My Dear Morse:  I have had a great compliment paid me, Master Samuel,—­You must know there is a great painter in Bruxelles of the name of Verboeckhoven, (which means a bull and a book baked in an oven!) who is another Paul Potter.  He out does all other men in drawing cattle,—­Well, sir, this artist did me the favor to call at Bruxelles with the request that I would let him sketch my face.  He came after the horses were ordered, and knowing the difficulty of the task, I thanked him, but was compelled to refuse.  On our arrival at Liege, we were told that a messenger from the governor had been to inquire for us, and I began to bethink me of my sins,—­however,—­it proved Mr. Bull-and-book-baked had come [by dilligence] to Liege (sixty-three miles) and got the governor to give him notice, by means of my passport, when we came.  Of course I sat,—­the likeness—­like all other pictures you have seen of my chameleon face—­has a vastly live-like look,—­the compliment is none the less, and, provided the artist does not mean to serve me up as a specimen of American wild beasts, I shall thank him for it.  To be followed twelve posts by a first-rate artist, who is in favor with the King, is so unusual, that I probed him a little.  I found him well skilled in his art,—­his gusto for natural subjects, strong,—­and his favorite among all my books is “The Prairie,” which you know is filled with wild beasts.  Here the secret is out.—­He sent me a beautiful pencil sketch of a Belgian hind as a memorial of our achievement.

[Illustration:  EUGENE-JOSEPH VERBOECKHOVEN.]

Cooper and his family spent some days drinking the waters at Spa, with best effects for Mrs. Cooper—­not over-strong since the Paris days.  They left its grass of “ghostly green” when the “dog-star raged with all its fury,” and “came on old Aix-la-Chapelle, well-cloaked and carriage windows closed.”  In compliment to the republic of letters the postman called on Cooper here, and like tribute was also paid two posts farther on, where he was asked if he “was the man who wrote books!” That day was well spent when they reached the terrace above the Rhine and got their first view of the towers of Cologne.  In “fine, lofty rooms” overlooking a garden, they here enjoyed a night’s rest, a breakfast, and then a pilgrimage to “the unfinished cathedral, that wonder of Gothic architecture.”  A visit was paid to the house in which Rubens was born, it is said, and the very room which sheltered the last moments of Mary of Medicis, wife of Henry IV and mother of Louis XIII of France.  Cooper thought it “a better sort of burgher home,” and saw it as “a public house.”

[Illustration:  RUBENS’ COLOGNE HOME.]