[The =Cathedral= of Brussels is dedicated to St. Gudula or Ste. Gudule, and to St. Michael the Archangel. Ste. Gudule is a holy person who takes us back to the earlier ages of Christianity among the Middle Franks. She was a member of the family of Pepin d’Heristal, the kinsman of Charlemagne, and she died about 712. She became a nun at Nivelles under her aunt, St. Gertrude. The only fact of importance known as to her life is that she used to rise early, in order to pay her devotions at a distant church, whither she guided her steps by the aid of a lantern. Satan frequently extinguished this light, desiring to lead her feet astray, but the prayers of the saint as often rekindled it. Hence she is usually represented carrying a lantern, with the devil beside her, who endeavours to blow it out. In the 10th century, the body of Ste. Gudule was brought to Brussels from Morseel; and in the 11th (1047), Lambert, Count of Louvain, built a church on this site above it: but the existing building, still containing the body of the saint, was not begun till 1220. More important, however, than Ste. Gudule, in the later history of Brussels Cathedral, is the painful mediæval incident of the =Stolen Hosts=. The Jew-baiting of the 14th century led to a story that on Good Friday, 1370, certain impious Jews had stolen 16 consecrated Hosts from the Cathedral, and sacrilegiously transfixed them with knives in their synagogue. The Hosts miraculously bled, which so alarmed the Jews that they restored them to the altar. Their sacrilege was discovered by the aid of an accomplice, and on this evidence several Jews were burned alive, and the rest banished from Brabant for ever. A chapel on the site of the synagogue still commemorates the event, and the Miracle of the Hosts (as it is called) gives rise to several works of art now remaining in the Cathedral. An annual ceremony (on the Sunday after the 15th of July) keeps green the memory of the miraculous bleeding: the identical wafers are then exhibited. Visit the =interior= between 12 and 4, when the doors are closed, but will be opened for you by a sacristan in the South Portal, at a charge of 50 c. per head. You will then be able to inspect the whole place peaceably at your leisure. Take your opera-glasses.]