masters. Nor were Rubens, Rembrandt, Teniers, and many of the Flemish artists, inferior to any in conception and execution, in originality, in invention, in truth of expression, and all the natural and acquired powers which constitute the perfection of the painter's art. And if the Italian artists--if Guido, Raphael, Buonarotti, Carlo Dolce, and Correggio, possess a pathos and sublimity, a force, a grace, and an undefinable charm of expression, which makes their works unequalled on earth--let it be remembered that the Flemish artists did not, like them, wake to life amidst the beauty and the harmony of nature; they were not surrounded by faces and forms of speaking, moving expression--of heavenly sublimity and soul-subduing tenderness. The "human face divine" was not moulded of the finer elements of beauty and of grace.--Painting is an imitative art. The world which Nature had spread before them they copied, but they could not create a new one. They were driven to seek in the habitations of men for the sources of that interest which the scenes of Nature denied them; and their powerful and original genius, seizing upon the materials which surrounded them, formed for itself a new and distinct school. They were most faithful copies of Nature. It is impossible to travel through Belgium and Holland and not notice at every step the landscapes of Hobbima, the _Interiors_ of Ostade and Gerard Douw; the faces, figures, and humorous scenes which Teniers has exhibited so often to our view; and to recognise at every turn the fat and fair, and well-fed and well-clad beauties of F. Mieres. But the paintings and the painters of Italy and Flanders have led me far from my travels. To return to Antwerp. After the bright-painted, well-scoured, baby-house looking towns of Holland, the streets of Antwerp appeared very grand and magnificent, but extremely dirty. Remarking this to an English, or rather an Irish officer, he laughed, and said they were beautifully clean in comparison of the state in which the British troops found them when they first came to the garrison. Their complaints of the filthiness and unwholesomeness of the town produced no effect; and to their representations of the necessity of cleaning it, the magistrates answered, with offended dignity, that "the city of Antwerp _was_ clean." The British commandant then ordered our soldiers to sweep the streets, and to pile up all the dirt against the houses of those magistrates who with so much pertinacity maintained that the city of Antwerp was clean! The mountains of dirt collected by the soldiers in one morning blocked up the windows, and it was with difficulty that the magistrates could get out of their doors. When they did, however, they immediately bestirred themselves, convinced by more senses than one that the city of Antwerp was _not_ clean; and they have taken due care ever since that the streets shall be regularly swept.