18TH.--Just finished lionizing. Firstly, churches; St. Jacques; Corinthian order; remarkably elegant and tasteful: Notre Dame des Victoires, Notre Dame de Chapelle, and St. Michael; cathedrals richly adorned with paintings and sculpture. The towers of St. Michael are massive and conspicuous objects in the panorama of the city; and the magnificence of the interior is really astonishing. High mass was here also in operation in more than usual splendor, but I need not detail the ceremonies, with which I am free to say I was more amused than edified. In these cathedrals, as you are aware, there are no such things as pews, or permanent seats. The multitude are content to kneel on the cold stone floor, or if perchance a few chairs are provided, the occupants are often interrupted in their 'Ave Marias' by a summons for the rent thereof. Much did some of them seem to marvel that my heretical self touched not the holy water. 'While I stood wrapped in the wonder of it,' comes up a batallion of about one hundred young ladies, all dressed alike, in black silk frocks and straw bonnets, respectable and intelligent-looking girls, probably belonging to some large Catholic seminary. They were escorted by two ladies into the choir. Close by Notre Dame, I passed a grog-shop with this sign, verbatim. 'À LA GRACE DE DIEU: VALENTINE, MARCHAND D'EPICERIES ET LIQUEURS.' In all these churches there are little chapels around the walls, dedicated to the different saints, with contribution-boxes at the entrance, labelled in French and Dutch, '_Ici on offre à St. Roch, patron contre maladies contagieuse_.' '_Ici on offre à St. Antoine patron contre_;' something else, I forget what. '_Ici on offre à Notre Dame des doleurs aux pieds de la croix_;' and so on. The next curiosity is the Hotel de Ville, a very large and curious old building, with a tower after the model of that of Babel. It was in this edifice that the Emperor Charles V. signed his abdication. The beautiful palace built for the Prince of Orange, was just completed and furnished, when the revolution of 1830 broke out. Leopold, it seems, is too honorable and conscientious to use it, so that it is kept as a show-place. The interior is superb. It is a small edifice, comparatively, but a perfect gem of its kind. Visitors are required to put on cloth slippers, and slide, not walk, over the floors of polished oak. In some of the rooms, the walls are of variegated marble; others are covered with the richest satin damask. There is a fine collection of choice paintings by Rubens, etc., in this palace. They showed me also, in the stable, the state-carriage of the Prince of Orange, which he had not time to save when he lost Belgium.