VO2. Rubens and Shakespeare-compared. 330 
ea MEMCRANDUMS BY LORD GARDENSTONE, 
Rusens AND SHAKESPEARE COMPARED. 
Antwerp. 
Serr. 6. This day we arrived at Antwerp.—The town pre- 
sents an appearance ofthe broken or decayed fragments of 
a city, once great and opulent.—lIt retains nothing of its 
ancient grandeur, but momuments and traces of supersti- 
tion.— We saw a most fantastical procefsion here, on the 
supposed birth-day of the virgin Mary.—The cathedral 
has certainly one of the noblest spires in Europe.—In 
this, and in other churches, and religious houses, we see,, 
at their altars, and in their chapels, many pillars and orna- 
ments of marble, which are, ina high degree, rich and 
beautiful—Among the prodigious mafs of paintings in: 
those ancient buildings, there is little or nothing excel- 
lent, but the works of Rubens and Vandyke, and a few 
paintings by one or two others of !efs note ;—the rest are,. 
for the most part, tawdry, or glaring pieces, intended to 
represent the mysterious, unintelligible, or supernatural: 
points of catholic faith, such as the incarnation, the re- 
surrection, the ascension, purgatory, alsumption of the 
lefsed virgin, Ge. bc. 
When we contemplate the works of a great. genius, in a 
heap of ordinary paintings, it resembles a perusal of Shake- 
speare’s plays, intermixed with a promiscuous and volu- 
minous collection of modern dramas.—_Rubens, like Shakes- 
peare, is a studious master of nature, which he never 
fersakes ;--though, by the force of a wonderful genius 
he is able to heighten and embellith his representations of 
it, so as to present the-appearance of supernatural objects, 
—This observation is singylarly applicable to his famous. 
