Little Travels and Roadside Sketches [10]
of Orange's picture by Perugino, very pretty indeed, up to a certain point, but all the heads are repeated, all the drawing is bad and affected; and this very badness and affectation, is what the so-called Catholic school is always anxious to imitate. Nothing can be more juvenile or paltry than the works of the native Belgians here exhibited. Tin crowns are suspended over many of them, showing that the pictures are prize compositions: and pretty things, indeed, they are! Have you ever read an Oxford prize-poem! Well, these pictures are worse even than the Oxford poems--an awful assertion to make.
In the matter of eating, dear sir, which is the next subject of the fine arts, a subject that, after many hours' walking, attracts a gentleman very much, let me attempt to recall the transactions of this very day at the table-d'-hote. 1, green pea-soup; 2, boiled salmon; 3, mussels; 4, crimped skate; 5, roast-meat; 6, patties; 7, melons; 8, carp, stewed with mushrooms and onions; 9, roast-turkey; 10, cauliflower and butter; 11, fillets of venison piques, with asafoetida sauce; 12, stewed calf's-ear; 13, roast-veal; 14, roast- lamb; 15, stewed cherries; 16, rice-pudding; 17, Gruyere cheese, and about twenty-four cakes of different kinds. Except 5, 13, and 14, I give you my word I ate of all written down here, with three rolls of bread and a score of potatoes. What is the meaning of it? How is the stomach of man to be brought to desire and to receive all this quantity? Do not gastronomists complain of heaviness in London after eating a couple of mutton-chops? Do not respectable gentlemen fall asleep in their arm-chairs? Are they fit for mental labor? Far from it. But look at the difference here: after dinner here one is as light as a gossamer. One walks with pleasure, reads with pleasure, writes with pleasure--nay, there is the supper-bell going at ten o'clock, and plenty of eaters, too. Let lord mayors and aldermen look to it, this fact of the extraordinary increase of appetite in Belgium, and, instead of steaming to Blackwall, come a little further to Antwerp.
Of ancient architectures in the place, there is a fine old Port de Halle, which has a tall, gloomy, bastille look; a most magnificent town-hall, that has been sketched a thousand of times, and opposite it, a building that I think would be the very model for a Conservative club-house in London. Oh! how charming it would be to be a great painter, and give the character of the building, and the numberless groups round about it. The booths lighted up by the sun, the market-women in their gowns of brilliant hue, each group having a character and telling its little story, the troops of men lolling in all sorts of admirable attitudes of ease round the great lamp. Half a dozen light-blue dragoons are lounging about, and peeping over the artist as the drawing is made, and the sky is more bright and blue than one sees it in a hundred years in London.
The priests of the country are a remarkably well-fed and respectable race, without that scowling, hang-dog look which one has remarked among reverend gentlemen in the neighboring country of France. Their reverences wear buckles to their shoes, light-blue neck-cloths, and huge three-cornered hats in good condition. To- day, strolling by the cathedral, I heard the tinkling of a bell in the street, and beheld certain persons, male and female, suddenly plump down on their knees before a little procession that was passing. Two men in black held a tawdry red canopy, a priest walked beneath it holding the sacrament covered with a cloth, and before him marched a couple of little altar-boys in short white surplices, such as you see in Rubens, and holding lacquered lamps. A small train of street-boys followed the procession, cap in hand, and the clergyman finally entered a hospital for old women, near the church, the canopy and the lamp-bearers remaining without.
It was a touching scene, and as I stayed to watch it, I could not but think of the poor old soul who was dying within, listening to the last words of prayer,
In the matter of eating, dear sir, which is the next subject of the fine arts, a subject that, after many hours' walking, attracts a gentleman very much, let me attempt to recall the transactions of this very day at the table-d'-hote. 1, green pea-soup; 2, boiled salmon; 3, mussels; 4, crimped skate; 5, roast-meat; 6, patties; 7, melons; 8, carp, stewed with mushrooms and onions; 9, roast-turkey; 10, cauliflower and butter; 11, fillets of venison piques, with asafoetida sauce; 12, stewed calf's-ear; 13, roast-veal; 14, roast- lamb; 15, stewed cherries; 16, rice-pudding; 17, Gruyere cheese, and about twenty-four cakes of different kinds. Except 5, 13, and 14, I give you my word I ate of all written down here, with three rolls of bread and a score of potatoes. What is the meaning of it? How is the stomach of man to be brought to desire and to receive all this quantity? Do not gastronomists complain of heaviness in London after eating a couple of mutton-chops? Do not respectable gentlemen fall asleep in their arm-chairs? Are they fit for mental labor? Far from it. But look at the difference here: after dinner here one is as light as a gossamer. One walks with pleasure, reads with pleasure, writes with pleasure--nay, there is the supper-bell going at ten o'clock, and plenty of eaters, too. Let lord mayors and aldermen look to it, this fact of the extraordinary increase of appetite in Belgium, and, instead of steaming to Blackwall, come a little further to Antwerp.
Of ancient architectures in the place, there is a fine old Port de Halle, which has a tall, gloomy, bastille look; a most magnificent town-hall, that has been sketched a thousand of times, and opposite it, a building that I think would be the very model for a Conservative club-house in London. Oh! how charming it would be to be a great painter, and give the character of the building, and the numberless groups round about it. The booths lighted up by the sun, the market-women in their gowns of brilliant hue, each group having a character and telling its little story, the troops of men lolling in all sorts of admirable attitudes of ease round the great lamp. Half a dozen light-blue dragoons are lounging about, and peeping over the artist as the drawing is made, and the sky is more bright and blue than one sees it in a hundred years in London.
The priests of the country are a remarkably well-fed and respectable race, without that scowling, hang-dog look which one has remarked among reverend gentlemen in the neighboring country of France. Their reverences wear buckles to their shoes, light-blue neck-cloths, and huge three-cornered hats in good condition. To- day, strolling by the cathedral, I heard the tinkling of a bell in the street, and beheld certain persons, male and female, suddenly plump down on their knees before a little procession that was passing. Two men in black held a tawdry red canopy, a priest walked beneath it holding the sacrament covered with a cloth, and before him marched a couple of little altar-boys in short white surplices, such as you see in Rubens, and holding lacquered lamps. A small train of street-boys followed the procession, cap in hand, and the clergyman finally entered a hospital for old women, near the church, the canopy and the lamp-bearers remaining without.
It was a touching scene, and as I stayed to watch it, I could not but think of the poor old soul who was dying within, listening to the last words of prayer,