Late in the evening we found ourselves in Brussels, and the following morning—though wet and dirty—we were visiting, as strangers do, the numerous churches. It was Sunday; and as in the face of nature we had seen in the Pas de Calais that we were in a foreign country, so to-day the appearance of the streets told us at every step that we were among a foreign people. The shops open everywhere, and more than usually frequented; the universal holiday sparkling upon every face; the frequent priests in gowns, bands, and broadbrims to be met with on the streets; the crowding to morning mass at St Gudule’s and St Jacques’; the pious indifference of the apparently devout congregations; the huddling together and intermixture among them of all classes and costumes; the mechanical crossings and genuflections even in the remotest corners, where only the tinkling of the bells was faintly heard; the easy air of superiority, and lazy movements and mumbling of the officiating clergy at the altar; and the happy contentment pictured on every face as the crowd streamed from the door when the service was ended;—all these things spoke of a foreign people and a foreign church. The evening theatres and Sunday amusements told equally of foreign ideas and foreign habits; while the old town-hall and the other quaint buildings which the English traveller regards at every new visit with new pleasure, kept constantly before his eyes that he was in a foreign city. The characteristic of Belgium among foreign countries is, that, with the exception of Spain, it is probably the most completely Roman Catholic sovereignty in Europe. To this almost exclusive devotion to the Roman Church the peculiarities to which we have referred are mainly to be ascribed. Of its population, which by the last census was 4,337,000, not less than 4,327,000 were Roman Catholics, and only 7,368 Protestants. The total expense of the dominant Church to the state, which pays all the clergy, is 4,366,000 francs, or about a franc a-head for each member of the Church. It has besides private revenues of various kinds for repairing churches, for charitable foundations, &c., amounting to 800,000 francs, making the total revenue about 5,000,000 of francs. This, divided among five thousand clergy of all ranks, gives less than one thousand francs as the average stipend. And when we add to this that the archbishop’s stipend is only £840, that of a bishop £580, and of a cathedral canon from £100 to £130, we should fancy the Church to be in money matters poor, and the clergy badly off. But in Protestant countries we understand very little of the system of fees and unseen payments in the Catholic Church, and we form probably a very erroneous idea of the real income and means of living of a Roman Catholic clergy when we conclude that, as a general rule, their main dependence is upon the known and avowed salaries they derive from the State or from other public sources.