One most flourishing branch of trade in Brussels, is that of books; and more especially of reprints of French and foreign literature, with which it plentifully supplies almost every country of Europe. The value of the volumes thus produced annually, is estimated at upwards of six millions of francs, of which two millions, at least, are for contrefaçons of foreign literature. In point of price they are much below that of France, notwithstanding that their paper is more expensive, nor is cheapness their only recommendation, their typographical beauty is of the highest order, and some of their éditions de luxe, illustrated by wood-cuts, and arabesques are in every way equal to those of Paris, and much superior to any attempts hitherto made in England, where the hardness of our sized paper, prevents the engravings from delivering a rich impression, and our pressmen accustomed only to work with it, want that delicacy of hand, which is essential to use the soft and spungy paper of the French and Belgians.
The railroad took us to Antwerp, a distance of thirty-four miles, in something more than an hour and a half. As usual the country lay as level as a bowling-green, and now and then the line of the railway intersecting the old paved highway, shewed on either side a vista of elms and poplars, as straight as the flight of an arrow, and so long that no opening was discernible in the distant perspective: occasionally we flew past some Dutch looking country box, with its red roof and whitened walls, its clipped hedges and grave looking garden, with parterres of sunflowers and dahlias; and here and there a grim little château, surrounded at each angle by a turret, like a pepper-box, and covered by a tiled roof, as tall and as sharp as the peaked hat of a burgomaster, seated in a coppice of alders and firs, and looking as primitive and secluded as if the railroad were the first visitant that had broken in upon its retirement from time immemorial. One of these pompous little manor houses, at some distance from the road between Malines and Brussels, was a residence of Rubens; and another called the Dry Thoren or Three Towers, not far from it at Perck, was the property of Teniers. The intention of the great perpendicularity in the roofs, in the Low Countries, was to prevent the lodgment of snow in their severe winters, and in the towns were building ground was so extremely valuable, to obtain rooms for storing fuel and other bulky articles, without trenching upon the space below.
The road between Malines and Antwerp, passes through the hamlet of Rosendael, (the Vale of Roses) where there was formerly a rich abbey of Cistercian monks. Duffill, a small manufacturing town, and a village bearing the remarkable name of Vieux Dieu, from a pagan temple, which is said to have been erected there at some remote period, and the site of which is pointed out in a clump of elms, a “sacred grove,” within which an altar is still erected on the occasion of any religious procession in the parish. Approaching Antwerp, the surface of the land becomes more uneven, much of it has been recovered from the rivers which traverse it, and is sunk in deep rich polders, which the roads traverse upon raised causeways. The agricultural toil seemed here to be extensively shared by the women, who were busied in its most laborious processes.
The first feature of Antwerp is the soaring and majestic tower of its Cathedral, springing from three to four hundred feet above the level plain. Beyond any comparison, this is the most chaste and beautiful steeple I have ever seen, its extraordinary height between three and four hundred feet, being less surprising than its airy and graceful lightness. It tapers up arch above arch, not in solid masonry, but pierced with innumerable openings, through which the clear blue sky is seen through the gothic net-work of its minarets and spandrils. It was of this handsome spire, that Charles V. said, it should be preserved under glass, and Napoleon with more vraisemblance, observed, that it reminded him of Mechlin lace. The entrance to the city, by the Porte de Borgerhout, gives a striking impression of its great strength, its fortifications rising in huge mounds of brickwork, above broad and river-like fosses, and the road after passing draw-bridge after draw-bridge entering a ponderous arch, apparently hollowed out of the ramparts, on emerging from which the wheels rattle and re-echo over the rough pavement of the narrow gloomy streets, that lead into the heart of the city.
Its appearance is like that of all the other ancient fortified towns of the Low Countries, where the circuit of the city, being girt in and determined by the line of the walls, the necessity of economizing space led to the construction of gloomy passages, and lofty houses that overshadow the street, and keep the sun from ever shining upon the pavement. Towards the centre of the town, however, there are some ample streets, and a lively square, the Place Vert, planted with trees and surrounded on all sides by hotels, cafés, and modern houses of great elegance. In the Place de Mer, there is a spacious mansion, surmounted by the royal arms, which is dignified with the name of a palace, but was merely the mansion of a merchant of Antwerp, and was purchased by Napoleon, as a residence for himself and his marshals, on their temporary visits to the city. It is still retained for the same purpose by King Leopold. In an adjoining street, which bears his name, is the house and garden of Rubens, the site of which he purchased from the corporation of the Arquebusiers, whose hall was next door, in exchange for his great picture in the Cathedral, of the “Descent from the Cross.” The generality of the houses are built of dark sand-stone, without any architectural decoration, except their castellated gables, which, as usual, are turned upon the street; the windows are generally furnished with espions, and at many of the corners, niches in which are seated tawdry Madonnas, covered with a profusion of brocade and copper lace. The weather became rainy before we left, and this together with the want of footways to the streets, the filth of the centre, and the odours which the unusual stream of water awoke from every sewer, left our impression of the domestic comforts of Antwerp, less agreeable, than it might have been, had we seen it under the influence of light and sunshine.
Antwerp like all its fellow cities in Belgium, boasts an origin of obscure antiquity, so remote as the fifth or sixth century, it is said,—but at all events in the tenth, it was of sufficient importance to constitute a Marquisate for Godfrey of Bouillon, the hero of Tasso, and the King of Jerusalem, the unexpected arrival of whose followers from the Holy Land, in January 1100, has been commemorated in a festival still observed by the women of Antwerp, as the Vroukens-Avond, or the Ladies’ Eve, in remembrance of the domestic fêtes which welcomed their return.
Two hundred years after, it was annexed along with the province of Lower Lorraine, to the Duchy of Flanders, and along with it passed successively under the dominion of Burgundy, Germany and Spain, sharing in all the vicissitudes and disasters which befel the rest of the Netherlands, under their various dynasties.
Antwerp contests with Holland and Germany, the glory of the discovery of printing. Little books of devotion, printed there, from solid blocks, early in the fourteenth century, are still in existence; numbers of volumes in moveable types, bear its name and the date of 1476; and during the sixteenth century, in the days of Plantin, it was one of the most extensive seats of printing in Europe, all the productions of its press, and especially its classics, being in the highest repute.
The original citadel and fortifications were erected by Philip II, which were strengthened and enlarged in the reign of Charles V, at a time when Antwerp was one of the first commercial cities in Europe. Its manufactures of linen and silk were then exported to every part of the world; its woollen trade was the parent of the same manufacture in Great Britain, and its local historians, perhaps with some exaggeration, describe its commerce as so flourishing, that the population supported by it, exceeded one hundred thousand souls, (though one is puzzled to discover where they found accommodation within its walls) and fifty thousand sailors and travellers on the river and in the faubourgs; and Scribanius declares that he has seen 2500 vessels in the Scheldt at a time, of which five hundred daily entered the river, whilst two thousand lay at anchor before the city; but, “pour être témoin véridique, il ne suffit pas toujours d’être témoin oculaire.” It was in this era of its splendour, that one of its merchants entertaining Charles V, at a banquet, kindled a fire of cinnamon, then a costly rarity, with the Emperor’s bond for two millions of florins, observing, “that the honor of having such a guest at his table, was infinitely more precious than the gold.” Its prosperity was, however, annihilated a century later, when at the treaty of Munster, which closed the Thirty years’ war in 1648, Holland had sufficient influence to obtain the closing of the Scheldt. For nearly one hundred and fifty years, this noble river flowing through the midst of one of the most active and industrious countries in Europe, was forbidden to be navigated by a single native sail, every vessel which bore produce for Antwerp, being compelled to transfer her cargo to a Dutchman under whose flag alone it could reach its destination. This unnatural embargo was terminated by the French in 1794, and Antwerp under the dominion of France, rose again into new and augmented importance.