up to the high altar, and the stalls are filled with the first comers; the whole arrangement is disgraceful, unecclesiastical, and irregular, and loudly calls for reform. Frequented as this church is by such masses of people, the screen should certainly be an open one, and the back, above the stalls, should correspond. There are two enormous canopies, over nothing, that stand against the pillars; at first I imagined they indicated the seat of some dean or dignitary, but I soon found they projected only over a vacant space, by which the stalls were ascended, and were simply placed there as a vehicle for exhibiting a great assemblage of pinnacles and buttresses, and expending a sum of money unhappily, that would have half built the rood loft. The authority from which I have taken the representation of the old screen, &c., is a picture by Peter Neefs, preserved at Bicton, the seat of Lady Rolle. All the churches in Antwerp have been wofully modernized; but there is something like a screen at S. James's: two huge masses of marble wall, projecting from each of the great pillars, at the entrance of the choir. It is a work of the seventeenth century, heavy, and ill-contrived; and for a parochial church, most unsuitable. GHENT. The cathedral of S. Bavon has two projections of a similar description, leaving the space open in the centre for an entrance to the choir. These form lofts at top, and are ascended by staircases. On Sundays and festivals, I regret to add, they are filled with _fiddlers_! Were they joined at top, this would form a regular rood loft, but as it stands at present, it is a most anomalous pile of marble-work, effectually shutting out half the choir, without any attempt at beauty or symbolism. The old Dominican church has a remarkable screen of the seventeenth century; it is overloaded with sculpture and ornament of a very bad period; but it has a rood and loft, and it separates the choir from the nave of the church, which, like the usual Dominican churches, consists of a long parallelogram, with side chapels, gained out of the projection of the buttresses. The building itself is of the fine, severe Pointed style that prevailed in the fourteenth century; but all the fittings, erected probably at the same time as the screen, are of very debased character. It may be proper to remark that all the side chapels of the great Belgian churches are enclosed by marble screens, intermixed with perforated brass-work. These are mostly the work of the early part of the seventeenth century, and no doubt replaced the more ancient oak and metal screens that were mutilated or destroyed by the Calvinists in the devastating religious wars of the Low Countries. They are an existing proof that the traditional principles of enclosure and reverence outlived the change of style of architecture; for, although all these are of debased Italian design, they are constructed principally on the old arrangement, and are usually surmounted by standards for tapers.