“intending to build a tower, set not down first and count the cost thereof.” A journey to Antwerp is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Rubens. Rubens is the tutelary idol of Antwerp--it was his home, though not his birth-place--his favourite residence, and the scene of his triumphs; and he has left to it the immortal legacy of his fame, his master-pieces, his monument, and his grave. Its museum and its churches are enriched by his principal pictures; and the inhabitants pay back, in grateful homage to his memory, the renown which his genius has entailed upon them. Fêtes in his honour, on a style of great magnificence, had been celebrated but a few weeks before our visit; to inaugurate his statue, which was crowned by the city, amidst public rejoicings, processions, music, banners, and all the pomp of civic triumph. The excitement had not yet subsided, and we found every table covered with portraits of the great painter, verses in his praise, and programmes of the recent festivals; and, with every individual, the absorbing topic was something connected with his name and his monuments. Antwerp has long been entitled to distinction as a nursery of the arts. The list of painters which she has produced is quite surprising; and in addition to those with whom we are familiar, as Teniers, and Vandyke, and Snyders, her churches abound in pictures by natives of the city--by Metsys, and Florus, and Jansens, Quellyn, Seghers, Crayer, Franc, Jordaens, and a multitude of others, who form a numerous gallery in themselves. Her enthusiasm in the cultivation of genius seems never to have flagged, and its unimpaired appreciation, at the present day, is attested, not only by the pride of its population in their public treasures, museums and churches, but by the vast number of private collections, at the houses of its nobility and merchants, which abound with the choicest pictures of the Dutch and Flemish schools, those of other countries being less eagerly sought after. From fifteen to twenty of these private galleries exist in Antwerp; and an equal ambition prevails throughout to maintain the ancient character of the city, by the patronage of its living artists. We saw an exhibition of modern pictures, in a room attached to the museum, which contained some of unusual ability, especially landscapes and cattle, amongst which some sheep and cows by Verboeckhoven of Brussels, eminently entitle him to the epithet which his countrymen are fond of bestowing on him, of the Landseer of Belgium.