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eAntwerp Nov 25. Friday.
So As soon as it was daylight this morning I was abroad
surveying the streets of this interesting city. It is a town in
which every thing whenever built seems to have been
built so as to endure, and nothing was built so
worthlessly as to be ultimately useless. So it exhibits
in its streets the progressive architecture of five
hundred years. Even some houses constructed of wood
remain to testify the character of architecture when
Antwerp was in its infancy. Antwerp as you know
was for a long time the capital of the Flemish
provinces. The seat of commerce arts industry and
taste of the Ger Empire of Germany as it rose out
of the confusion and debris of the middle ages.
It was the Venice of the West. The Roman Catholic
Church as a State Institution made a stand here
against Protestantism and drove it back. The triumph
was attended by unheard of persecutions which
drove the many of the merchants and manufacturers
into exile. They carried their talents skill and
industry into England and thus laid there the
foundations of the commercial ascendancy of Great
Britain. Their noble Gothic ^ecclesiastical^ civil structures and

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private dwellings built in the Gothic style highly
rated and ornamented still remain. Situated safely
far inland on the Scheldt Antwerp is the great
harbor of Western Europe. It is and long has been
strongly fortified. When Napoleon had extended
his empire to the Zuyder Zee he began to
rebuild declining Antwerp and to make it the
chief bulwark of France.
My first visit was made to the Cathedral.
A Gothic structure 500 feet long and 250 feet broad
the interim space divided by columns into treble
aisles on each side of the nave. Its tower is 460
feet high consisting of successive stories all built of
the most delicate reticulated work. But it is ^not so much^ less
the trade, the strength or wealth that constitutes
the attraction of Antwerp as it’s title to the fame
of Rubens who was born lived and died here.
In this cathedral are several of his paintings and
amongst others his Master piece the Descent from the
Cross. The same Church possesses also another of his
great paintings the Elevation of the Cross. In another
church I saw “The flagellation of Christ ” by the
same powerful hand. Any book on ^the^ art will
give you entries of those works of men with their
names. I shall content myself with saying that

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they affected me with terror or rather – with horror.
So justly so fully do they present the agonies of the
Savior under the cruel torments inflicted by the Jews.
I could not study them – but turned away for relief
of sympathies that I could not suppress –
It was not without an exceeding satisfaction that
I passed away from them and stood almost immediately
stood before the picture by the same wonderful artist of
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary. You know that
the Catholic Church receives the tradition that the Virgin
Mary when buried was assumed and in restored
life into Heaven. More ethereal more angelic beauty
was never I think exhibited than on this sweet and
touching picture. For a time it converted me to a
faith in the ^pious^ fiction it celebrates.
From the Churches I passed into the
Museum which contains about 200 pictures all
by Masters of the Flemish school.
Antwerp rejoices and glories in the fame of Rubens.
They show you his grave, his monument, his statue
the home in which he lived and in which he died.
Even his two wives are honored with tombs in which
their forms are sculptured in marble fwith exquisite
taste –

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One needs to see Europe once (and to study it carefully),
to see how the material the rather the personal of the
Sacred History impressed itself in the early ages of the
Church on the human mind. Every actor in the great
tragedy was a living breathing walking suffering human
creature in the flesh, like ourselves, and is known as such
and not merely as an intellectual or spiritual agent.
Hence the hold that the Church with its traditions ^and its dogmas^ yet
holds on the consciences of men. As distinguished
from the more speculative and rational views and
tempers of Christians in our own Country. Is our system
the better of the two, I doubt not that it is. Did it
come into the world too late for the permanency of
the Christian religion? I am sure it did not.
Of Wharves and Citadels not to speak of markets
you do not come to hear. So farewell to
Antwerp. The Omnibus waits.