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and Orleans 'Aureliani.') And first to St. Jacques, a most exquisitely wrought bit of more than florid gothic: all the arches are fringed with stone lace, la dentelle en pierre; the roof is a wonder of honeycombed tracery, frescoed in many colours; and everything is perfect in its way, except the pulpit,—commonplace, and I hope temporary. Only one grand fault have I to find; to wit, that being in reality 800 years old, it now looks not five. years old, nor one ;-every inch having recently been scraped and scoured, and painted quite clean, and all mended up bran-new! much more imposing all that magic fretwork would have looked with the hoariness of eight centuries upon it, and even a fracture or two to witness of the teeth of time: but Belgian taste has no idea of leaving any patina on a coin, nor any timestain on a cathedral. Thence to St. Paul's, of a more simple and severe gothic in the nave, with a gloriously frescoed choir, and perhaps the most wonderful pulpit extant; a cobwebby fretwork of light oak, arch over arch, with five marble statues let into the columnar pedestal, and a most florid profusion of ornament. Thence, by way of the gloomy Palais de Justice, with its ill-assorted modern gothic wing, and its Moorish arcaded courtyard, to St. Martin's; another stately church,

remarkable for its burnished brass angels, rails, and altar-piece; with mechanical arrangements for exhibiting the host, and a very indifferent Protestant-looking pulpit: and so home to tea and "Times," well nigh tired out of extravagant church-architecture. Nobody can calculate the sums laid out in agatey marbles, sculptures, oak-carvings, paintings, and other sorts of costly decoration stored up in these Belgian churches; each one would require a good large volume full of plates to exhaust its beauties in description. Our last small exploit to-day has been to ascend to the Belvidered roof of our fine hotel, and so overlook the city, intersected by the traitorous Meuse, (which ever and anon drowns its too confiding neighbourland by inundation,) and lying cradled among green hills between a pair of wooded and green-sloped citadels.

20th.-If wood and stone can worship God per se, if He is adored by temples, and not in temples, then is Belgium a right holy and religious nation; but if, as a Spirit, He is to be worshipped intelligently and truly, then are all these glorious fanes little better than altars of idolatry and ignorance. Such manifest image-worship, such mere formalism, such abject credulity in people, and such pompous

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arrogance in priest, never were more rampant in heathendom; and the whole thing is a warning to us Protestant laymen not to give way to St. Barnabas mysticism and allegorism, nor to any so-called "Anglo-Catholic" priestcraft. Took an early ramble once more round the Liege churches, to admire their glorious proportions and wealth of decoration; noticing in St. Paul's the chained Lucifer in marble under the pulpit, and a marble dead Christ, and the fine contrast between the grey and white severe nave, and the variegated marble choir in St. Jacques, admiring again the fairy Moresco tracery everywhere; really, the church looks like a bride dressed out in Brussels-lace, and is, perhaps, the most delicate stone-work in existence this church was all prepared, by dint of black velvet and candles, and tin. sconces and painted skulls, for a death-mass, to help a rich lawyer, who died some weeks ago, to repose in peace; and so, it was tolling dismally, while all the other churches round. were tinkling out their matin chime. Thence looked in at an anonymous chapel, with "Pax Virginis" over it; a Jesuit priest (they swarm in Belgium) was there, mumbling and gesticulating before his flower-bedizened saint, with the most contemptuous back-turning against the congregation. Round by a beautiful mall,

under St. Martin's and the old walls of Liege, full of terraced gardens and dark arches, to the restored church of St. Croix, where the most noticeable novelty was a new idol to the honour of "immaculate" Mary, in the midst of an enormous oval nimbus of blue calico, surrounded by thousands of paper flowers. And so, skirting the grandly-piazzaed theatre, and a plainer looking church, to our Belle Vue hotel again, and off by the train for Cologne. A very beautiful ride it is all the way to Verviers, especially about Vieux Montagne, famous for iron works, Chaudfontaine for hot wells, and Pepinster, a name unknown to fame; rough and wooded hill and dale, streams, and occasional works or factories, with a seignor's chateau or two-a sort of Matlock-bath, or Albury-hanger style of country. Spa would probably be a pleasantish resting place, but for the perpetual gambling there. Chaudfontaine has all its advantages of hot-bath and rural beauty without the faro, and with fly-fishing.

At Verviers, we enter Prussia; and there is a change not only of carriages, but of government and route; passports are demanded, and soldiers stalk about in spiked helmets. For a manufacturing town, of many mills, and forges, and the like, it is the most romantic possible, and the country continues pretty enough till

you pass Aix la Chapelle. This we did pass, because years ago I saw all it has to show of casketed relics, and Charlemagne, and bronze artichokes; and because we cannot stop everywhere so, on to Cologne in a thunder-shower. Vexatious luggage-searching by the customs; what they ever expect to find beyond a fivefranc piece, I am at a loss to imagine; the whole thing is a barbarous persecution of goodnatured travellers; for us, however, while others were teased miserably, good Pierre saved all trouble; and I have only to wonder at the evil policy of all this jealous hindrance to trade and human intercourse.

Enter Cologne, by moat and foss and mound and rampart and drawbridge and gate; threading filthy narrow streets to our present hotel, Rheinberg, at the corner of the bridge of boats, and overlooking father Rhine : coming here for auld lang syne's sake, as my boyhood's lieu in '29: but if we are to stay at Cologne over Sunday, we must move, seeing the house stinks horribly. Is it not a strange bit of compensation, that a city immortalized for stenches by Coleridge and Byron, should have since redeemed its character by an equally immortal scent? I'll buy of Jean Marie to-morrow. The perpetual trouble of eating over, (and it is a very weari