Connecticut western news., 1877-02-23
A Festival fm Antwerp.


 summer season when the peasants from the meadows press close upon the burning, white pavements of Antwerp, and gaze ill wonder at the beauty of the show. The whole life of the city becomes one vast homage to the dei- ties ill which all the thoughts and tra- ditions of the people centre-their Vir- gin and their Rubens. The joyful voice of the cathedral calls out over the meadows and the gala decked streets: Arise, o ye burghers of Antwerp, for this is the great day of the year! The procession of Our Lady formeth beloww
 Soon the house fronts and the peaked roofs are alive with round Flemish faces and fair hair and white caps, and the people swarm out of the houses and stand packed together on the sultry sidewalks. In all the windows great waxen tapers are flaring, and garlands of paper roses hang over ali the doors. The old women tell their beads, and mutter a prayer for themselves and their city and their homes and their trades.
 Within the cathedral, the peasants, in their blue blouses, and brown kirtles, are kneeling about the chancel and the sacrament chapel. They are tired and careworn with the miles they have walked this morning. Their work knotted hands are folded patiently over their umbrellas, and their faces, brown, honest, and humble, are up- turned in reverent adoration to the glory upon the altar and the walls. They are still with dumb instinct of the beauty and grandeur that lie so far above their simple lives of sowing and reaping, and etreveal themselves to them, dimly, imperfectly. it may be, in every gleam of the silver vessels, in every breath of the vaporous incense.
 The black veils have been drawn away from the great passion scenes, and blaze of scarlet and shining of yellow hair and large white patch of shroud and the fiery eyes of a great brown horse and suggestion of grief lined human faces look down upon the kneeling worshipers through the dim twilight of the nave.
 About the chapel hang old Flemish altar pieces, with grotesque faces and monstrous heads, and leer of mockery that breaks the solemn symmetry of the editice like aippant laugh. From over the great door streams flood of rosy and purple light that deluges the dark pillars, and rests now on the gilded vestments of the priests, now on the low, gray tombs of the burgher- princes. A torrent of sound rushes from the organ loft down the arches to the dome, like loud chant of victory with wailing undertone of grief for the dead. . In the body of the cathedral is an altar erected for the festival, and great white lilies and forests of oleanders grouped about it. The priests stand before it, with jeweled incense-vessels in their hands. Above, against drap- pery of deep scarlet velvet, stands the Madonna with the Child in her arms, She wears train of cloth of gold en- broidered with roses, and petticoat of solid silver studded with diamonds. Her sceptre is set with rubies and en- eralds, and there is a high .jeweled crown upon her head.
 See how the old traditions of the land have been handed down! She is no Virgin, this royal dame with the scornful plaster face, but one of those proud burgher-queenes who rustic about the streets in stiff brOcades and jeweled coifs-one of these naughty Princesses that made an annual prog ress through their liege domain of Flanders.
 But they are proud of her those Flem- ings She represents to them the old time splendor and pomp and luxury that once filled tLeir land with color and wealth. They bow their heads reverently when the priest rings the bell. and the proud tignre moves to- ward the door, with the white robed acolytes pressing about it. She passes, this naughty doll, beyond the canvas, from which the Mother and Son look down in their agony upon the hurrying people, and reaches the pure daylight | or the 11OW6r-UcCkcu SGEt6U.
 A low murmur sweeps through the gathered crowds. Children come out from the houses, and strew flowers along the path of Our Lady of Antwerp On she moves, amid the chanting and incense, and the blaze of gold and sill banners, to the great Place, where above the mighty sea of faces, is raised another altar, on which sits pale marble image, life size, of the Mother of Sorrows. It is thrown out in ghastly relief by the sheaves of arms and tro- phies behind her, and the dark green curtain above her head.
 Here the procession halts. A breath less silence falls upon the crowd. The incense smokes afresh. The priests ascend the altar steps, and bare theil heads to the streaming sunlight, and say a mass for the welfare of the good city of Antwerp during the coming year.
 Ay! it is we'll that there where the fires of the Inquisition blazed, and the gallows reared their corpse hung crests the people should kneel to-day, with bowed heads and folded hands, and wait with due humbleness and grati- tude for the benediction that the bright robed priest, who stands there among the gold and silver vessels at the feet of the pale statue, shall shower upon their contrite heads with one wave oi his jeweled hand.
 Beyond the surging multitude and the chanting priests and the stately altar, a great white house rises in the distance. There is a marble bust high up on the roof, dark against the sky It IS the head of Rubens. FluteC columns are on the marble front of the