| Years. | FOREIGN. | |||||
| With Cargoes. | In Ballast. | Total. | ||||
| Inwards. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. |
| 1835 | 1,316 | 160,104 | 48 | 4,877 | 1,364 | 164,981 |
| 1836 | 1,289 | 160,378 | 40 | 4,073 | 1,329 | 164,451 |
| 1837 | 1,443 | 214,739 | 18 | 886 | 1,461 | 215,625 |
| Outwards. | ||||||
| 1835 | 916 | 105,545 | 457 | 61,711 | 1,373 | 167,256 |
| 1836 | 869 | 105,224 | 476 | 59,863 | 1,345 | 165,087 |
| 1837 | 827 | 131,088 | 613 | 84,497 | 1,440 | 215,585 |
Antwerp and Ostend are suffering, also, by being defrauded of their fair proportion of legitimate commerce by the extensive system of contrabandism, which prevails upon all the Belgian frontiers, and is carried on in foreign vessels; a loss to which they would not be subject, were the government in a position to protect the portion of trade to which the country must still give employment, by an effectual system of the douane upon the frontiers and the coast.
Antwerp had once a most extensive manufacture of silk; in 1794, there were twelve thousand workmen employed in that branch alone. The number is now reduced to two hundred, and their only employment is in producing a beautiful description of rich black taffetas, which is used for the Spanish head-dresses, still worn by females.
Another most important branch of maritime trade, that of the transit of goods for consumption in the interior of Europe, has been almost entirely drawn from Antwerp by the Dutch, but the government hope to recover it, by means of the railroad, from the sea to the Rhine. Here, again, the most formidable opposition may be looked for from Holland, whose vessels on the Rhine are prepared to dispute with her the possession of this important department. Independently of the fact, that the carriage of goods by railway in England, where it has been most extensively tried, has not, as yet, answered the expectations of its projectors; the Dutch, having by their recent treaty with Prussia, obtained the free navigation of the Rhine, on the same footing as those vessels which bear the Prussian flag, will be disposed to make sacrifices in their freights, in order to underbid their rivals by land; the loss on which will be a very trifle compared with that which must ensue, if the Belgians are disposed to play out the same “desperate game with cold iron.” At the present moment, I am told, that the Rhinvaeders, of from two hundred to three hundred tons burthen, carry goods for from eight to nine florins the last, from Rotterdam to Cologne. This charge, it is natural to suppose, they will be able to reduce, so soon as a competition is instituted by the railroad. The advantage on the side of the latter will be manifest, as regards the item of time, the journey to Cologne by the railroad occupying but twenty-four hours, for what may require a number of days by the Rhinvaerder. But the question is—can the directors, or rather the government, whose property it is, reduce the carriage so low, as, with charges of all kinds, to underbid the Dutch to such an extent as to command a preference? A Belgian gentleman, who spoke to me in high hopes as to the ultimate success of the railroad in the struggle, admitted, at once, that it could only be achieved by a dead loss upon the adventure—which, however, he said, the government would, as usual, bear out of the taxes! Well may the merchants of Antwerp apply to the concocters of the revolution, the complaint against those who, “intending to build a tower, set not down first and count the cost thereof.”
A journey to Antwerp is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Rubens. Rubens is the tutelary idol of Antwerp—it was his home, though not his birth-place—his favourite residence, and the scene of his triumphs; and he has left to it the immortal legacy of his fame, his master-pieces, his monument, and his grave. Its museum and its churches are enriched by his principal pictures; and the inhabitants pay back, in grateful homage to his memory, the renown which his genius has entailed upon them. Fêtes in his honour, on a style of great magnificence, had been celebrated but a few weeks before our visit; to inaugurate his statue, which was crowned by the city, amidst public rejoicings, processions, music, banners, and all the pomp of civic triumph. The excitement had not yet subsided, and we found every table covered with portraits of the great painter, verses in his praise, and programmes of the recent festivals; and, with every individual, the absorbing topic was something connected with his name and his monuments.
Antwerp has long been entitled to distinction as a nursery of the arts. The list of painters which she has produced is quite surprising; and in addition to those with whom we are familiar, as Teniers, and Vandyke, and Snyders, her churches abound in pictures by natives of the city—by Metsys, and Florus, and Jansens, Quellyn, Seghers, Crayer, Franc, Jordaens, and a multitude of others, who form a numerous gallery in themselves. Her enthusiasm in the cultivation of genius seems never to have flagged, and its unimpaired appreciation, at the present day, is attested, not only by the pride of its population in their public treasures, museums and churches, but by the vast number of private collections, at the houses of its nobility and merchants, which abound with the choicest pictures of the Dutch and Flemish schools, those of other countries being less eagerly sought after. From fifteen to twenty of these private galleries exist in Antwerp; and an equal ambition prevails throughout to maintain the ancient character of the city, by the patronage of its living artists. We saw an exhibition of modern pictures, in a room attached to the museum, which contained some of unusual ability, especially landscapes and cattle, amongst which some sheep and cows by Verboeckhoven of Brussels, eminently entitle him to the epithet which his countrymen are fond of bestowing on him, of the Landseer of Belgium.
The Museum in which a large collection of Rubens and Vandyke’s pictures are deposited is an ugly suite of rooms in an obscure corner, the building having been a suppressed convent. It is situated in a little garden, ornamented, or rather disfigured by some wretched statues, as if their worthlessness was meant to serve as a foil to the gems within doors. It is curious that that which ought to be a native collection does not contain a single piece of Teniers, except one wretched thing which it is libellous to ascribe to his pencil, and only two of Snyders. In England, where the best pictures of Rubens’ pencil are comparatively unknown, and where our countrymen are accustomed only to his allegorical subjects and ungraceful women, the homage rendered to his abilities is, I think, rather an echo of his continental fame than a genuine appreciation of his merits; but any one who wishes thoroughly to estimate his loftier pretensions, and ardently to admit his claims to admiration, should visit the Museum and the Cathedral of Antwerp. Here his pictures evince not power alone, not merely that wonder-creative imagination that peoples the canvass with the most masterly compositions, but they exhibit a sweet adherence to nature, a rich perception of beauty, and a magical command of expression and action, that makes the canvass record the event it commemorates like a page of history or the voice of a poet. It is impossible, for instance, to look at “the Descent from the Cross” without almost expecting the attitudes to change as the act proceeded, so eager and intent are the countenances of his figures, and so earnest and real their occupations; and in the same way in the picture of “the Crucifixion,” where the Centurion has already broken one of the legs of the malefactor on the left, who has torn it from the cross under the agony of the stroke, and the soldier has the iron raised to crush the other; one’s very flesh thrills in anticipation of the scream that seems about to issue from the excruciated lips of the sufferer. This is a marvellous picture in every respect, and certainly the pride of the Museum; each individual figure is a perfect episode—Christ himself, in all the dignified calm repose of recent death; the soldier, with his hand raised to pierce his side, whilst Mary Magdalene, who seems in a paroxysm of suffering, to have been clinging around the foot of the cross, springs forward in a sudden agony of terror, with her arms outstretched to intercept the spear. This head of the Magdalene, Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounces to be “the most beautiful profile he ever saw of Rubens or any other painter.” Finely contrasted with the stirring action of these figures, is the expression of the mother of Jesus, who appears stupified by the exhaustion of her very sufferings, and that of the good Centurion, who leans forward over the neck of his horse in evident sympathy and horror at the scene before him.
“The Adoration of the Magi” is another picture of Rubens, well known in England from its innumerable engravings. It is, however, in every respect inferior to the Crucifixion, though a superb picture. But there are two charming paintings, the insensible attraction of which is, perhaps, the sweet repose of the subject; one a Christ exhibiting his wounds to satisfy Thomas’s incredulity, and the other the Virgin instructing St. Anne. It is impossible for any creature to sit before these, and another exquisite little copy of “The Descent from the Cross,” and to retire from them unimbued with a veneration for the genius that could conceive and embody such imaginings. There are in all fifteen paintings of Rubens in this collection, and they are certainly triumphs of his easel; the gallery at Munich possesses no less than ninety-five of his works, but after having seen both, I would rather have five of these at Antwerp than the ninety-five which are the boast of Bavaria.
There are five or six pictures by Vandyke, but they are in the same style with Rubens, groups from sacred subjects; and they do not bear to be placed in such immediate contact with the chefs-d’œuvres of his master. Vandyke’s unrivalled portraits, and his single figures are as much superior to those of Rubens, as the latter excels him in combination and compositions. Their productions are as an epic poem to a lyric or a sonnet; and whilst Rubens is the Homer of his art, Vandyke may be well contented to be its Pindar or Plutarch. The rest of the walls are occupied with the canvass of the other second rate names which have competed for fame with these great originals, Van Thulden, Seghers, Jordaens, de Vos, and a picture by Quellyn, which, I presume, to be the largest in the world upon canvass, as it occupies the entire end of the gallery, from the ground to the roof, and must be, at least, forty feet broad by sixty or seventy high. With the exception of Rubens and Vandyke, in fact, the collection is commonplace. In one of the halls is appropriately placed, as a relic of Rubens, the gilt leather chair which he occupied when president of the academy. Unfortunately it has not proved the tripod of the Pythoness to his successors.
I think it is Dr. Clarke who advises every traveller, who wishes speedily to map the spot in which he finds himself in his memory, to take the earliest opportunity of ascending the nearest tower or mountain, and I am most fully prepared to certify for its advantages. One half-hour on the tower of the Cathedral of Antwerp will give a stranger a better idea of its localities and extent, than a week’s driving around its streets and environs. The Cathedral itself is situated near the pretty little square called the Place Vert, (which was, I think, at one time a burying-place attached to the church). The building itself is defaced, as usual, by a number of ordinary houses erected against its walls, and which, of course, cover up all the exterior beauty of the architecture. It stands, tradition says, on a spot of ground which belonged to a monastery founded by Godfrey of Bouillon. The exquisite steeple, however, was built shortly before the reign of Charles V., (who stood as godfather to the great Bell,) from a design which originally contemplated two towers of equal grandeur and elegance, but one only was completed. The ascent is fatiguing in the extreme; and as the day was stormy, the vibrations of the tower were sensibly felt as the wind rushed through its beautiful galleries. Workmen have been employed for some years in restoring all the decayed portions of the stone-work, and the steeple is still filled with their scaffolding and machinery. But the view, long before gaining the extreme summit, is by far the finest in Belgium, extending, as it does, over the broad current of the Scheldt, whose windings can be traced from Ghent to Flushing, whilst to the north, the eye can reach Breda and the frontiers of Holland; to the south and east, the distant cities of Brussels, Mechlin, Turnhout, and Louvain. The vast extent of country which is swept by one of these Flemish prospects is really quite inconceivable, whilst the absence of a single hill to intercept the horizon upon either side, renders them as peculiar as they are surprising.