FullReads

There are two exquisite Vandykes (whatever Sir Joshua may say of them), and in which the very management of the gray tones which the President abuses forms the principal excellence and charm. Why, after all, are we not to have our opinion? Sir Joshua is not the Pope. The color of one of those Vandykes is as fine as FINE Paul Veronese, and the sentiment beautifully tender and graceful.

I saw, too, an exhibition of the modern Belgian artists (1843), the remembrance of whose pictures after a month’s absence has almost entirely vanished. Wappers’s hand, as I thought, seemed to have grown old and feeble, Verboeckhoven’s cattle-pieces are almost as good as Paul Potter’s, and Keyser has dwindled down into namby-pamby prettiness, pitiful to see in the gallant young painter who astonished the Louvre artists ten years ago by a hand almost as dashing and ready as that of Rubens himself. There were besides many caricatures of the new German school, which are in themselves caricatures of the masters before Raphael.

An instance of honesty may be mentioned here with applause. The writer lost a pocket-book containing a passport and a couple of modest ten-pound notes. The person who found the portfolio ingeniously put it into the box of the post-office, and it was faithfully restored to the owner; but somehow the two ten-pound notes were absent. It was, however, a great comfort to get the passport, and the pocket-book, which must be worth about ninepence.

BRUSSELS.

It was night when we arrived by the railroad from Antwerp at Brussels; the route is very pretty and interesting, and the flat countries through which the road passes in the highest state of peaceful, smiling cultivation. The fields by the roadside are enclosed by hedges as in England, the harvest was in part down, and an English country gentleman who was of our party pronounced the crops to be as fine as any he had ever seen. Of this matter a Cockney cannot judge accurately, but any man can see with what extraordinary neatness and care all these little plots of ground are tilled, and admire the richness and brilliancy of the vegetation. Outside of the moat of Antwerp, and at every village by which we passed, it was pleasant to see the happy congregations of well-clad people that basked in the evening sunshine, and soberly smoked their pipes and drank their Flemish beer. Men who love this drink must, as I fancy, have something essentially peaceful in their composition, and must be more easily satisfied than folks on our side of the water. The excitement of Flemish beer is, indeed, not great. I have tried both the white beer and the brown; they are both of the kind which schoolboys denominate “swipes,” very sour and thin to the taste, but served, to be sure, in quaint Flemish jugs that do not seem to have changed their form since the days of Rubens, and must please the lovers of antiquarian knick-knacks. Numbers of comfortable-looking women and children sat beside the head of the family upon the tavern-benches, and it was amusing to see one little fellow of eight years old smoking, with much gravity, his father’s cigar. How the worship of the sacred plant of tobacco has spread through all Europe! I am sure that the persons who cry out against the use of it are guilty of superstition and unreason, and that it would be a proper and easy task for scientific persons to write an encomium upon the weed. In solitude it is the pleasantest companion possible, and in company never de trop. To a student it suggests all sorts of agreeable thoughts, it refreshes the brain when weary, and every sedentary cigar-smoker will tell you how much good he has had from it, and how he has been able to return to his labor, after a quarter of an hour’s mild interval of the delightful leaf of Havana. Drinking has gone from among us since smoking came in. It is a wicked error to say that smokers are drunkards; drink they do, but of gentle diluents mostly, for fierce stimulants of wine or strong liquors are abhorrent to the real lover of the Indian weed. Ah! my Juliana, join not in the vulgar cry that is raised against us. Cigars and cool drinks beget quiet conversations, good-humor, meditation; not hot blood such as mounts into the head of drinkers of apoplectic port or dangerous claret. Are we not more moral and reasonable than our forefathers? Indeed I think so somewhat; and many improvements of social life and converse must date with the introduction of the pipe.