It was dark ere we could complete our visit to the other churches of Antwerp, which here, as elsewhere, are the great depositories of the public treasures. We had light, however, to see the exquisite pulpit in the church of Saint Andrew. This is by far the noblest work of this kind that I have seen: it represents a boat drawn upon the sea shore, beneath a rock on which Christ stands, and calls to the fishermen Simon, Peter and Andrew, “follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; and straightway they left their nets and followed him.” Nothing could be more appropriate than the selection of this subject for such a purpose, and in the church of Saint Andrew too, and nothing of the kind can excel the extreme beauty of its execution. The figures, which are full of grace and expression, are by Van Geel,--and the other parts and minute details, are by Van Hoole, some of which, such as the fish and nets in the boat are as delicately finished as those of Grynlyn Gibbons. Against one of the gothic columns of this church, by the south transept, there is a small portrait and an obscure little monument in black and white marble to the memory of Queen Mary of Scotland, erected by two of her maids of honour, “præ-nobilis familiæ _Currell_,” who had attended her to the scaffold, and had then returned to the Low Countries. Its inscription records their indignation at her fate, “seeking refuge in England where her relative Elizabeth was Queen, she was, by the perfidy of the parliament and the heretics, held in captivity for nineteen years, and then had her head cut off for the good of religion. _Perfidia senat: et heret: post 19 captivit annos, relig: ergo caput obtruncata._” We dined with M. David, a wealthy merchant, for whom we had brought a letter of introduction; and if his house is to be taken as a specimen of the rest, the merchants of Antwerp must indeed be “princes.” It occupied three sides of a large court-yard, with lofty staircases on either side of the porte-cochère, the rooms furnished with English carpets, and the walls, as usual, covered with some excellent pictures by native artists. It is singular, that the use of carpets should be so slow in making its way upon the continent; climate is not the cause, because in countries much colder than England, they equally reject them with the countries of the south. Independently of their comfortable enjoyment, they are as much a _picture_ on the floor as stucco work or frescoes are a picture for the ceiling. We seem to divide the two with our continental neighbours; with us the floors are richly decorated, and the ceilings forgotten, comparatively, whilst with them the ceiling is the great field for the display of taste, and the floors of ordinary houses are seldom more costly than earthen tiles or sanded fir. In their palaces, indeed, the idea of an English floor is adopted, but it is exhibited not in velvety carpets, but in the more expensive material of an inlaid _parquet_.