Teniers lived in Dendermonde, of which his lady was a native, and the house he occupied, with a fresco over the mantel-piece of the saloon, is still shown to visitors. It has some manufactories of cotton and wool, but the only process we saw was one of those mills for crushing oil, which as they find both the raw material and the consumer upon the spot, seems to be amongst the most prosperous establishments in Belgium.
The journey by the railroad from Dendermonde to Mechlin, a distance of sixteen miles, is performed in about half-an-hour. Mechlin quite comes up to one’s expectations of it. I had always heard of it by its soubriquet of Malines la Propre, and associated it with the stateliness and quaintness of “Mechlin lace:” and certainly it is just such an old place as one would imagine likely to produce such collars and lappets as one sees in Vandyke’s portraits—quiet, grotesque-looking old houses of great size, and with rich and sober ornaments and decorations to the points and gables, tall gothic churches, and streets accurately clean, with groups of cheerful, contented-looking loungers at the doors, and here and there a demure ecclesiastic, stepping silently along in his black gown and silk sash, with his little three-cornered hat and white bands, edged with black ribband, and broad silver buckles to his shoes.
Mechlin is full of priests, as it abounds in churches, and is the residence of an Archbishop. The present prelate is M. Sterckx, son to a farmer at the village of Ophem, but one of the most restless, energetic and ambitious ecclesiastics that ever aspired to political power. He obtained his present See subsequently to the Revolution, but he is now the leading spirit of the parti-prêtre in the legislature, and his will and wishes, transmitted through becoming channels, serve to “move, direct, and animate the whole” policy of the state, in the present ascendant position of the church in both houses. The Abbé de Pradt was Bishop of Mechlin under Napoleon.
Malines is a very antique place; its name has been derived from Maris linea, and the influence of the tide upon the current of the Scheldt, and its tributary, the Dyle, on the side of which it is built, is felt for a mile beyond the town. It was once fortified, and besieged by Marlborough and others, but the French levelled the ramparts and filled up the fosse in 1804. Its lace manufacture has been sadly interfered with by other competitors, but above all, by the invention of tulle and bobbin-net, but the genuine specimens of its ancient production are still in the most distinguished repute. The other occupations of the population, which is somewhere about 20,000, are the manufactures of cashmere shawls, and chairs of gilded leather, which were, at one time, an article of export, so choice was the taste of their designs; they still engage upwards of four hundred workmen, and are in as great repute as ever with the Dutch. The district around is as usual, highly agricultural, and the canals which traverse it and pass by the city, have rendered Mechlin a prosperous seat of the flax trade, and quite an entrepôt for corn and oil.
The only objects of interest, and depositaries of art in Mechlin, are, as usual, the churches. The Cathedral, whose solid moresco tower is seen from a vast distance, is of great antiquity, though not remarkable for its beauty. The tower is of amazing height, though unfinished; we ascended it by a stone staircase, in which I lost count after reckoning an ascent of five hundred steps; I should, therefore, conclude it to be at least three hundred feet high. It contains one of those “corals for grown gentlemen,” as some Fadladeen in music has denominated the carillons of the Netherlands—a chime of innumerable stops, set in motion by machinery. But, I confess, that the well arranged harmony of the carillons is to me infinitely more pleasing than the monotonous clangour that on fête days in London, disturb the city from its propriety, or the sweet but “drowsy tinklings” from every church and convent, that load the air with sound on an evening in Italy. Their gay and measured melody sometimes strikes so unexpectedly upon the ear, descending through such a distance from the sky, that it, also, seems like the song of Ariel attracting Ferdinand:—
“Where should this music be? i’ the air or i’ the earth?
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes.
It swept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion