UNBIASED OPINIONS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 7172, 16 September 1886, Page 4

UNBIASED OPINIONS.

rw» deem it right to Btnts thnt we in no tot ktuntirj onrsolvoa with the opinions expressed iv atuoiei Dppennng under this head.]

IRELAND AND THE IRISH— No. 20.

(Continued from yesterday.) A few months ago, a distinguished visitor from these very Provinces was in our own Town of New Plymouth, in the the course of a tour through the Colony. He more than once referred to the now once more wealthy and prosperous City of Antwerp, the chief port of the Kingdom ef Belgium. The City of Antwerp, in the middle of the sixteenth century, and for a considerable period previously, was the most important commercial city in Europe, having risen to that distinguished position lon the decline of the Cities of Vienna and Genoa. Antwerp, from the time of Edward 111, had been a noted emporium of the English woollan trade. Subsequently to the discovery of the Indies, the rich productions of those distant Colonies of Spain jhad been poured through the port of Antwerp into Britain and Northern Germany. Situated ■within easy reach of London and Paris, on a deep and easy navigable, river ; surpassing in the wealtk and luxury of its citizens, as well as the stateliness of ' its edifices, Paris itself, though Paris .exceeded it in population ; far surpassing London in both these particulars ; with strong walls and lofty towers around it, ample, it was thought to secure tha inhabitants in the enjoyment of their ancient chartered rights und liberties ; its magnificent cathedral ; Hotel de Ville ; generous provision of public schools, where overy child, in addition to a sound rudimentary instruction, was taught at least two languages ; such was Antwerp three hundred years ago ; a city still among the most beautiful and picturesque in all Europe ; not oqly within the lust half century once more rising into something approaching its ancient glory, wheD, three penturies ago, its streets were reddened with the blood of slaughtered citizens, its palaces burned, its walls levelled with the ground, by the merciless soldiery of Spain ; that very soldiery who menaced with a like destruction the lives and liberties of Englishmen, at the command of that king, who, again and again, stirred up Ireland to rebellion, and aided Mary of Scotland against her Protestant subject?, and the life of Elizabeth. The traveller who, with the writer of these letters, has paid a visist to the gay modern capital of Belgium, distant an tour or two's railway ride from Antwerp, beholds, at the present day, with delighted eyp, its purks, palaces, Houses of Parliament, picture gallery, aud other attractions of this second Paris. Not always, however, does the passing tourist traverse tho older Brussels on the slope leading downwards from the modern city, yet here, in a capacious equate exactly facing tho stately Town Hall, stands a monument of more interest I confess, to myself, even than th" rot distant field of Waterloo, the monument to those two martyred patriots, the noble Counts Egmont nnd Horn, who perished on the scaffold, victims to the ciuelty and bigotry of Philip, on the morning of Juue~stb, 1668. This uncieut City of Brussels, now called the Lower City, was ia the fifteenth and six tee'nth centuries, famous for its manufactory o£ armour and its gorgeous tapeetry, as in this century for its carpels and its kce-work. Within its walls, six miles in circumference, were no fewer than seven majestic and spacious churches, amidst them the cathedral dedicated to St. Gudule, with its twin towers and its matchless painted windows. Around the city extended, and still extends, a wide expanse of green and fruitful fields, with avenues of shady trees, and pretty gardens sloping down to the little river Seono. Crowning the rising ground up which «Bee ided its steep and narrow streets, he nired in on each side by lofty bouses, •rose the towers of the chateau o£ the Counts of Brabant, and close by it the mansion inhabited by one of the most heroic figures in all history — William of Orange, called the Silent. Egmont,