The road passed through the little village of Zwyndrecht, a secluded little spot embowered in trees upon the verge of the great polder. The income of the curate, a comfortable and easy divine, who saluted us from the roadside, is thirty pounds a year, but the saint to whom the church is dedicated, St. Makuyt, being in high repute for the cure of weak limbs in children, brings in a handsome income in addition. The fame of the saint, is in fact, the main source of income to the incumbents of these miserable livings, many hundreds of which do not exceed that of Zwyndrecht. The first question of a priest, in fact, on being offered a benefice, is, what is the stipend? the second, who is the saint? The reason is this, that the whole contents of Pandora’s box, all the diseases of mankind have been parcelled out to the various saints of the calendar, each taking his or her own peculiar department of the pharmacopœia:--thus, Saint Blaize is consulted for the quinsey, St. Nicholas for barrenness, St. Apollonia for the tooth-ache, St. Dorothea of Alois for pining children, St. Œdilia for weak eyes, St. Cornelius for the hooping-cough, St. Joseph au besoin for ladies who are anxious for heirs, St. Wendelin for the murrain in cattle, and St. Gertrude to drive away rats. Of all the most valuable and money-making are the ladies who preside over the illnesses of infants; not only the frequency of the malady, but the alarm of the mother contributing to the fame and the profits of the saint. Not merely Roman Catholic ladies who laugh at the powers ascribed to the saint, but even protestants, who, in their calmer moments, despise the imposture, seldom fail in the last extremity to call in the aid of the priest; they distrust the profession, but they shrink from neglecting the last expedient, however, unpromising. If the patient sinks under the process, that arises from the parent having been too long in applying, and, if it revives, the faith of the mother receives a powerful inclination towards belief in the church. Mons. D---- who was in the carriage with us, mentioned rather an amusing anecdote connected with the system. His uncle is a priest and incumbent of a parish, the patron saint of which, Saint Joachim has under his charge the department of _deafness_. The income of his living is small, but it is far more than exceeded by the profits of the saint, who has been gradually rising into repute during the last fifty years that the old gentleman has had him under his care. He came, however, a short time since to visit his nephew at Antwerp, and feelingly complained of a disaster, which was likely to ruin both the saint and his practice; he had completed his eightieth year, and _had grown so deaf himself_, that he could no longer make out the complaints of his patients!