[Footnote V-41: The Assumption of the Virgin is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church on the 15th August.] [Footnote V-42: Albrecht Dürer’s Reisejournal, in Von Murr, 7er Theil, S. 63-65.] Though Durer chiefly resided at Antwerp during his stay in the Netherlands, he did not entirely confine himself to that city, but occasionally visited other places. On the 2nd of September 1520, he left Antwerp for Brussels, proceeding by way of Malines and Vilvorde. When at Brussels, he saw a number of valuable curiosities which had been sent to the Emperor from Mexico, among which he enumerates a golden sun, a fathom broad, and a silver moon of the same size, with weapons, armour, and dresses, and various other admirable things of great beauty and cost. He says that their value was estimated at a hundred thousand guilders; and that he never saw any thing that pleased him so much in his life. Durer was evidently fond of seeing sights; he speaks with delight of the fountains, the labyrinths, and the parks in the neighbourhood of the Royal Palace, which he says were like Paradise; and among the wonders which he saw at Brussels, he notices a large fish-bone which was almost a fathom in circumference and weighed fifteen “centner;”[V-43] a great bed that would hold fifty men; and a stone which fell from the sky in a thunder-storm in presence of the Count of Nassau. He also mentions having seen at Antwerp the bones of a giant who had been eighteen feet high. Durer and his wife seem to have had a taste for zoology: Herr Lazarus Von Ravenspurg complimented him with a monkey; and “Signor Roderigo,” a Portuguese, presented his ill-tempered spouse with a green parrot. [Footnote V-43: This “gross Fischpein” was probably part of the back-bone of a whale.] When at Brussels, Durer painted the portrait of the celebrated Erasmus, from whom, previous to leaving Antwerp, he had received as a present a Spanish mantle and three portraits. He remained about a week at Brussels, during which time he drew or painted seven portraits; and in his Journal he makes the following memorandum: “Item, six persons whose likenesses I have taken at Brussels, have not given me anything.” Among those portraits was that of Bernard Van Orley, an eminent Flemish painter who had studied under Raffaele, and who at that time held the office of painter to the Archduchess Margaret, regent of the Netherlands, and aunt of the Emperor Charles V. When at Brussels, Durer bought for a stiver[V-44] two copies of the “Eulenspiegel,” a celebrated engraving by Lucas Van Leyden, now of very great rarity.