JOURNAL (CONTINUED.)

.

MONDAY, August 15. From Eisenach, where we dined cozily in the railroad station house, we took the cars for Cassel. After we had established ourselves comfortably in a nich rauchen car, a gentleman, followed by a friend, came to the door with a cigar in his mouth. Seeing ladies, he inquired if he could smoke. Comprehending his look and gesture, we said, "No." But as we spoke very gently, he misunderstood us, and entered. Seeing by our looks that something was amiss, he repeated the question more emphatically in German: "Can I smoke? Yes, or no." "No," we answered in full chorus. Discomfited, he retired with rather a flushed cheek. We saw him prospecting up and down the train, hunting for a seat, followed by his fidus Achates. Finally, a guard took him in tow, and after navigating a while brought him to our door; but the gentleman recoiled, said something in German, and passed on. Again they made the whole circuit of the train, and then we saw the guard coming, with rather a fierce, determined air, straight to our door. He opened it very decidedly, and ordered the gentleman to enter. IIe entered, cigar and all. His friend followed.

"Well," said II., in English, "I suppose he must either smoke or die."

"Ah, yes," I replied, "for the sake of saving his life we I will even let him smoke."

"Hope the tobacco is good," added H.; and we went on reading our "Villette," which was very amusing just then. The gentleman had his match already lighted, and was just in the act of puffing preliminarily when H. first spoke. I thought I saw a peculiar expression on his friend's face. He dropped a word or two in German, as if quite incidentally, and I soon observed that the smoking made small progress. He kept the cigar in his mouth, it is true, for a while, just to show he would smoke if he chose; but his whiffs were fewer and fainter every minute; and after reading several chapters, happening to cast my eye that way, the cigar had disappeared. Not long after the friend, sitting opposite me, addressed W. in good English, and they were soon well agoing in a friendly discussion of our route. The winged word had hit the mark that time.

We passed the night in an agreeable hotel, Roi de Prusse, at Cassel. By the way, it occurred to us that this was where the Hessians came from in the old revolutionary times.

Tuesday, August 16. A long, dull ride from Cassel to Dusseldorf.

Wednesday, August 17. Whittridge came at breakfast. The same mellow, friendly, good-humored voice, and genial soul, I had loved years ago in the heart of Indiana. We had a brief festival of talk about old times, art, artists, and friends, and the tide of time rolled in and swept us asunder. Success to his pencil in the enchanted glades of Germany! America will yet be proud of his landscapes, as Italy of Claude, or England of Turner.

Ho for Anvers! (Antwerp.) Through Aix-la-Chapelle, Liége, Malines, till nine at night.

Thursday, August 18. What gnome's cave is this Antwerp,

where I have been hearing such strange harmonies in the air all night? We drive to the cathedral, whose tower reminded Napoleon of Mechlin lace. What a shower of sprinkling music drops comes from the sky above us! We must go up and see about this. We spiralize through a tubular stairway to an immense height - a tube of stone, like a Titanic organ pipe, filled with waves of sound pouring down like a deluge. Undulations tremendous, yet not intolerable: we soon learned their origin. Reaching a small door, I turned aside, and came where the great bell was hung, which twenty men were engaged in ringing. It was a fete day. I crept inside the frame, and stood actually under the colossal mass, as it swung like a world in its spheric chime. A new sense was developed, such as I had heard of the deaf possessing. I seemed existing in a new medium. I felt the sound in my lungs, in my bones, on all my nerves to the minutest fibre, and yet it did not stupefy nor stun me with a harsh clangor. It was deep, DEEP. It was an abyss, gorgeously illuminated of velvet softness, in which I floated. The sound was fluid like water about me. I closed my eyes. Where was I? Had some prodigious monster swallowed me, and, like another Jonali, had I "gone down beneath the bottoms of the mountains"? I escaped from that perilous womb of sound, and ascended still higher. There was the mystery of that nocturnal minstrelsy. Seventy-three bells in chromatic diapason — with their tinkling, ringing, tolling, knolling peal! Was not that a chime? a chime of chimes? And all these goblin hammers, like hands and feet of sprites, rising and falling by magic, by hidden mechanism.

Of all German cactus blossoms this is the most ethereal. What head conceived those harmonies, so ghostlike? Every

ten minutes, if you lie wakeful, they wind you up in a net of silver wirework, and swing you in the clouds; and the next time they swing you higher, and the next higher, and when the round hour is full the giant bell strikes at the gate of heaven to bring you home!

But this is dreaming. Fie, fie! tures, masses, and common sense.

Let us come down to pic-
We came down. We

entered the room, and sat before the Descent from the Cross, where the dead body of Jesus seems an actual reality before you. The waves of the high mass came rolling in, muffled by intervening walls, columns, corridors, in a low, mysterious murmur. Then organ, orchestra, and choir, with rising voices urged the mighty acclaim, till the waves seemed beating down the barriers upon us. The combined excitement of the chimes, the painting, the music, was too much. I seemed to breathe ether. Treading on clouds, as it were, I entered the cathedral, and the illusion vanished.

Friday, August 19. Antwerp to Paris.

Saturday, August 20. H. and I take up our abode at the house of M. Belloc, where we find every thing so pleasant, that we sigh to think how soon we must leave these dear friends. The rest of our party are at the Hotel Bedford.

LETTER XLVII.

ANTWERP.

MY DEAR:

Of all quaint places this is one of the most charming. I have been rather troubled that antiquity has fled before me where I have gone. It is a fatality of travelling that the sense of novelty dies away, so that we do not realize that we are seeing any thing extraordinary. I wanted to see something as quaint as Nuremberg in Longfellow's poem, and have but just found it. These high-gabled old Flemish houses, nine steps to each gable! in externals than any yet. that of Strasbourg would. chimes, I deliver that over to Charlie.

The cathedral, too, affects me more
And the spire looks as I expected
As to the grammarye of bells and
But I have seen

Rubens's painting! Before I came to Europe, Longfellow said to me, "You must go to Antwerp, to see Rubens."

"I do not think I shall like Rubens," was my reply.

"But you will, though. Yet never judge till you have been to Antwerp."

So, during our various meanders, I kept my eye with a steady resolve on this place. I confess I went out to see the painting without much enthusiasm. My experience with Correggio's Notte, and some of the celebrities of Dresden, was not encouraging. I was weary, too, with sightseeing. I expected to find an old, dim picture, half spoiled by cleaning, which I should be required to look into shape, by an exercise of my jaded imagination.