catherine's smile, pardon me if I
withhold my adoration. After I had most dutifully observed all the
Rubenses in the church, I walked half over Antwerp in search of St.
John's relics, which were moving about in procession, but an
heretical wind having extinguished all their tapers, and discomposed