While we are at home discussing with some little sectarian animosity the subject of State payments to Popish chaplains for our prisons and military hospitals, it is but fair to this most Catholic country to mention, that to the 7,368 Protestants the Belgian state-chest pays yearly 56,000 francs to eleven native pastors and six Church of England ministers, for salaries and other church expenses—being at the rate of eight francs for each Protestant in the kingdom. It allows also 7,900 francs to the Jews, or about seven francs a-head. For their religious liberality the reader will give such credit to the Belgian clergy as he may think they deserve. Detained by unforeseen circumstances for a day in Brussels, we witnessed the honours paid to Prince Napoleon on his entry from Paris, and in the afternoon were on our way to Cologne. Passing Louvain and Tirlemont in the dark, we recognised the neighbourhood of Liege only by its coke-ovens and iron-works, and an hour before midnight reached Cologne. Cologne, with thy sixty stinks still redolent, even a midnight entrance reveals to travelling olfactories thy odoriferous presence! As we jogged along to the Hotel Disch, enjoying alone a luxurious omnibus, the slumbering memory of long-familiar smells sprung up fresh in our nostrils, and awoke us to the full conviction that our railway conductor had made no mistake, and that we were really passing beneath the shadow of the magnificent cathedral of Cologne. Early morning saw us pacing the nave of the gigantic pile, admiring anew its glorious windows, peering into its chapels, glancing hurriedly at its saintly pictures, turning away both eyes and ears from unwholesome-looking priests intoning the morning service, admiring the by-play called “private worship,” which was proceeding at the same moment in the northern aisle, and offending susceptible un-fee’d officials by indecent looks, as we stealthily paced the circumference of the lordly choir. No familiarity can reconcile an English Protestant to the mummeries of a worship performed before tawdry dolls by the light even of a dozen penny candles. And the paltriness appears the greater in a vast pile like this, which itself is but a feeble attempt to do something adequate to the greatness of Him who dwelleth not in temples made with hands. This feeling awoke within us in full force as we came, in our promenade round the church, upon a large side-chapel, with its Virgin dressed in lace, enclosed in a small glass cupboard, with votive offerings of waxen limbs and other objects hung up beside it, while three small candles in dirty sconces burned beneath. And before this trumpery exhibition knelt and prayed grave men and women, who had passed the middle of life; and young girls with warm hearts, who had still the world with all its lures and temptations before them. Pity that hearts so devout and so susceptible should be so badly directed—that the plain