The churches, are, as usual, splendid specimens of gorgeous altars, (with their ponderous candelabra and Madonnas in embroidered petticoats,) solemn aisles, marble columns, painted ceilings, Flemish pictures and carved pulpits, so flowing and graceful in their execution, that they look as if the Van Hools and Van Bruggens of former times, possessed some secret for fusing the knotted oak and pouring it into moulds to form their statues and their wreathes of flowers. Their Pulpits are, in reality, one of the wonders of the Netherlands, they are of immense dimensions, some of them reaching almost as high as the gothic arches which separate the nave from the side aisles. The lower department usually represents some appropriate scene from the events of sacred history, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, Elijah fed by ravens, the conversion of St. Paul, with the frightened horse most vigorously introduced, or Christ calling Peter and Andrew, who are represented in their boat by the sea-shore, with their nets and fish, all exquisite specimens of the art; and, occasionally, the designs are allegorical, with figures of Time, Truth and Christianity. Above these, usually rises a rock, or a mass of foliage and flowers, on which are perched birds and other accompaniments, and on this rests the shell of the pulpit, the whole is then surmounted, either by a canopy sustained by angels and cherubims, or by the spreading branches of a palm tree, so arranged as to overshadow the whole. Almost every great church and cathedral in Belgium contains one of these unique productions of an art which is now almost extinct, or, at least, possessed of no practitioners at all qualified to cope in excellence with these ancient masters. The confessionals, altars and organs are likewise elaborately covered with these almost unique decorations, and even the doors and windows sometimes exhibit specimens of extraordinary beauty and value. The _church of St. Gudule_, which is the most remarkable at Brussels, has two huge gothic towers, each nearly the same height with St. Pauls, and from their solid and massy construction looking even more stupendous; but the effect is seriously injured by a number of ordinary houses, which have been permitted to be erected against the very walls of the building!--a curious instance of the absence of all taste in the ecclesiastical body, who can thus permit, for money, the actual defacement of their finest building. The pillars which sustain the roof within, bear each in front a colossal statue, of which there are fourteen or sixteen representing the various saints and apostles, some of them by Duquesnoy and Quellyn, but the generality of inferior merit. The pulpit was carved by Van Bruggen in 1699, and was presented to the cathedral by the Empress Maria Theresa.