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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4242-h.zip b/4242-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..27fe730 --- /dev/null +++ b/4242-h.zip diff --git a/4242-h/4242-h.htm b/4242-h/4242-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ad650d --- /dev/null +++ b/4242-h/4242-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1720 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of Beautiful Europe: Belgium, by Joseph E. Morris +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.footnote {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Beautiful Europe - Belgium, by Joseph E. Morris + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Beautiful Europe - Belgium + +Author: Joseph E. Morris + +Posting Date: July 9, 2009 [EBook #4242] +Release Date: July, 2003 +First Posted: December 14, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL EUROPE - BELGIUM *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto" cellpadding="4" border="3"> +<tr> +<td> +THERE IS ANOTHER MUCH IMPROVED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY A DIFFERENT AUTHOR WHICH MAY VIEWED AT EBOOK <big><b><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46248"> +[# 46248 ]</a></b></big> +</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +Beautiful Europe +<BR> +Belgium +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +by +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +Joseph E. Morris +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="40%"> +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%"> +<A HREF="#chap01">I</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%"> +<A HREF="#chap02">II</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%"> +<A HREF="#chap03">III</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%"> +<A HREF="#chap04">IV</A> +</TD> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I. +</H3> + +<P> +It needs, indeed, an effort of the imagination at the moment of writing +to think of Belgium as in any sense a component part of "Beautiful +Europe." The unhappy "cockpit" of the Continent at the actual hour is +again in process of accomplishing its frightful destiny—no treaty, or +"scrap of paper," is potent to preserve this last, and weakest, of all +the nations of Western Europe from drinking to the dregs the cup of +ruin and desolation. Tragic indeed in the profoundest sense—in the +sense of Aristotle—more tragic than the long ruin of the predestined +house of Oedipus—is this accumulated tragedy of a small and helpless +people, whose sole apparent crime is their stern determination to cling +at any cost to their plighted word of honour. I have been lately +glancing into a little book published about five years ago, in which a +view is taken of the Belgian character that no one could term +indulgent. "It is curious," says the writer in one place, "how few +Belgians, old or young, rich or poor, consider the feelings or +convenience of others. They are intensely selfish, and this is +doubtless caused by the way in which they are brought up." And, again, +in another chapter, he insinuates a doubt as to whether the Belgians, +if ever called on, would even prove good soldiers. "But whether the +people of a neutral State are ever likely to be brave and +self-sacrificing is another thing." Such a writer certainly does not +shrink—as Burke, we know, once shrank—from framing an indictment +against an entire people. Whether Belgium, as a nation, is +self-sacrificing and brave may safely be left to the judgment of +posterity. There is a passage in one of Mr. Lecky's books—I cannot put +my finger on the exact reference—in which he pronounces that the sins +of France, which are many, are forgiven her, because, like the woman in +the Gospels, she has loved much. It is not our business now, if indeed +at any time, to appraise the sins of Belgium; but surely her love, in +anguish, is manifest and supreme. When we contemplate these firstfruits +of German "kultur"—this deluge of innocent blood, and this wreckage of +ancient monuments—who can hesitate for a moment to belaud this little +people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the spirit of purest +sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and frightful +Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent creed, exemplified +perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of Persian +Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that it is +only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves on +triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, in truth, through the blood +of a bruised and prostrate Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a +rescued European civilization will spring presently from the soaked and +untilled soil? +</P> + +<P> +Yet even if German "kultur" in the end sweep wholly into ruin the long +accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and +painting—if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to-morrow +be reckoned with Dinant and Louvain—yet it would still be worth while +to set before a few more people this record of vanished splendour, that +they may better appreciate what the world has lost through lust of +brutal ambition, and better be on guard in the future to protect what +wreckage is left. All these treasures were bequeathed to us—not to +Belgium alone, but to the whole world—by the diligence and zeal of +antiquity; and we have seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment +into dust beneath the heel of an insolent and degraded militancy. +Belgium, in very truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of +other nations, has lavishly wrecked her own. "They made me keeper of +the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." +</P> + +<P> +Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the "work of waste and +ruin" is wholly irreparable. One sees in the illustrated English papers +pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches at Dixmude, Dinant, +and Louvain, made evidently from photographs, that suggest at least +that it is not impossible still to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. +Dixmude, indeed—I judge from an interior view—is possibly shattered +past hope; but Dinant and St. Pierre, at Louvain, so far at least as +their fabrics are concerned, seem to lack little but the woodwork of +their roofs. It is only a few years ago since the writer stood in the +burnt-out shell of Selby Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though +some ancient fittings of inestimable value have irreparably perished, +is in some ways not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, +than its imperfect predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the +thought of York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single +madman Martin in 1829, and of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in +nave and chancel, whilst the great gallery of painted glass, by some +odd miracle, escaped. Is it too much to hope that this devil's work of +a million madmen at Dixmude or Nieuport may prove equally incomplete? +</P> + +<P> +In the imperfect sketch that follows I write of the aspect of +Belgium—of its cities, that were formerly the most picturesque in +Europe; of its landscapes, that range from the level fens of Flanders +to the wooded limestone wolds of the Ardennes—as I knew these, and +loved them, in former years, before hell was let loose in Europe. And +perhaps, the picture here presented will in time be not altogether +misrepresentative of the regenerated Belgium that will certainly some +day arise. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H3> + +<P> +It is not merely in its quality of unredeemed and absolute flatness +that the great fen country of Flanders is so strongly reminiscent of +the great fen country of the Holland parts of Lincolnshire. Each of +these vast levels is equally distinguished by the splendour and +conspicuousness of its ancient churches. Travelling by railway between +Nieuport and Dixmude, you have on every side of you, if the day be +clear, a prospect of innumerable towers and spires, just as you have if +you travel by railway between Spalding and Sleaford, or between +Spalding and King's Lynn. The difference, perhaps, is that the +Lincolnshire churches present finer architectural feature, and are +built of stone, floated down in barges, by dyke or fen, from the famous +inland quarries of Barnack, in Northamptonshire; whilst most of those +in Flanders are built of local brick, though the drums of the piers and +the arches are often of blue limestone. It is remarkable, certainly, +that these soaring spires should thus chiefly rise to eminence in a +setting of dead, flat plain. It may well be, indeed, as some have +suggested, that the character of architecture is unconsciously +determined by the type of surrounding scenery; that men do not build +spires in the midst of mountains to compete with natural sublimity that +they cannot hope to emulate, but are emboldened to express in stone and +mortar their own heavenward aspirations in countries where Nature seems +to express herself in less spiritual, or at any rate in less ambitious, +mood. +</P> + +<P> +As we cross the level prairie between these two little towns of West +Flanders (we hope to visit them presently), a group of lofty roofs and +towers is seen grandly towards the west, dominating the fenland with +hardly less insistency than Boston "Stump," in Lincolnshire, as seen +across Wash and fen. This is the little town of Furnes, than which one +can hardly imagine a quainter place in Belgium, or one more entirely +fitted as a doorway by which to enter a new land. Coming straight from +England by way of Calais and Dunkirk, the first sight of this ancient +Flemish market-place, with its unbroken lines of old white-brick +houses, many of which have crow-stepped gables; with the two great +churches of St. Nicholas, with its huge square tower, and of St. +Walburge, with its long ridge of lofty roof; and with its Hotel de +Ville and Palais de Justice of about the dawn of the seventeenth +century, is a revelation, in its atmosphere of sleepy evening quiet, to +those who rub their eyes with wonder, and find it hard to credit that +London, "with its unutterable, external hideousness," was actually left +behind them only that very morning, and is actually at present not two +hundred miles distant. Furnes, in short, is an epitome, and I think a +very charming one, of all that is most characteristic in Flanders; and +not the less charming because here the strong currents of modern life +that throb through Ghent and Antwerp extend only to its threshold in +the faintest of dying ripples, and because you do not need to be told +that in its town hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish +leather, and that the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the +ante-chamber of the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to +throw yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness +from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which +Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed. +</P> + +<P> +Furnes—in Flemish Veurne—is an excellent centre from which to explore +the extreme west point of Belgian Flanders, which is also the extreme +west point of Belgium as a whole. Flanders, be it always remembered, +does not terminate with mere, present-day, political divisions, but +spreads with unbroken character to the very gateways of Calais and +Lille. Hazebrouck, for example, is a thoroughly Flemish town, though +nearly ten miles, in a beeline, inside the French border—Flemish not +merely, like Dunkirk, in the architecture of its great brick church, +but also actually Flemish in language, and in the names that one reads +above its shop doors. In particular, excursions may be pleasantly made +from Furnes—whose principal inn, the Noble Rose, is again a quaint +relic of the sixteenth century—to the two delightful little +market-towns of Dixmude and Nieuport-Ville: I write, as always, of what +was recently, and of what I have seen myself; to-day they are probably +heaps of smoking ruin, and sanguinary altars to German "kultur." +Nieuport-Ville, so called in distinction from its dull little +watering-place understudy, Nieuport-les-Bains, which lies a couple of +miles to the west of it, among the sand-dunes by the mouth of the Yser, +and is hardly worth a visit unless you want to bathe—Nieuport-Ville, +in addition to its old yellow-brick Halles, or Cloth Hall, and its +early Tour des Templiers, is remarkable for its possession of a +fascinating church, the recent restoration of which has been altogether +conservative and admirable. Standing here, in this rich and picturesque +interior, you realize strongly the gulf in this direction between +Belgium and France, in which latter country, in these days of +ecclesiastical poverty, loving restoration of the kind here seen is +rare, and whose often neglected village churches seldom, or never, +exhibit that wealth of marble rood-screen and sculptured woodwork—of +beaten brass and hammered iron—that distinguishes Belgian church +interiors from perhaps all others on earth. The church has also some +highly important brasses, another detail, common of course in most +counties of England, that is now never, or hardly ever, found in +France. Chief, perhaps, among these is the curious, circular brass—I +hope it has escaped—with figures of husband, wife, and children, on a +magnificently worked background, that is now suspended on the northwest +pier of the central crossing. Very Belgian, too, in character is the +rood-beam, with its three figures of Our Lord in Crucifixion, of the +Virgin, and of St. John; and the striking Renaissance rood-screen in +black and white marble, though not as fine as some that are found in +other churches. Rood-screens of this exact sort are almost limited to +Belgium, though there is one, now misplaced in the west end of the +nave, and serving as an organ-loft, in the church of St. Gery at +Cambrai—another curious link between French and Belgian Flanders. +Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuide), nine and a half miles south from +Nieuport, is an altogether bigger and more important place, with a +larger and more important church, of St. Nicholas, to match. My +recollection of this last, on a Saturday afternoon of heavy showers +towards the close of March, is one of a vast interior thronged with men +and women in the usual dismal, black Flemish cloaks, kneeling in +confession, or waiting patiently for their turn to confess, in +preparation for the Easter Mass. Here the best feature, till lately, +was the glorious Flamboyant rood-screen, recalling those at Albi and +the church of Brou, in France; and remarkable in Belgium as one of the +very few examples of its sort (there is, or was, another in St. Pierre, +at Louvain) of so early a period, in a land where rood-screens, as a +body, are generally much later in date. +</P> + +<P> +It is difficult, in dealing with Flanders, to avoid a certain amount of +architectural description, for architecture, after all, is the chief +attraction of the country, save perhaps in Ghent and Bruges, where we +have also noble pictures. Even those who do not care to study this +architecture in detail will be gratified to stroll at leisure through +the dim vastness of the great Flemish churches, where the eye is +satisfied everywhere with the wealth of brass and iron work, and where +the Belgian passion for wood-carving displays itself in lavish +prodigality. Such wealth, indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will +hardly find elsewhere in Western Europe—font covers of hammered brass, +like those at Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits, +new and old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall +tabernacles for the reception of the Sacred Host, like those at Louvain +and Leau, that tower towards the roof by the side of the High Altars. +Most of this work, no doubt, is post-Gothic, except the splendid stalls +and canopies (I wonder, do they still survive) at the church of St. +Gertrude at Louvain; for Belgium presents few examples of mediaeval +wood-work like the gorgeous stalls at Amiens, or like those in half a +hundred churches in our own land. Much, in fact, of these splendid +fittings is more or less contemporary with the noble masterpieces of +Rubens and Vandyck, and belongs to the same great wave of artistic +enthusiasm that swept over the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. +Belgian pulpits, in particular, are probably unique, and certainly, to +my knowledge, without parallel in Italy, England, or France. Sometimes +they are merely adorned, like the confessionals at St. Charles, at +Antwerp, and at Tirlemont, with isolated figures; but often these are +grouped into some vivid dramatic scene, such as the Miraculous Draught +of Fishes, at St. Andrew's, at Antwerp, or the Conversion of St. +Norbert, in the cathedral at Malines. Certainly the fallen horseman in +the latter, if not a little ludicrous, is a trifle out of place. +</P> + +<P> +From Furnes to Ypres it is a pleasant journey across country by one of +those strange steam-trams along the road, so common in Belgium and +Holland, and not unknown in France, that wind at frequent intervals +through village streets so narrow, that you have only to put out your +hand in passing to touch the walls of houses. This is a very leisurely +mode of travelling, and the halts are quite interminable in their +frequency and length; but the passenger is allowed to stand on the open +platform at the end of the carriage—though sometimes nearly smothered +with thick, black smoke—and certainly no better method exists of +exploring the short stretches of open country that lie between town and +town. Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground—you are +hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out of +Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of Europe, +perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you find so many +big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of country that lie +between, though often intolerably dull, are (unlike the strips in +Yorkshire) intensely rural in character. Belgian towns do not sprawl in +endless, untidy suburbs, as Sheffield sprawls out towards Rotherham, +and Bradford towards Leeds. Belgian towns, moreover—again unlike our +own big cities in England—are mostly extremely handsome, and generally +contrive, however big, to retain, at any rate in their heart, as at +Antwerp, or in the Grande Place at Brussels, a striking air of +antiquity; whilst some fairly big towns, such as Malines and Bruges, +are mediaeval from end to end. This, of course, is not true of Belgian +Luxembourg and the region of the Ardennes, where the population is much +more sparse; where we do not stumble, about every fifteen miles or so, +on some big town of historic name; and where the endless chessboard of +little fields that lies, for example, between Ghent and Oudenarde, or +between Malines and Louvain, is replaced by long contours of sweeping +limestone wold, often covered with rolling wood. +</P> + +<P> +Ypres is distinguished above all cities in Belgium by the huge size and +stately magnificence of its lordly Cloth Hall, or Halles des Drapiers. +So vast, indeed, is this huge building, and so flat the surrounding +plain, that it is said that it is possible from the strangely isolated +hill of Cassel, which lies about eighteen miles away to the west, just +over the border, in France, on a really clear day—I have only climbed +it myself, unluckily, in a fog of winter mist—to distinguish in a +single view, by merely turning the head, the clustering spires of Laon, +the white chalk cliffs of Kent, and this vast pile of building, like a +ship at sea, that seems to lie at anchor in the heart of the "sounding +plain." Nothing, perhaps, in Europe is so strangely significant of +vanished greatness—not even Rome, with its shattered Forum, or Venice, +with a hundred marble palaces—as this huge fourteenth-century +building, with a facade that is four hundred and thirty-six feet long, +and with its lofty central tower, that was built for the pride and need +of Ypres, and as a market for the barter of its priceless linens, at a +time when Ypres numbered a population of two hundred thousand souls +(almost as big as Leicester at the present day), and was noisy with +four thousand busy looms; whereas now it has but a beggarly total of +less than seventeen thousand souls (about as big as Guildford), and is +only a degree less sleepy than Malines or Bruges-la-Morte. Ypres, +again, like Arras, has lent its name to commerce, if diaper be really +rightly derived from the expression "linen of Ypres." The Cloth Hall +fronts on to the Grande Place, and, indeed, forms virtually one side of +it; and behind, in the Petite Place, is the former cathedral of St. +Martin. This is another fine building, though utterly eclipsed by its +huge secular rival, that was commenced in the thirteenth century, and +is typically Belgian, as opposed to French, in the character of its +architecture, and not least in its possession of a single great west +tower. This last feature is characteristic of every big church in +Belgium—one can add them up by the dozen: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain +(though ruined, or never completed), Oudenarde, Malines, Mons—save +Brussels, where the church of Ste. Gudule, called persistently, but +wrongly, the cathedral, has the full complement of two, and Antwerp, +where two were intended, though only one has been actually raised. This +tower at Ypres, however, fails to illustrate—perhaps because it is +earlier, and therefore in better taste—that astounding disproportion +in height that is so frequently exhibited by Belgian towers, as at +Malines, or in the case of the famous belfry in the market-place at +Bruges, when considered with reference to the church, or town hall, +below. In front of the High Altar, in the pavement, is an inconspicuous +square of white stone, which marks the burial-place of Cornelius +Jansen, who died of the plague, as Bishop of Ypres, in 1638. The +monument, if you can call it monument, is scarcely less insignificant +than the simple block, in the cemetery of Plainpalais at Geneva, that +is traditionally said to mark the resting-place of Calvin. Yet Jansen, +in his way, proved almost a second Calvin in his death, and menaced the +Church from his grave with a second Reformation. He left behind in +manuscript a book called "Augustinus," the predestinarian tenor of +which was condemned finally, though nearly a century later, by Pope +Clement XI., in 1713, in the Bull called Unigenitus. Jansenism, +however, had struck deep its roots in France, and still survives in +Holland at the present day, at Utrecht, as a sect that is small, +indeed, but not altogether obscure. Jansen himself, it may be noted, +was a Hollander by birth, having been born in 1585 at Akkoi in that +kingdom. +</P> + +<P> +If Ypres is to be praised appropriately as a still delightful old city +that has managed to retain to a quite singular degree the outward +aspect and charm of the Middle Ages, one feels that one has left one's +self without any proper stock of epithets with which to appraise at its +proper value the charm and romance of Bruges. Of late years, it is +true, this world-famed capital of West Flanders has lost something of +its old somnolence and peace. Malines, in certain quarters, is now much +more dead-alive, and Wordsworth, who seems to have visualized Bruges in +his mind as a network of deserted streets, "whence busy life hath +fled," might perhaps be tempted now to apply to it the same prophetic +outlook that he imagined for Pendragon Castle: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Viewing<BR> + As in a dream her own renewing."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed too +zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour of +crisis. Perhaps there is no big city in the world—and Bruges, though +it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great estate in the +Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand souls—that remains +from end to end, in every alley, and square, and street, so wholly +unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the modern spirit, or that +presents so little unloveliness and squalor in its more out-of-the-way +corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course, like Venice, and half a dozen +towns in Holland, is a strangely amphibious city that is intersected in +every direction, though certainly less persistently than Venice, by a +network of stagnant canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the +splendour of the better parts of Venice—the Piazza and the Grand +Canal—and lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if +somewhat faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of +the Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her +monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so dilapidated, and +tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one stumbles against in +Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and in sailing up almost every +canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say, what Byron said of Greece, that +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Hers is the loveliness in death<BR> + That parts not quite with parting breath";<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all, but +the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital old age. +</P> + +<P> +We cannot, of course, attempt, in a mere superficial sketch like this, +even to summarize briefly the wealth of objects of interest in Bruges, +or to guide the visitor in detail through its maze of winding streets. +Two great churches, no doubt, will be visited by everyone—the +cathedral of St. Sauveur and the church of Notre Dame—both of which, +in the usual delightful Belgian fashion, are also crowded +picture-galleries of the works of great Flemish masters. The See of +Bruges, however, dates only from 1559; and even after that date the +Bishop had his stool in the church of St. Donatian, till this was +destroyed by the foolish Revolutionaries in 1799. In a side-chapel of +Notre Dame, and carefully boarded up for no reason in the world save to +extort a verger's fee for their exhibition, are the splendid black +marble monuments, with recumbent figures in copper gilt, of Charles the +Bold, who fell at Nancy in 1477 (but lives for ever, with Louis XI. of +France, in the pages of "Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, +the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by being +thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482. These two tombs are of +capital interest to those who are students of Belgian history, for +Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of Burgundy, and it was +by the marriage of his daughter that the Netherlands passed to the +House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately fell under the flail of +religious persecution during the rule of her grandson, Spanish Philip. +Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St. Catherine, is the famous old +Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick walls of which rise sleepily from +the dull waters of the canal, just as Queens' College, or St. John's, +at Cambridge, rise from the sluggish Cam. Here is preserved the rich +shrine, or chasse, "resembling a large Noah's ark," of St. Ursula, the +sides of which are painted with scenes from the virgin's life by Hans +Memling, who, though born in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and thus +really by birth a German, lived for nearly a quarter of a century or +more of his life in Bruges, and is emphatically connected, like his +master Roger van der Weyden and the brothers Van Eyck, with the +charming early Flemish school. There is a story that he was wounded +under Charles le Temeraire on the stricken field of Nancy, and painted +these gemlike pictures in return for the care and nursing that he +received in the Hospital of St. Jean, but "this story," says Professor +Anton Springer, "may be placed in the same category as those of Durer's +malevolent spouse, and of the licentiousness of the later Dutch +painters." These scenes from the life of St. Ursula are hardly less +delightfully quaint than the somewhat similar series that was painted +by Carpaccio for the scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now +preserved in the Accademia. Early Flemish painting, in fact, in +addition to its own peculiar charm of microscopic delicacy of finish, +is hardly inferior, in contrast with the later strong realism and +occasional coarseness of Rubens or Rembrandt, to the tender poetic +dreaminess of the primitive Italians. Certainly these pictures, though +finished to the minutest and most delicate detail, are lacking in +realism actually to a degree that borders on a delicious absurdity. St. +Ursula and her maidens—whether really eleven thousand or eleven—in +the final scene of martyrdom await the stroke of death with the stoical +placidity of a regiment of dolls. "All the faces are essentially +Flemish, and some of the virgins display to great advantage the pretty +national feature of the slight curl in one or in both lips." A little +farther along the same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small +but admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St. +Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on either +side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks as one of his +best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon Van de Paelen, +painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing an old churchman with +a typically heavy Flemish face; and the rather unpleasant picture by +Gerard David of the unjust judge Sisamnes being flayed alive by order +of King Cambyses. By a turning to the right out of the Rue St. +Catherine, you come to the placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far +from the shores of which is one of those curious beguinages that are +characteristic of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little +houses, grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine, +or less strict kind of nun. In the house of the Lady Superior is +preserved the small, but very splendid, memorial brass of a former +inmate, who died at about the middle of the fifteenth century. +</P> + +<P> +Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you will +not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of antiquity, or +to stumble at every street corner on some new and charming combination +of old houses, with their characteristic crow-stepped, or corbie, +gables. New houses, I suppose, there must really be by scores; but +these, being built with inherent good taste (whether unconscious or +conscious I do not know) in the traditional style of local building, +and with brick that from the first is mellow in tint and harmonizes +with its setting, assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and +left, and fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness. +Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm; but +the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two +market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place du +Bourg. In the former are the brick Halles, with their famous belfry +towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian disregard for +proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower piled on tower, till +one is almost afraid lest the final octagon should be going to topple +over! In the Place du Bourg is a less aspiring group, consisting of the +Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien +Greffe, and the Palais de Justice—all very Flemish in character, and +all, in combination, elaborately picturesque. In the Chapel of the Holy +Blood is preserved the crystal cylinder that is said to enshrine +certain drops of the blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the +Holy Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and installed in the +Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt of +which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been rebuilt, in +the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the relic is exhibited +to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to kiss it. Some congealed +blood of Our Lord is also said to be preserved, after remarkable +vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and +mediaeval Gloucestershire once boasted as big a treasure, which brought +great concourse and popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles. Pass +beneath the archway of the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, cross the +sluggish canal, and turn sharply to the left, and follow, first the +cobbled Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai +Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble +cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the +adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and +gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in mellow +charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford whose presence +Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, to overpower his +"soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says elsewhere in his journal, +"the modern taste in costume, architecture, etc., has got the mastery; +in Ghent there is a struggle; but in Bruges old images are still +paramount, and an air of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a +thinly-peopled city is inexpressibly soothing. A pensive grace seems to +be cast over all, even the very children." This estimate, after the +lapse of considerably more than half a century, still, on the whole, +stands good. +</P> + +<P> +"In Ghent there is a struggle." Approaching Ghent, indeed, by railway +from Bruges, and with our heads full of old-world romance of Philip van +Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers (for whom Ghent was +rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse without peer," "brought +good news from Ghent," one is rather shocked at first, as we circle +round the suburbs, at the rows of aggressive new houses, and rather +tempted to conclude that the struggle has now ended, and that +modernity, as at Brussels, has won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt +is dissipated as we quit the splendid Sud station—and Belgium, one may +add in parenthesis, has some of the most palatial railway-stations in +the world—and find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of +ancient thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet, +and in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at +every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six great +things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon (and in the +cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the Lamb," by Hubert +and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel, with a "Crucifixion" by +Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful old houses on the Quai des +Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry; and possibly the Grande +Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town. The cathedral has the usual +solitary west tower, as at Ely, that we have now come to associate—at +Ypres and Bruges—with typical Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is +hung in a chapel on the south of the choir, and the services of the +verger must be sought for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters +are merely copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture +Gallery in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a +fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany owes +to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work of the +early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been begun by +Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre-piece is in +illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12): "Worthy is the Lamb +that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, +and honour, and glory, and blessing." One may question, indeed, if +figurative language of the kind in question can ever be successfully +transferred to canvas; whether this literal lamb, on its red-damasked +table, in the midst of these carefully marshalled squadrons of +Apostles, Popes, and Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something +ludicrous. One may question all this, yet still admire to the full both +the spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its +miracle of minute and jewel-like execution. There are scores of other +good pictures in Ghent, including (not even to go outside St. Bavon's) +the "Christ among the Doctors" by Francis Pourbus, into which portraits +of Philip II. of Spain, the Emperor Charles V., and the infamous Duke +of Alva—names of terrible import in the sixteenth-century history of +the Netherlands—are introduced among the bystanders; whilst to the +left of Philip is Pourbus himself, "with a greyish cap on which is +inscribed Franciscus Pourbus, 1567." But it is always to the "Adoration +of the Mystic Lamb" that our steps are first directed, and to which +they always return. +</P> + +<P> +It is hard, indeed, that necessities of space should compel us to pass +so lightly over other towns in Flanders—over Courtrai, with its noble +example of a fortified bridge, and with its great picture, by Van Dyck, +of the "Raising of the Cross" that was stolen mysteriously a few years +ago from the church of Notre Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at +the Louvre, been recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two +fine churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour +even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most +elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in +Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the +north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half-deserted +churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish mediaevalism. Of +the short strip of Flemish coast, from near Knocke, past the +fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst, Blankenberghe, and Ostende, +to a point beyond La Panne—from border to border it measures roughly +only some forty miles, and is almost absolutely straight—I willingly +say little, for it seems to me but a little thing when compared with +this glorious inland wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it +has developed in every direction, and is now almost continuously a +thin, brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and +lodging-houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, +where only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of +rolling sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only +with rushes and coarse grass. About tastes there is no disputing; and +there are people, no doubt, who, for some odd reason, find this kind of +aggressive modernity in some way more attractive in Belgium than in +Kent. For myself, I confess, it hardly seems worth while to incur the +penalty of sea-sickness merely to play golf on the ruined shore of +Flanders. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H3> + +<P> +Of Brussels I do not propose to say very much, because Brussels, +although the brightest and gayest town in Belgium, and although +retaining in its Grande Place, and in the buildings that immediately +surround this last, as well as in its great church of St. Gudule +(which, in spite of popular usage, is not, and never was, in the proper +sense a cathedral), relics of antiquity of the very highest value and +interest, yet Brussels, as a whole, is so distinctively a modern, and +even cosmopolitan city, and has so much general resemblance to Paris +(though its site is far more picturesque, and though the place, to my +mind at least, just because it is smaller and more easily +comprehensible, is a much more agreeable spot to stay in), that it +seems better in a sketch that is principally devoted to what is old and +nationally characteristic in Belgium to give what limited space one has +to a consideration rather of towns like Louvain or Malines, in which +the special Belgian flavour is not wholly overwhelmed by false and +extraneous influences. St. Gudule, of course, should certainly be +visited, not only for the sake of the general fabric, which, +notwithstanding its possession of TWO west towers, is typically Belgian +in its general character, but also for the sake of its magnificent +sixteenth and seventeenth century glass, and especially for the sake of +the five great windows in the Chapelle du Saint Sacrement, which +illustrate in a blaze of gorgeous colour the story of how Jonathan the +Jew bribed Jeanne de Louvain to steal the three Consecrated Wafers, +from which oozed, when sacrilegiously stabbed by the sceptical Jew, the +Sacred Blood of a world's redemption. This story is told again—or +rather, perhaps, a similar story—in the splendid painted glass from +the church of St. Eloi that is now preserved at Rouen in the +Archaeological Museum. As for the Grande Place, or original +market-place of the city, which is bounded on one side by the +magnificent Hotel de Ville, on the opposite side by the rather heavy, +rebuilt Maison du Roi, and on the remaining two sides chiefly by the +splendid old seventeenth-century Corporation Houses of the various +ancient city guilds—Le Renard, the house of the silk-mercers and +haberdashers; Maison Cornet, the house of the boatmen, or "batelliers"; +La Louvre, the house of the archers; La Brouette, the house of the +carpenters; Le Sac, the house of the printers and booksellers; the +Cygne, the house of the butchers; and other houses that need not be +specified at any greater length, of the tailors, painters, and +brewers—this is probably the completest and most splendid example of +an ancient city market-square that now remains in Europe, and +absolutely without rival even in Belgium itself, though similar old +guild-houses, in the same delightful Flemish fashion, may still be +found (though in this case with admixture of many modern buildings) in +the Grande Place at Antwerp. It was in this splendid square at Brussels +that the unhappy Counts of Egmont and Horn were brutally done to death, +to glut the sinister tyranny of Spanish Philip, on June 5, 1568. +</P> + +<P> +Also, in addition to these two superlative antiquities, two modern +buildings in Brussels, though for widely different reasons, can hardly +be passed over under plea of lack of space. Crowning the highest point +of the city, and towering itself towards heaven in a stupendous pile of +masonry, is the enormous new Palais de Justice, probably the most +imposing law courts in the world. English Law undoubtedly is housed +with much greater modesty, though not without due magnificence, in the +altogether humbler levels of the Strand. Also in the High Town—which +is the modern quarter of Brussels, in contrast with the mediaeval Low +Town, which lies in the flat below—is the Royal Museum of Ancient +Paintings, which probably divides honours with the Picture Gallery at +Antwerp as the finest and most representative collection of pictures of +the Netherlandish school in the world. Here you may revel by the hour +in a candlelight effect by Gerard Dow; in the poultry of Melchior +d'Hondecoeter; in a pigsty of Paul Potter's; in landscapes by Meindert +Hobbema; in a moonlight landscape of Van der Neer's; in a village scene +by Jan Steen; in the gallant world of Teniers; and in the weird +imaginings of Pieter Brueghel the younger. The greatest pictures in the +whole collection, I suppose, are those by Rubens, though he has nothing +here that is comparable for a moment with those in the Picture Gallery +and Cathedral at Antwerp. Very magnificent, however, is the "Woman +taken in Adultery," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Interceder +Interceded" (the Virgin, at the prayer of St. Francis d'Assisi, +restrains the angry Saviour from destroying a wicked world), and the +"Martyrdom of St. Livinius." This last, however—like the "Crucifixion" +in the Antwerp Gallery; like Van Dyck's picture in this collection of +the drunken Silenus supported by a fawn; and like Rubens' own +disgusting Silenus in our National Gallery at home—illustrates +unpleasantly the painful Flemish facility to condescend to details, or +even whole conceptions, the realism of which is unnecessarily +deliberate and coarse. Here, in this death of St. Livinius, the +executioner is shown in the act of presenting to a dog with pincers the +bleeding tongue that he has just cut out of the mouth of the dying +priest. +</P> + +<P> +Brussels itself, as already intimated, is an exceedingly pleasant city +for a more or less prolonged stay; and, owing at once to the admirable +system of "Rundreise" tickets that are issued by the State railways at +an uncommonly low price, to the rather dubious quality of the hotels in +some of the smaller towns, and to the cardinal fact that Brussels is a +centre from which most of the other great cities of Belgium—Malines, +Ghent, Antwerp, and Liege, not to mention smaller towns of absorbing +interest, such as Mons, Namur, Hal, Tirlemont, Leau, and Soignies—may +be easily visited, more or less completely, in the course of a single +day—owing to all these facts many people will be glad to make this +pleasant city their centre, or headquarters, for the leisurely +exploration of most of Belgium, with the exception of the more distant +and out-of-the-way districts of West Flanders and the Ardennes. All the +places enumerated are thoroughly worth visiting, but obviously only the +more important can be dealt with more than just casually here. Mons, on +a hill overlooking the great coalfield of the Borinage, with its +strange pyramidal spoil-heaps, is itself curiously free from the dirt +and squalor of an English colliery town; and equally worth visiting for +the sake of its splendid cathedral of St. Wandru, the richly +polychromatic effect of whose interior, due to the conjunction of deep +red-brick vaulting with the dark blue of its limestone capitals and +piers, illustrates another pleasant phase of Belgian ecclesiastical +architecture, as well as for the sake of a contest, almost of +yesterday, that has added new and immortal laurels to the genius of +British battle. Tournai, on the upper Scheldt, or Escaut, is remarkable +for the heavy Romanesque nave of its cathedral, which is built of the +famous local black marble, as well as for its remarkable central +cluster of five great towers. Soignies (in Flemish Zirick), roughly +half-way between Mons and Brussels, and probably little visited, has a +sombre old abbey church, of St. Vincent Maldegaire, that was built in +the twelfth century, and that is enriched inside with such a collection +of splendidly carved classical woodwork—stalls, misericordes, and +pulpit—as you will scarcely find elsewhere even in Belgium. The pulpit +in particular is wonderful, with its life-sized girl supporters, with +their graceful and lightly poised figures, and pure and lovely faces. +Namur, strangely enough, has really nothing of antiquity outside the +doors of its Archaeological Museum, but is worth a visit if only for +the pleasure of promenading streets which, if almost wholly modern, are +unusually clean and bright. Tirlemont, again, has two old churches that +will not delay you long, though Notre Dame de Lac has remarkably fine +confessionals of the dawn of the seventeenth century, and though the +splendid brass-work of the font and baptistery lectern at St. Germains +would alone be worth a visit; but Leau, for which Tirlemont is the +junction, is so quaint and curious a little town, and comes so much in +the guise of a pleasant discovery—since Baedeker barely mentions +it—that, even apart from its perfect wealth of wood and brass work in +the fine thirteenth-century church of St. Leonhard, it might anyhow be +thought to justify a visit to this little visited corner of South +Brabant. I do not know that the brass-work could be easily matched +elsewhere: the huge standard candelabrum to the north of the altar, +with its crowning Crucifixion; the lectern, with its triumphant eagle +and prostrate dragon; the font, with its cover, and the holy-water +stoup almost as big as a small font (in Brittany I have seen them as +big as a bath); and the beautiful brass railings that surround the +splendid Tabernacle that was executed in 1552 by Cornelius de Vriendt, +the brother of the painter Frans Floris, and that towers high into the +vaulting to a height of fifty-two feet. One realizes more completely in +a quiet village church like this the breadth and intensity of the wave +of artistic impulse that swept through the Lowlands in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries than is possible in half a dozen hurried +visits to a picture gallery at Antwerp or Brussels. Finally Hal, to +conclude our list of minor places, has a grand fourteenth-century +church, with a miracle-working Virgin, and a little red-brick town hall +of characteristically picturesque aspect. +</P> + +<P> +The railway journey from Brussels to Antwerp traverses a typical bit of +Belgian landscape that is as flat as a pancake; and the monotony is +only relieved, first by the little town of Vilvoorde, where William +Tyndale was burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536, though not alive, +having first been mercifully strangled, and afterwards by the single, +huge, square tower of Malines (or Mechlin) Cathedral, which dominates +the plain from enormous distances, like the towers of Ely or Lincoln, +though not, like these last, by virtue of position on a hill, but +solely by its own vast height and overwhelming massiveness. Malines, +though certainly containing fewer objects of particular interest than +Bruges, and though certainly on the whole a less beautiful city, +strikes one as hardly less dead-and-alive, and altogether may fairly +claim second place among the larger Belgian cities (it houses more than +fifty thousand souls) in point of mediaeval character. The great +thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral of St. Rombaut has been the +seat of an archbishopric since the sixteenth century, and is still the +metropolitan church of Belgium. Externally the body, like the +market-hall at Bruges, is almost entirely crushed into insignificance +by the utterly disproportionate height and bulk of the huge west tower, +the top of which, even in its present unfinished state (one almost +hopes that it may never be finished), is actually three hundred and +twenty-four feet high. Boston "Stump" is only two hundred and eighty +feet to the top of the weather vane, but infinitely slimmer in +proportion; whilst even Salisbury spire is only about four hundred odd +feet. Immediately below the parapet is the enormous skeleton +clock-face, the proportions of which are reproduced on the pavement of +the market-place below. The carillons in this tower are an extravagant +example of the Belgian passion for chiming bells. Once safely inside +the church, and the monster tower forgotten, and we are able to admire +its delicate internal proportions, and the remarkable ornament of the +spandrels in the great main arcades of the choir. Unfortunately, much +of this interior, like that of St. Pierre at Louvain, is smothered +under half an inch of plaster; but where this has been removed in +tentative patches, revealing the dark blue "drums" of the single, +circular columns of the arcades, the general effect is immensely +improved. One would also like to send to the scrap-heap the enormous +seventeenth-century figures of the Apostles on their consoles on the +piers, which form so bad a disfigurement in the nave. The treasure of +the church is the great "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, which is hung in the +south transept, but generally kept covered. To see other stately +pictures you must go to the church of St. Jean, where is a splendid +altar triptych by Rubens, the centre panel of which is the "Adoration +of the Magi"; or to the fifteenth-century structure of Notre Dame au +dela de la Dyle (the clumsy title is used, I suppose, for the sake of +distinction from the classical Notre Dame d'Hanswyck), where Rubens' +"Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is sometimes considered the painter's +masterpiece. It is not yet clear whether this noble picture has been +destroyed in the recent bombardment. Even to those who care little for +art, a stroll to these two old churches through the sleepy back-streets +of Malines, with their white and sunny houses, can hardly fail to +gratify. +</P> + +<P> +If Malines is a backwater of the Middle Time, as somnolent or as dull +(so some, I suppose, would call it) as the strange dead towns of the +Zuyder Zee, or as Coggeshall or Thaxted in our own green Essex, +Antwerp, at any rate, which lies only some fifteen miles or so to the +north of it, is very much awake, and of aspect mostly modern, though +not without some very curious and charming relics of antiquity embedded +in the heart of much recent stone and mortar. Perhaps it will be well +to visit one of these at once, taking the tram direct from the +magnificent Gare de l'Est (no lesser epithet is just) to the Place +Verte, which may be considered the real centre of the city; and making +our way thence by a network of quieter back-streets to the Musee +Plantin-Moretus, which is the goal of our immediate ambition. I bring +you here at once, not merely because the place itself is quite unique +and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes precisely +that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern din and bustle of +Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we listen needfully. Happy, +indeed, was the inspiration that moved the city to buy this house from +its last private possessor, Edward Moretus, in 1876. To step across +this threshold is to step directly into the merchant atmosphere of the +sixteenth century. The once great printing house of Plantin-Moretus was +founded by the Frenchman, Christopher Plantin, who was born at St. +Aventin, near Tours, in 1514, and began his business life as a +book-binder at Rouen. In 1549 he removed to Antwerp, and was there +innocently involved one night in a riot in the streets, which resulted +in an injury that incapacitated him for his former trade, and +necessitated his turning to some new employment. He now set up as +printer, with remarkable success, and was a sufficiently important +citizen at the date of his death, in 1589, to be buried in his own +vault under a chapel in the Cathedral. The business passed, on his +decease, to his son-in-law, Jean Moertorf, who had married his +daughter, Martine, in 1570, and had Latinized his surname to Moretus in +accordance with the curious custom that prevailed among scholars of the +sixteenth century. Thus Servetus was really Miguel Servete, and Thomas +Erastus was Thomas Lieber. The foundation of the fortunes of the house +was undoubtedly its monopoly—analogous to that enjoyed by the English +house of Spottiswoode, and by the two elder Universities—of printing +the liturgical works—Missals, Antiphons, Psalters, Breviaries, +etc.—that were used throughout the Spanish dominions. No attempt, +however, seems to have been made in the later stages of the history of +the house to adopt improved machinery, or to reconstruct the original, +antiquated buildings. The establishment, accordingly, when it was taken +over by the city in 1876, retained virtually the same aspect as it had +worn in the seventeenth century, and remains to the present day perhaps +the best example in the world of an old-fashioned city business house +of the honest time when merchant-princes were content to live above +their office, instead of seeking solace in smug suburban villas. The +place has been preserved exactly as it stood, and even the present +attendants are correctly clad in the sober brown garb of the servants +of three hundred years since. It is interesting, not only in itself, +but as an excellent example of how business and high culture were +successfully combined under the happier economic conditions of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Plantin-Moretus family held a +high position in the civic life of Antwerp, and mixed in the +intellectual and artistic society for which Antwerp was famed in the +seventeenth century—the Antwerp of Rubens (though not a native) and +Van Dyck, of Jordaens, of the two Teniers, of Grayer, Zegers, and +Snyders. Printing, indeed, in those days was itself a fine art, and the +glories of the house of Plantin-Moretus rivalled those of the later +Chiswick Press, and of the goodly Chaucers edited in our own time by +Professor Skeat, and printed by William Morris. Proof-reading was then +an erudite profession, and Francois Ravelingen, who entered Plantin's +office as proof-reader in 1564, and assisted Arias Montanus in revising +the sheets of the Polyglot Bible, is said to have been a great Greek +and Oriental scholar, and crowned a career of honourable toil, like +Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, by marrying his master's eldest +daughter, Marguerite, in 1565. The room in which these scholars worked +remains much in its old condition, with the table at which they sat, +and some of their portraits on the wall. Everything here, in short, is +interesting: the press-room, which was used almost continuously and +practically without change—two of the antiquated presses of Plantin's +own time remain—for nearly three centuries; the Great and Little +Libraries, with their splendid collection of books; the archive room, +with its long series of business accounts and ledgers; the private +livingrooms of the Moretus family; and last, but not least, the modest +little shop, where books still repose upon the shelves, which looks as +though the salesman might return at any moment to his place behind the +counter. England has certainly nothing like it, though London had till +recently in Crosby Hall a great merchant's house of the fifteenth +century, though stripped of all internal fittings and propriety. +Luckily this last has been re-erected at Chelsea, though robbed by the +change of site of half its authenticity and value. +</P> + +<P> +I have chosen to dwell on this strange museum at length that seems +disproportionate, not merely because of its unique character, but +because it seems to me full of lessons and reproach for an age that has +subordinated honest workmanship to cheap and shoddy productiveness, and +has sacrificed the workman to machinery. Certainly no one who visits +Antwerp can afford to overlook it; but probably most people will first +bend their steps towards the more popular shrine of the great +cathedral. Here I confess myself utter heretic: to call this church, as +I have seen it called, "one of the grandest in Europe," seems to me +pure Philistinism—the cult of the merely big and obvious, to the +disregard of delicacy and beauty. Big it is assuredly, and +superficially astonishing; but anything more barn-like architecturally, +or spiritually unexalting, I can hardly call to memory. Outside it +lacks entirely all shadow of homogeneity; the absence of a central +tower, felt perhaps even in the great cathedrals of Picardy and the Ile +de France, just as it is felt in Westminster and in Beverley Minster, +is here actually accentuated by the hideous little cupola—I hardly +know how properly to call it—that squats, as though in derision, above +the crossing; whilst even the natural meeting and intersection at this +point of high roofs, which in itself would rise to dignity, is wantonly +neglected to make way for this monstrosity. The church, in fact, looks, +when viewed externally, more like four separate churches than one; and +when we step inside, with all the best will in the world to make the +best of it, it is hard to find, much to admire, and anything at all to +love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long, feeble +lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of Belgian +architecture—its lack of really beautiful detail, and its fussy +superfluity of pinnacle and panelling—seems to me here to culminate. +Belgium has really beautiful churches—not merely of the thirteenth +century, when building was lovely everywhere, but later buildings, like +Mons, and St. Pierre at Louvain; but Antwerp is not of this category. +Architecturally, perhaps, the best feature of the whole church is the +lofty spire (over four hundred feet), which curiously resembles in +general outline that of the Hotel de Ville at Brussels (three hundred +and seventy feet), and dates from about the same period (roughly the +middle of the fifteenth century). As usual in Belgium, it is quite out +of scale; it is lucky, indeed, that the corresponding south-west tower +has never been completed, for the combination of the two would be +almost overwhelming. It is curious and interesting as an example of a +tower tapering upwards to a point in a succession of diminishing +stages, in contrast with tower and spire. France has something like it, +though far more beautiful, in the thirteenth-century tower at Senlis; +but England affords no parallel. I am not sure who invented the quite +happy phrase, "Confectioner's Gothic," but this tower at Antwerp is not +badly described by it. It is altogether too elaborate and florid, like +the sugar pinnacle of a wedding-cake. +</P> + +<P> +This cathedral of Antwerp, however, though at the time that it was +built a mere collegiate church of secular canons, and only first +exalted to cathedral rank in 1559, is one of the largest churches in +superficial area in the world, a result largely due to its possession, +uniquely, of not less than six aisles, giving it a total breadth of one +hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two transepts respectively are +the two great pictures by Rubens—the "Elevation of the Cross" and the +"Descent from the Cross"—that are described at such length, and with +so much critical enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to +Flanders and Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens +in 1612, when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more +splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which the +artist has successfully ventured (what "none but great colourists can +venture") "to paint pure white linen near flesh." His Christ, continues +Sir Joshua, "I consider as one of the finest figures that ever was +invented: it is most correctly drawn, and I apprehend in an attitude of +the utmost difficulty to execute. The hanging of the head on His +shoulder, and the falling of the body on one side, gives such an +appearance of the heaviness of death, that nothing can exceed it." +Antwerp, of course, is full of magnificent paintings by Rubens, though +unfortunately the house in which he lived in the Place de Meir (which +is traversed by the tram on its way from the Est Station to the Place +Verte), which was built by him in 1611, and in which he died in 1640, +was almost entirely rebuilt in 1703. There is another great Crucifixion +by the master in the Picture Gallery, or Palais des Beaux Arts, which +illustrates his exceptional power as well as his occasional brutality." +The centurion, with his hands on the nape of his horse's neck, is +gazing with horror at the writhings of the impenitent thief, whose legs +are being broken with an iron bar, which has so tortured the unhappy +man that in his agony he has torn his left foot from the nail." It is +questionable whether any splendour of success can ever justify a man in +thus condescending to draw inspiration from the torture-room or +shambles. +</P> + +<P> +One would gladly spend more time in this Antwerp gallery, which +exceeds, I think, in general magnificence the collections at Brussels +and Amsterdam; and gladly would one visit the great fifteenth and +sixteenth century churches of St. Jacques, St. Andre, and St. Paul, +which not merely form together architecturally an important group of a +strongly localized character, but are also, like the cathedral, +veritable museums or picture galleries. It is necessary, however, to +conclude this section, to say a few words about Louvain, which, lying +as it does on the main route from Brussels to Liege, may naturally be +considered on our way to the northern Ardennes. +</P> + +<P> +Louvain, on the whole, has been much more modernized than other Belgian +cities of corresponding bulk, such as Bruges or Malines. The road from +the railway-station to the centre of the town is commonplace indeed in +its lack of picturesque Flemish house-fronts or stepped, "corbie," +Flemish gables. Louvain, in fact, unlike the two "dead" cities of West +Flanders and Brabant, wears a briskly business-like aspect, and pulses +with modern life. I suppose that I ought properly to have written all +this in the past tense, for Louvain is now a heap of smoking cinders. +The famous Town Hall has, indeed, so far been spared by ruffians who +would better have spared the magnificent Cloth Hall at Ypres; between +these two great buildings, the products respectively of the Belgian +genius of the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries, "culture" could +hardly hesitate. The Hotel-de-Ville at Louvain is, indeed, an +astonishing structure, just as the cathedral at Antwerp is astonishing; +but one has to be very indulgent, or very forgetful of better models, +not to deprecate this absolutely wanton riot of overladened panelling +and bulging, top-heavy pinnacles. The expiring throes of Belgian Gothic +were a thousand degrees less chaste than the classicism of the early +Renaissance: few, perhaps, will prefer the lacelike over-richness of +this midfifteenth century town hall at Louvain to the restraint of the +charming sixteenth-century facade of the Hotel de Ville at Leiden. +Opposite the town hall is the huge fifteenth-century church of St. +Pierre, the interior of which, still smothered in whitewash in 1910, +was remarkable for its florid Gothic rood-screen and soaring +Tabernacle, or Ciborium. The stumpy fragment of tower at the west end +is said once to have been five hundred and thirty feet high! It is not +surprising to read that this last, and crowning, manifestation of a +familiar Belgian weakness was largely wrecked by a hurricane in 1604. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H3> + +<P> +One has left oneself all too little space to say what ought to be said +of the Belgian Ardennes. Personally I find them a trifle disappointing; +they come, no doubt, as a welcome relief after the rest of Belgian +landscape, which I have heard described, not altogether unjustly, as +the ugliest in the world; but the true glory and value of Belgium will +always be discovered in its marvellously picturesque old towns, and in +its unrivalled wealth of painting, brass-work, and wood-carving. +Compared with these last splendours the low, wooded wolds of the +Ardennes, with their narrow limestone valleys, seem a little thing +indeed. Dinant, no doubt, and Rochefort would be pleasant places enough +if one were not always harking back in memory to Malines and Ypres, or +longing to be once more in Ghent or Bruges. +</P> + +<P> +The traveller by railway between Brussels and Liege passes, soon after +leaving the station of Ans, a point of great significance in the study +of Belgian landscape. Hitherto from Brussels, or for that matter from +Bruges and Ostend, the country, though studded at frequent intervals +with cities and big towns, has been curiously and intensely rural in +the tracts that lie between; but now, as we descend the steep incline +into the valley of the Meuse, we enter on a scene of industrial +activity which, if never quite as bad as our own Black Country at home, +is sufficiently spoilt and irritating to all who love rustic grace. The +redeeming point, as always, is that infinitely superior good taste +which presents us, in the midst of coal-mines and desolation, not with +our own unspeakably squalid Sheffields or Rotherhams, but with a +queenly city, with broad and handsome streets, with a wealth of public +gardens, and with many stately remnants of the Renaissance and Middle +Time. It is possible in Liege to forget—or rather impossible to +recall—the soiled and grimy country that stretches from its gates in +the direction of Seraing. Even under the sway of the Spanish tyranny +this was an independent state under the rule of a Bishop Prince, who +was also an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Its original cathedral, +indeed, has vanished, like those at Cambrai and Bruges, in the +insensate throes of the French Revolution; and the existing church of +St. Paul, though dating in part from the thirteenth century, and a fine +enough building in its way, is hardly the kind of structure that one +would wish to associate with the seat of a bishopric that is still so +historic, and was formerly so important and even quasi-regal. Here, +however, you should notice, just as in the great neighbour church of +St. Jacques, the remarkable arabesque-pattern painting of the severies +of the vault, and the splendour of the sixteenth-century glass. St. +Jacques, I think, on the whole is the finer church of the two, and +remarkable for the florid ornament of its spandrels, and for the +elaborate, pendent cusping of the soffits of its arches—features that +lend it an almost barbaric magnificence that reminds one of Rosslyn +Chapel. Liege, built as it is exactly on the edge of the Ardennes, is +far the most finely situated of any great city in Belgium. To +appreciate this properly you should not fail to climb the long flight +of steps—in effect they seem interminable, but they are really about +six hundred—that mounts endlessly from near the Cellular Prison to a +point by the side of the Citadelle Pierreuse. Looking down hence on the +city, especially under certain atmospheric conditions—I am thinking of +a showery day at Easter—one is reminded of the lines by poor John +Davidson: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm;<BR> + Clouds scattered largesses of rain;<BR> + The sounding cities, rich and warm,<BR> + Smouldered and glittered in the plain."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +It is not often that one is privileged to look down so directly, and +from so commanding a natural height, on to so vast and busy a +city—those who like this kind of comparison have styled it the Belgian +Birmingham—lying unrolled so immediately, like a map, beneath our feet. +</P> + +<P> +From Liege, if you like, you may penetrate the Ardennes—I do not know +whether Shakespeare was thinking in "As You Like It" of this woodland +or of his own Warwickshire forest of Arden; perhaps he thought of +both—immediately by way of Spa and the valley of the Vesdre, or by the +valleys of the Ourthe and of its tributary the Ambleve; or you may +still cling for a little while to the fringe of the Ardennes, which is +also the fringe of the industrial country, and explore the valley of +the Meuse westward, past Huy and Namur, to Dinant. Huy has a noble +collegiate church of Notre Dame, the chancel towers of which (found +again as far away as Como) are suggestive of Rhenish influence, but +strikes one as rather dusty and untidy in itself. Namur, on the +contrary, we have already noted with praise, though it has nothing of +real antiquity. The valley of the Meuse is graced everywhere at +intervals with fantastic piles of limestone cliff, and certainly, in a +proper light, is pretty; but there is far too much quarrying and +industrialism between Liege and Namur, and far too many residential +villas along the banks between Namur and Dinant, altogether to satisfy +those who have high ideals of scenery. Wordsworth, in a prefatory note +to a sonnet that was written in 1820, and at a date when these signs of +industrialism were doubtless less obtrusive, says: "The scenery on the +Meuse pleases one more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, though +the river itself is much inferior in grandeur"; but even he complains +that the scenery is "in several places disfigured by quarries, whence +stones were taken for the new fortifications." Dinant, in particular, +has an exceptionally grand cliff; but the summit is crowned (or was) by +an ugly citadel, and the base is thickly clustered round with houses +(not all, by any means, mediaeval and beautiful) in a way that calls to +mind the High Tor at Matlock Bath. Dinant, in short, is a kind of +Belgian Matlock, and appeals as little as Matlock to the "careful +student" of Nature. If at Dinant, however, you desert the broad valley +of the Meuse for the narrow and secluded limestone glen of the Lesse, +with its clear and sparkling stream, you will sample at once a kind of +scenery that reminds you of what is best in Derbyshire, and is also +best and most characteristic in the Belgian Ardennes. The walk up the +stream from Dinant to Houyet, where the valley of the Lesse becomes +more open and less striking, is mostly made by footpath; and the +pellucid river is crossed, and recrossed, and crossed again, by a +constant succession of ferries. Sometimes the white cliff rises +directly from the water, sheer and majestic, like that which is crowned +by the romantic Chateau Walzin; sometimes it is more broken, and rises +amidst trees from a broad plinth of emerald meadow that is interposed +between its base and the windings of the river. Sometimes we thread the +exact margin of the stream, or traverse in the open a scrap of level +pasture; sometimes we clamber steeply by a stony path along the sides +of an abrupt and densely wooded hillside, where the thicket is yellow +in spring with Anemone Ranunculoides, or starred with green Herb Paris. +This is the kind of glen scenery that is found along the courses of the +Semois, Lesse, and Ourthe, recalling, with obvious differences, that of +Monsal Dale or Dovedale, but always, perhaps, without that subtle note +of wildness that robes even the mild splendours of Derbyshire with a +suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in short—and this is +their scenic weakness—never attain to the proper mountain spirit. +There is a further point, however, in which they also recall +Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast +agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but +here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. +Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of +which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated +myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized +of its character and scale merely by visiting its gaping mouth at +Eprave. This is the exit of the Lesse, which, higher up the vale, at +the curious Perte de Lesse, swerves suddenly from its obvious course, +down the bright and cheerful valley, to plunge noisily through a narrow +slit in the rock— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Where Alph, the sacred river, ran<BR> + Through caverns measureless to man<BR> + Down to a sunless sea."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Rochefort, which itself has a considerable cave, is a pleasant centre +for the exploration of these subterranean marvels. Altogether this +limestone region of the Ardennes, though certainly not remarkable for +mountain or forest splendour, comes as a somewhat welcome relief after +the interminable levels and chessboard fields of East and West +Flanders, or of the provinces of Limburgh and Antwerp. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Beautiful Europe - Belgium, by Joseph E. Morris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL EUROPE - BELGIUM *** + +***** This file should be named 4242-h.htm or 4242-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/4242/ + +Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Beautiful Europe - Belgium + +Author: Joseph E. Morris + +Posting Date: July 9, 2009 [EBook #4242] +Release Date: July, 2003 +First Posted: December 14, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL EUROPE - BELGIUM *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + + +Beautiful Europe + +Belgium + + +by + +Joseph E. Morris + + + + +I. + + +It needs, indeed, an effort of the imagination at the moment of writing +to think of Belgium as in any sense a component part of "Beautiful +Europe." The unhappy "cockpit" of the Continent at the actual hour is +again in process of accomplishing its frightful destiny--no treaty, or +"scrap of paper," is potent to preserve this last, and weakest, of all +the nations of Western Europe from drinking to the dregs the cup of +ruin and desolation. Tragic indeed in the profoundest sense--in the +sense of Aristotle--more tragic than the long ruin of the predestined +house of Oedipus--is this accumulated tragedy of a small and helpless +people, whose sole apparent crime is their stern determination to cling +at any cost to their plighted word of honour. I have been lately +glancing into a little book published about five years ago, in which a +view is taken of the Belgian character that no one could term +indulgent. "It is curious," says the writer in one place, "how few +Belgians, old or young, rich or poor, consider the feelings or +convenience of others. They are intensely selfish, and this is +doubtless caused by the way in which they are brought up." And, again, +in another chapter, he insinuates a doubt as to whether the Belgians, +if ever called on, would even prove good soldiers. "But whether the +people of a neutral State are ever likely to be brave and +self-sacrificing is another thing." Such a writer certainly does not +shrink--as Burke, we know, once shrank--from framing an indictment +against an entire people. Whether Belgium, as a nation, is +self-sacrificing and brave may safely be left to the judgment of +posterity. There is a passage in one of Mr. Lecky's books--I cannot put +my finger on the exact reference--in which he pronounces that the sins +of France, which are many, are forgiven her, because, like the woman in +the Gospels, she has loved much. It is not our business now, if indeed +at any time, to appraise the sins of Belgium; but surely her love, in +anguish, is manifest and supreme. When we contemplate these firstfruits +of German "kultur"--this deluge of innocent blood, and this wreckage of +ancient monuments--who can hesitate for a moment to belaud this little +people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the spirit of purest +sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and frightful +Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent creed, exemplified +perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of Persian +Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that it is +only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves on +triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, in truth, through the blood +of a bruised and prostrate Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a +rescued European civilization will spring presently from the soaked and +untilled soil? + +Yet even if German "kultur" in the end sweep wholly into ruin the long +accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and +painting--if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to-morrow +be reckoned with Dinant and Louvain--yet it would still be worth while +to set before a few more people this record of vanished splendour, that +they may better appreciate what the world has lost through lust of +brutal ambition, and better be on guard in the future to protect what +wreckage is left. All these treasures were bequeathed to us--not to +Belgium alone, but to the whole world--by the diligence and zeal of +antiquity; and we have seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment +into dust beneath the heel of an insolent and degraded militancy. +Belgium, in very truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of +other nations, has lavishly wrecked her own. "They made me keeper of +the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." + +Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the "work of waste and +ruin" is wholly irreparable. One sees in the illustrated English papers +pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches at Dixmude, Dinant, +and Louvain, made evidently from photographs, that suggest at least +that it is not impossible still to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. +Dixmude, indeed--I judge from an interior view--is possibly shattered +past hope; but Dinant and St. Pierre, at Louvain, so far at least as +their fabrics are concerned, seem to lack little but the woodwork of +their roofs. It is only a few years ago since the writer stood in the +burnt-out shell of Selby Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though +some ancient fittings of inestimable value have irreparably perished, +is in some ways not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, +than its imperfect predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the +thought of York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single +madman Martin in 1829, and of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in +nave and chancel, whilst the great gallery of painted glass, by some +odd miracle, escaped. Is it too much to hope that this devil's work of +a million madmen at Dixmude or Nieuport may prove equally incomplete? + +In the imperfect sketch that follows I write of the aspect of +Belgium--of its cities, that were formerly the most picturesque in +Europe; of its landscapes, that range from the level fens of Flanders +to the wooded limestone wolds of the Ardennes--as I knew these, and +loved them, in former years, before hell was let loose in Europe. And +perhaps, the picture here presented will in time be not altogether +misrepresentative of the regenerated Belgium that will certainly some +day arise. + + + + +II. + + +It is not merely in its quality of unredeemed and absolute flatness +that the great fen country of Flanders is so strongly reminiscent of +the great fen country of the Holland parts of Lincolnshire. Each of +these vast levels is equally distinguished by the splendour and +conspicuousness of its ancient churches. Travelling by railway between +Nieuport and Dixmude, you have on every side of you, if the day be +clear, a prospect of innumerable towers and spires, just as you have if +you travel by railway between Spalding and Sleaford, or between +Spalding and King's Lynn. The difference, perhaps, is that the +Lincolnshire churches present finer architectural feature, and are +built of stone, floated down in barges, by dyke or fen, from the famous +inland quarries of Barnack, in Northamptonshire; whilst most of those +in Flanders are built of local brick, though the drums of the piers and +the arches are often of blue limestone. It is remarkable, certainly, +that these soaring spires should thus chiefly rise to eminence in a +setting of dead, flat plain. It may well be, indeed, as some have +suggested, that the character of architecture is unconsciously +determined by the type of surrounding scenery; that men do not build +spires in the midst of mountains to compete with natural sublimity that +they cannot hope to emulate, but are emboldened to express in stone and +mortar their own heavenward aspirations in countries where Nature seems +to express herself in less spiritual, or at any rate in less ambitious, +mood. + +As we cross the level prairie between these two little towns of West +Flanders (we hope to visit them presently), a group of lofty roofs and +towers is seen grandly towards the west, dominating the fenland with +hardly less insistency than Boston "Stump," in Lincolnshire, as seen +across Wash and fen. This is the little town of Furnes, than which one +can hardly imagine a quainter place in Belgium, or one more entirely +fitted as a doorway by which to enter a new land. Coming straight from +England by way of Calais and Dunkirk, the first sight of this ancient +Flemish market-place, with its unbroken lines of old white-brick +houses, many of which have crow-stepped gables; with the two great +churches of St. Nicholas, with its huge square tower, and of St. +Walburge, with its long ridge of lofty roof; and with its Hotel de +Ville and Palais de Justice of about the dawn of the seventeenth +century, is a revelation, in its atmosphere of sleepy evening quiet, to +those who rub their eyes with wonder, and find it hard to credit that +London, "with its unutterable, external hideousness," was actually left +behind them only that very morning, and is actually at present not two +hundred miles distant. Furnes, in short, is an epitome, and I think a +very charming one, of all that is most characteristic in Flanders; and +not the less charming because here the strong currents of modern life +that throb through Ghent and Antwerp extend only to its threshold in +the faintest of dying ripples, and because you do not need to be told +that in its town hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish +leather, and that the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the +ante-chamber of the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to +throw yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness +from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which +Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed. + +Furnes--in Flemish Veurne--is an excellent centre from which to explore +the extreme west point of Belgian Flanders, which is also the extreme +west point of Belgium as a whole. Flanders, be it always remembered, +does not terminate with mere, present-day, political divisions, but +spreads with unbroken character to the very gateways of Calais and +Lille. Hazebrouck, for example, is a thoroughly Flemish town, though +nearly ten miles, in a beeline, inside the French border--Flemish not +merely, like Dunkirk, in the architecture of its great brick church, +but also actually Flemish in language, and in the names that one reads +above its shop doors. In particular, excursions may be pleasantly made +from Furnes--whose principal inn, the Noble Rose, is again a quaint +relic of the sixteenth century--to the two delightful little +market-towns of Dixmude and Nieuport-Ville: I write, as always, of what +was recently, and of what I have seen myself; to-day they are probably +heaps of smoking ruin, and sanguinary altars to German "kultur." +Nieuport-Ville, so called in distinction from its dull little +watering-place understudy, Nieuport-les-Bains, which lies a couple of +miles to the west of it, among the sand-dunes by the mouth of the Yser, +and is hardly worth a visit unless you want to bathe--Nieuport-Ville, +in addition to its old yellow-brick Halles, or Cloth Hall, and its +early Tour des Templiers, is remarkable for its possession of a +fascinating church, the recent restoration of which has been altogether +conservative and admirable. Standing here, in this rich and picturesque +interior, you realize strongly the gulf in this direction between +Belgium and France, in which latter country, in these days of +ecclesiastical poverty, loving restoration of the kind here seen is +rare, and whose often neglected village churches seldom, or never, +exhibit that wealth of marble rood-screen and sculptured woodwork--of +beaten brass and hammered iron--that distinguishes Belgian church +interiors from perhaps all others on earth. The church has also some +highly important brasses, another detail, common of course in most +counties of England, that is now never, or hardly ever, found in +France. Chief, perhaps, among these is the curious, circular brass--I +hope it has escaped--with figures of husband, wife, and children, on a +magnificently worked background, that is now suspended on the northwest +pier of the central crossing. Very Belgian, too, in character is the +rood-beam, with its three figures of Our Lord in Crucifixion, of the +Virgin, and of St. John; and the striking Renaissance rood-screen in +black and white marble, though not as fine as some that are found in +other churches. Rood-screens of this exact sort are almost limited to +Belgium, though there is one, now misplaced in the west end of the +nave, and serving as an organ-loft, in the church of St. Gery at +Cambrai--another curious link between French and Belgian Flanders. +Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuide), nine and a half miles south from +Nieuport, is an altogether bigger and more important place, with a +larger and more important church, of St. Nicholas, to match. My +recollection of this last, on a Saturday afternoon of heavy showers +towards the close of March, is one of a vast interior thronged with men +and women in the usual dismal, black Flemish cloaks, kneeling in +confession, or waiting patiently for their turn to confess, in +preparation for the Easter Mass. Here the best feature, till lately, +was the glorious Flamboyant rood-screen, recalling those at Albi and +the church of Brou, in France; and remarkable in Belgium as one of the +very few examples of its sort (there is, or was, another in St. Pierre, +at Louvain) of so early a period, in a land where rood-screens, as a +body, are generally much later in date. + +It is difficult, in dealing with Flanders, to avoid a certain amount of +architectural description, for architecture, after all, is the chief +attraction of the country, save perhaps in Ghent and Bruges, where we +have also noble pictures. Even those who do not care to study this +architecture in detail will be gratified to stroll at leisure through +the dim vastness of the great Flemish churches, where the eye is +satisfied everywhere with the wealth of brass and iron work, and where +the Belgian passion for wood-carving displays itself in lavish +prodigality. Such wealth, indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will +hardly find elsewhere in Western Europe--font covers of hammered brass, +like those at Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits, +new and old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall +tabernacles for the reception of the Sacred Host, like those at Louvain +and Leau, that tower towards the roof by the side of the High Altars. +Most of this work, no doubt, is post-Gothic, except the splendid stalls +and canopies (I wonder, do they still survive) at the church of St. +Gertrude at Louvain; for Belgium presents few examples of mediaeval +wood-work like the gorgeous stalls at Amiens, or like those in half a +hundred churches in our own land. Much, in fact, of these splendid +fittings is more or less contemporary with the noble masterpieces of +Rubens and Vandyck, and belongs to the same great wave of artistic +enthusiasm that swept over the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. +Belgian pulpits, in particular, are probably unique, and certainly, to +my knowledge, without parallel in Italy, England, or France. Sometimes +they are merely adorned, like the confessionals at St. Charles, at +Antwerp, and at Tirlemont, with isolated figures; but often these are +grouped into some vivid dramatic scene, such as the Miraculous Draught +of Fishes, at St. Andrew's, at Antwerp, or the Conversion of St. +Norbert, in the cathedral at Malines. Certainly the fallen horseman in +the latter, if not a little ludicrous, is a trifle out of place. + +From Furnes to Ypres it is a pleasant journey across country by one of +those strange steam-trams along the road, so common in Belgium and +Holland, and not unknown in France, that wind at frequent intervals +through village streets so narrow, that you have only to put out your +hand in passing to touch the walls of houses. This is a very leisurely +mode of travelling, and the halts are quite interminable in their +frequency and length; but the passenger is allowed to stand on the open +platform at the end of the carriage--though sometimes nearly smothered +with thick, black smoke--and certainly no better method exists of +exploring the short stretches of open country that lie between town and +town. Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground--you are +hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out of +Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of Europe, +perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you find so many +big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of country that lie +between, though often intolerably dull, are (unlike the strips in +Yorkshire) intensely rural in character. Belgian towns do not sprawl in +endless, untidy suburbs, as Sheffield sprawls out towards Rotherham, +and Bradford towards Leeds. Belgian towns, moreover--again unlike our +own big cities in England--are mostly extremely handsome, and generally +contrive, however big, to retain, at any rate in their heart, as at +Antwerp, or in the Grande Place at Brussels, a striking air of +antiquity; whilst some fairly big towns, such as Malines and Bruges, +are mediaeval from end to end. This, of course, is not true of Belgian +Luxembourg and the region of the Ardennes, where the population is much +more sparse; where we do not stumble, about every fifteen miles or so, +on some big town of historic name; and where the endless chessboard of +little fields that lies, for example, between Ghent and Oudenarde, or +between Malines and Louvain, is replaced by long contours of sweeping +limestone wold, often covered with rolling wood. + +Ypres is distinguished above all cities in Belgium by the huge size and +stately magnificence of its lordly Cloth Hall, or Halles des Drapiers. +So vast, indeed, is this huge building, and so flat the surrounding +plain, that it is said that it is possible from the strangely isolated +hill of Cassel, which lies about eighteen miles away to the west, just +over the border, in France, on a really clear day--I have only climbed +it myself, unluckily, in a fog of winter mist--to distinguish in a +single view, by merely turning the head, the clustering spires of Laon, +the white chalk cliffs of Kent, and this vast pile of building, like a +ship at sea, that seems to lie at anchor in the heart of the "sounding +plain." Nothing, perhaps, in Europe is so strangely significant of +vanished greatness--not even Rome, with its shattered Forum, or Venice, +with a hundred marble palaces--as this huge fourteenth-century +building, with a facade that is four hundred and thirty-six feet long, +and with its lofty central tower, that was built for the pride and need +of Ypres, and as a market for the barter of its priceless linens, at a +time when Ypres numbered a population of two hundred thousand souls +(almost as big as Leicester at the present day), and was noisy with +four thousand busy looms; whereas now it has but a beggarly total of +less than seventeen thousand souls (about as big as Guildford), and is +only a degree less sleepy than Malines or Bruges-la-Morte. Ypres, +again, like Arras, has lent its name to commerce, if diaper be really +rightly derived from the expression "linen of Ypres." The Cloth Hall +fronts on to the Grande Place, and, indeed, forms virtually one side of +it; and behind, in the Petite Place, is the former cathedral of St. +Martin. This is another fine building, though utterly eclipsed by its +huge secular rival, that was commenced in the thirteenth century, and +is typically Belgian, as opposed to French, in the character of its +architecture, and not least in its possession of a single great west +tower. This last feature is characteristic of every big church in +Belgium--one can add them up by the dozen: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain +(though ruined, or never completed), Oudenarde, Malines, Mons--save +Brussels, where the church of Ste. Gudule, called persistently, but +wrongly, the cathedral, has the full complement of two, and Antwerp, +where two were intended, though only one has been actually raised. This +tower at Ypres, however, fails to illustrate--perhaps because it is +earlier, and therefore in better taste--that astounding disproportion +in height that is so frequently exhibited by Belgian towers, as at +Malines, or in the case of the famous belfry in the market-place at +Bruges, when considered with reference to the church, or town hall, +below. In front of the High Altar, in the pavement, is an inconspicuous +square of white stone, which marks the burial-place of Cornelius +Jansen, who died of the plague, as Bishop of Ypres, in 1638. The +monument, if you can call it monument, is scarcely less insignificant +than the simple block, in the cemetery of Plainpalais at Geneva, that +is traditionally said to mark the resting-place of Calvin. Yet Jansen, +in his way, proved almost a second Calvin in his death, and menaced the +Church from his grave with a second Reformation. He left behind in +manuscript a book called "Augustinus," the predestinarian tenor of +which was condemned finally, though nearly a century later, by Pope +Clement XI., in 1713, in the Bull called Unigenitus. Jansenism, +however, had struck deep its roots in France, and still survives in +Holland at the present day, at Utrecht, as a sect that is small, +indeed, but not altogether obscure. Jansen himself, it may be noted, +was a Hollander by birth, having been born in 1585 at Akkoi in that +kingdom. + +If Ypres is to be praised appropriately as a still delightful old city +that has managed to retain to a quite singular degree the outward +aspect and charm of the Middle Ages, one feels that one has left one's +self without any proper stock of epithets with which to appraise at its +proper value the charm and romance of Bruges. Of late years, it is +true, this world-famed capital of West Flanders has lost something of +its old somnolence and peace. Malines, in certain quarters, is now much +more dead-alive, and Wordsworth, who seems to have visualized Bruges in +his mind as a network of deserted streets, "whence busy life hath +fled," might perhaps be tempted now to apply to it the same prophetic +outlook that he imagined for Pendragon Castle: + + "Viewing + As in a dream her own renewing." + +One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed too +zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour of +crisis. Perhaps there is no big city in the world--and Bruges, though +it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great estate in the +Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand souls--that remains +from end to end, in every alley, and square, and street, so wholly +unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the modern spirit, or that +presents so little unloveliness and squalor in its more out-of-the-way +corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course, like Venice, and half a dozen +towns in Holland, is a strangely amphibious city that is intersected in +every direction, though certainly less persistently than Venice, by a +network of stagnant canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the +splendour of the better parts of Venice--the Piazza and the Grand +Canal--and lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if +somewhat faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of +the Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her +monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so dilapidated, and +tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one stumbles against in +Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and in sailing up almost every +canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say, what Byron said of Greece, that + + "Hers is the loveliness in death + That parts not quite with parting breath"; + +whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all, but +the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital old age. + +We cannot, of course, attempt, in a mere superficial sketch like this, +even to summarize briefly the wealth of objects of interest in Bruges, +or to guide the visitor in detail through its maze of winding streets. +Two great churches, no doubt, will be visited by everyone--the +cathedral of St. Sauveur and the church of Notre Dame--both of which, +in the usual delightful Belgian fashion, are also crowded +picture-galleries of the works of great Flemish masters. The See of +Bruges, however, dates only from 1559; and even after that date the +Bishop had his stool in the church of St. Donatian, till this was +destroyed by the foolish Revolutionaries in 1799. In a side-chapel of +Notre Dame, and carefully boarded up for no reason in the world save to +extort a verger's fee for their exhibition, are the splendid black +marble monuments, with recumbent figures in copper gilt, of Charles the +Bold, who fell at Nancy in 1477 (but lives for ever, with Louis XI. of +France, in the pages of "Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, +the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by being +thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482. These two tombs are of +capital interest to those who are students of Belgian history, for +Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of Burgundy, and it was +by the marriage of his daughter that the Netherlands passed to the +House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately fell under the flail of +religious persecution during the rule of her grandson, Spanish Philip. +Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St. Catherine, is the famous old +Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick walls of which rise sleepily from +the dull waters of the canal, just as Queens' College, or St. John's, +at Cambridge, rise from the sluggish Cam. Here is preserved the rich +shrine, or chasse, "resembling a large Noah's ark," of St. Ursula, the +sides of which are painted with scenes from the virgin's life by Hans +Memling, who, though born in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and thus +really by birth a German, lived for nearly a quarter of a century or +more of his life in Bruges, and is emphatically connected, like his +master Roger van der Weyden and the brothers Van Eyck, with the +charming early Flemish school. There is a story that he was wounded +under Charles le Temeraire on the stricken field of Nancy, and painted +these gemlike pictures in return for the care and nursing that he +received in the Hospital of St. Jean, but "this story," says Professor +Anton Springer, "may be placed in the same category as those of Durer's +malevolent spouse, and of the licentiousness of the later Dutch +painters." These scenes from the life of St. Ursula are hardly less +delightfully quaint than the somewhat similar series that was painted +by Carpaccio for the scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now +preserved in the Accademia. Early Flemish painting, in fact, in +addition to its own peculiar charm of microscopic delicacy of finish, +is hardly inferior, in contrast with the later strong realism and +occasional coarseness of Rubens or Rembrandt, to the tender poetic +dreaminess of the primitive Italians. Certainly these pictures, though +finished to the minutest and most delicate detail, are lacking in +realism actually to a degree that borders on a delicious absurdity. St. +Ursula and her maidens--whether really eleven thousand or eleven--in +the final scene of martyrdom await the stroke of death with the stoical +placidity of a regiment of dolls. "All the faces are essentially +Flemish, and some of the virgins display to great advantage the pretty +national feature of the slight curl in one or in both lips." A little +farther along the same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small +but admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St. +Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on either +side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks as one of his +best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon Van de Paelen, +painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing an old churchman with +a typically heavy Flemish face; and the rather unpleasant picture by +Gerard David of the unjust judge Sisamnes being flayed alive by order +of King Cambyses. By a turning to the right out of the Rue St. +Catherine, you come to the placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far +from the shores of which is one of those curious beguinages that are +characteristic of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little +houses, grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine, +or less strict kind of nun. In the house of the Lady Superior is +preserved the small, but very splendid, memorial brass of a former +inmate, who died at about the middle of the fifteenth century. + +Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you will +not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of antiquity, or +to stumble at every street corner on some new and charming combination +of old houses, with their characteristic crow-stepped, or corbie, +gables. New houses, I suppose, there must really be by scores; but +these, being built with inherent good taste (whether unconscious or +conscious I do not know) in the traditional style of local building, +and with brick that from the first is mellow in tint and harmonizes +with its setting, assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and +left, and fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness. +Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm; but +the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two +market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place du +Bourg. In the former are the brick Halles, with their famous belfry +towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian disregard for +proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower piled on tower, till +one is almost afraid lest the final octagon should be going to topple +over! In the Place du Bourg is a less aspiring group, consisting of the +Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien +Greffe, and the Palais de Justice--all very Flemish in character, and +all, in combination, elaborately picturesque. In the Chapel of the Holy +Blood is preserved the crystal cylinder that is said to enshrine +certain drops of the blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the +Holy Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and installed in the +Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt of +which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been rebuilt, in +the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the relic is exhibited +to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to kiss it. Some congealed +blood of Our Lord is also said to be preserved, after remarkable +vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and +mediaeval Gloucestershire once boasted as big a treasure, which brought +great concourse and popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles. Pass +beneath the archway of the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, cross the +sluggish canal, and turn sharply to the left, and follow, first the +cobbled Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai +Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble +cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the +adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and +gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in mellow +charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford whose presence +Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, to overpower his +"soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says elsewhere in his journal, +"the modern taste in costume, architecture, etc., has got the mastery; +in Ghent there is a struggle; but in Bruges old images are still +paramount, and an air of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a +thinly-peopled city is inexpressibly soothing. A pensive grace seems to +be cast over all, even the very children." This estimate, after the +lapse of considerably more than half a century, still, on the whole, +stands good. + +"In Ghent there is a struggle." Approaching Ghent, indeed, by railway +from Bruges, and with our heads full of old-world romance of Philip van +Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers (for whom Ghent was +rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse without peer," "brought +good news from Ghent," one is rather shocked at first, as we circle +round the suburbs, at the rows of aggressive new houses, and rather +tempted to conclude that the struggle has now ended, and that +modernity, as at Brussels, has won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt +is dissipated as we quit the splendid Sud station--and Belgium, one may +add in parenthesis, has some of the most palatial railway-stations in +the world--and find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of +ancient thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet, +and in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at +every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six great +things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon (and in the +cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the Lamb," by Hubert +and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel, with a "Crucifixion" by +Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful old houses on the Quai des +Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry; and possibly the Grande +Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town. The cathedral has the usual +solitary west tower, as at Ely, that we have now come to associate--at +Ypres and Bruges--with typical Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is +hung in a chapel on the south of the choir, and the services of the +verger must be sought for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters +are merely copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture +Gallery in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a +fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany owes +to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work of the +early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been begun by +Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre-piece is in +illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12): "Worthy is the Lamb +that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, +and honour, and glory, and blessing." One may question, indeed, if +figurative language of the kind in question can ever be successfully +transferred to canvas; whether this literal lamb, on its red-damasked +table, in the midst of these carefully marshalled squadrons of +Apostles, Popes, and Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something +ludicrous. One may question all this, yet still admire to the full both +the spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its +miracle of minute and jewel-like execution. There are scores of other +good pictures in Ghent, including (not even to go outside St. Bavon's) +the "Christ among the Doctors" by Francis Pourbus, into which portraits +of Philip II. of Spain, the Emperor Charles V., and the infamous Duke +of Alva--names of terrible import in the sixteenth-century history of +the Netherlands--are introduced among the bystanders; whilst to the +left of Philip is Pourbus himself, "with a greyish cap on which is +inscribed Franciscus Pourbus, 1567." But it is always to the "Adoration +of the Mystic Lamb" that our steps are first directed, and to which +they always return. + +It is hard, indeed, that necessities of space should compel us to pass +so lightly over other towns in Flanders--over Courtrai, with its noble +example of a fortified bridge, and with its great picture, by Van Dyck, +of the "Raising of the Cross" that was stolen mysteriously a few years +ago from the church of Notre Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at +the Louvre, been recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two +fine churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour +even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most +elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in +Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the +north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half-deserted +churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish mediaevalism. Of +the short strip of Flemish coast, from near Knocke, past the +fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst, Blankenberghe, and Ostende, +to a point beyond La Panne--from border to border it measures roughly +only some forty miles, and is almost absolutely straight--I willingly +say little, for it seems to me but a little thing when compared with +this glorious inland wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it +has developed in every direction, and is now almost continuously a +thin, brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and +lodging-houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, +where only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of +rolling sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only +with rushes and coarse grass. About tastes there is no disputing; and +there are people, no doubt, who, for some odd reason, find this kind of +aggressive modernity in some way more attractive in Belgium than in +Kent. For myself, I confess, it hardly seems worth while to incur the +penalty of sea-sickness merely to play golf on the ruined shore of +Flanders. + + + + +III. + + +Of Brussels I do not propose to say very much, because Brussels, +although the brightest and gayest town in Belgium, and although +retaining in its Grande Place, and in the buildings that immediately +surround this last, as well as in its great church of St. Gudule +(which, in spite of popular usage, is not, and never was, in the proper +sense a cathedral), relics of antiquity of the very highest value and +interest, yet Brussels, as a whole, is so distinctively a modern, and +even cosmopolitan city, and has so much general resemblance to Paris +(though its site is far more picturesque, and though the place, to my +mind at least, just because it is smaller and more easily +comprehensible, is a much more agreeable spot to stay in), that it +seems better in a sketch that is principally devoted to what is old and +nationally characteristic in Belgium to give what limited space one has +to a consideration rather of towns like Louvain or Malines, in which +the special Belgian flavour is not wholly overwhelmed by false and +extraneous influences. St. Gudule, of course, should certainly be +visited, not only for the sake of the general fabric, which, +notwithstanding its possession of TWO west towers, is typically Belgian +in its general character, but also for the sake of its magnificent +sixteenth and seventeenth century glass, and especially for the sake of +the five great windows in the Chapelle du Saint Sacrement, which +illustrate in a blaze of gorgeous colour the story of how Jonathan the +Jew bribed Jeanne de Louvain to steal the three Consecrated Wafers, +from which oozed, when sacrilegiously stabbed by the sceptical Jew, the +Sacred Blood of a world's redemption. This story is told again--or +rather, perhaps, a similar story--in the splendid painted glass from +the church of St. Eloi that is now preserved at Rouen in the +Archaeological Museum. As for the Grande Place, or original +market-place of the city, which is bounded on one side by the +magnificent Hotel de Ville, on the opposite side by the rather heavy, +rebuilt Maison du Roi, and on the remaining two sides chiefly by the +splendid old seventeenth-century Corporation Houses of the various +ancient city guilds--Le Renard, the house of the silk-mercers and +haberdashers; Maison Cornet, the house of the boatmen, or "batelliers"; +La Louvre, the house of the archers; La Brouette, the house of the +carpenters; Le Sac, the house of the printers and booksellers; the +Cygne, the house of the butchers; and other houses that need not be +specified at any greater length, of the tailors, painters, and +brewers--this is probably the completest and most splendid example of +an ancient city market-square that now remains in Europe, and +absolutely without rival even in Belgium itself, though similar old +guild-houses, in the same delightful Flemish fashion, may still be +found (though in this case with admixture of many modern buildings) in +the Grande Place at Antwerp. It was in this splendid square at Brussels +that the unhappy Counts of Egmont and Horn were brutally done to death, +to glut the sinister tyranny of Spanish Philip, on June 5, 1568. + +Also, in addition to these two superlative antiquities, two modern +buildings in Brussels, though for widely different reasons, can hardly +be passed over under plea of lack of space. Crowning the highest point +of the city, and towering itself towards heaven in a stupendous pile of +masonry, is the enormous new Palais de Justice, probably the most +imposing law courts in the world. English Law undoubtedly is housed +with much greater modesty, though not without due magnificence, in the +altogether humbler levels of the Strand. Also in the High Town--which +is the modern quarter of Brussels, in contrast with the mediaeval Low +Town, which lies in the flat below--is the Royal Museum of Ancient +Paintings, which probably divides honours with the Picture Gallery at +Antwerp as the finest and most representative collection of pictures of +the Netherlandish school in the world. Here you may revel by the hour +in a candlelight effect by Gerard Dow; in the poultry of Melchior +d'Hondecoeter; in a pigsty of Paul Potter's; in landscapes by Meindert +Hobbema; in a moonlight landscape of Van der Neer's; in a village scene +by Jan Steen; in the gallant world of Teniers; and in the weird +imaginings of Pieter Brueghel the younger. The greatest pictures in the +whole collection, I suppose, are those by Rubens, though he has nothing +here that is comparable for a moment with those in the Picture Gallery +and Cathedral at Antwerp. Very magnificent, however, is the "Woman +taken in Adultery," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Interceder +Interceded" (the Virgin, at the prayer of St. Francis d'Assisi, +restrains the angry Saviour from destroying a wicked world), and the +"Martyrdom of St. Livinius." This last, however--like the "Crucifixion" +in the Antwerp Gallery; like Van Dyck's picture in this collection of +the drunken Silenus supported by a fawn; and like Rubens' own +disgusting Silenus in our National Gallery at home--illustrates +unpleasantly the painful Flemish facility to condescend to details, or +even whole conceptions, the realism of which is unnecessarily +deliberate and coarse. Here, in this death of St. Livinius, the +executioner is shown in the act of presenting to a dog with pincers the +bleeding tongue that he has just cut out of the mouth of the dying +priest. + +Brussels itself, as already intimated, is an exceedingly pleasant city +for a more or less prolonged stay; and, owing at once to the admirable +system of "Rundreise" tickets that are issued by the State railways at +an uncommonly low price, to the rather dubious quality of the hotels in +some of the smaller towns, and to the cardinal fact that Brussels is a +centre from which most of the other great cities of Belgium--Malines, +Ghent, Antwerp, and Liege, not to mention smaller towns of absorbing +interest, such as Mons, Namur, Hal, Tirlemont, Leau, and Soignies--may +be easily visited, more or less completely, in the course of a single +day--owing to all these facts many people will be glad to make this +pleasant city their centre, or headquarters, for the leisurely +exploration of most of Belgium, with the exception of the more distant +and out-of-the-way districts of West Flanders and the Ardennes. All the +places enumerated are thoroughly worth visiting, but obviously only the +more important can be dealt with more than just casually here. Mons, on +a hill overlooking the great coalfield of the Borinage, with its +strange pyramidal spoil-heaps, is itself curiously free from the dirt +and squalor of an English colliery town; and equally worth visiting for +the sake of its splendid cathedral of St. Wandru, the richly +polychromatic effect of whose interior, due to the conjunction of deep +red-brick vaulting with the dark blue of its limestone capitals and +piers, illustrates another pleasant phase of Belgian ecclesiastical +architecture, as well as for the sake of a contest, almost of +yesterday, that has added new and immortal laurels to the genius of +British battle. Tournai, on the upper Scheldt, or Escaut, is remarkable +for the heavy Romanesque nave of its cathedral, which is built of the +famous local black marble, as well as for its remarkable central +cluster of five great towers. Soignies (in Flemish Zirick), roughly +half-way between Mons and Brussels, and probably little visited, has a +sombre old abbey church, of St. Vincent Maldegaire, that was built in +the twelfth century, and that is enriched inside with such a collection +of splendidly carved classical woodwork--stalls, misericordes, and +pulpit--as you will scarcely find elsewhere even in Belgium. The pulpit +in particular is wonderful, with its life-sized girl supporters, with +their graceful and lightly poised figures, and pure and lovely faces. +Namur, strangely enough, has really nothing of antiquity outside the +doors of its Archaeological Museum, but is worth a visit if only for +the pleasure of promenading streets which, if almost wholly modern, are +unusually clean and bright. Tirlemont, again, has two old churches that +will not delay you long, though Notre Dame de Lac has remarkably fine +confessionals of the dawn of the seventeenth century, and though the +splendid brass-work of the font and baptistery lectern at St. Germains +would alone be worth a visit; but Leau, for which Tirlemont is the +junction, is so quaint and curious a little town, and comes so much in +the guise of a pleasant discovery--since Baedeker barely mentions +it--that, even apart from its perfect wealth of wood and brass work in +the fine thirteenth-century church of St. Leonhard, it might anyhow be +thought to justify a visit to this little visited corner of South +Brabant. I do not know that the brass-work could be easily matched +elsewhere: the huge standard candelabrum to the north of the altar, +with its crowning Crucifixion; the lectern, with its triumphant eagle +and prostrate dragon; the font, with its cover, and the holy-water +stoup almost as big as a small font (in Brittany I have seen them as +big as a bath); and the beautiful brass railings that surround the +splendid Tabernacle that was executed in 1552 by Cornelius de Vriendt, +the brother of the painter Frans Floris, and that towers high into the +vaulting to a height of fifty-two feet. One realizes more completely in +a quiet village church like this the breadth and intensity of the wave +of artistic impulse that swept through the Lowlands in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries than is possible in half a dozen hurried +visits to a picture gallery at Antwerp or Brussels. Finally Hal, to +conclude our list of minor places, has a grand fourteenth-century +church, with a miracle-working Virgin, and a little red-brick town hall +of characteristically picturesque aspect. + +The railway journey from Brussels to Antwerp traverses a typical bit of +Belgian landscape that is as flat as a pancake; and the monotony is +only relieved, first by the little town of Vilvoorde, where William +Tyndale was burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536, though not alive, +having first been mercifully strangled, and afterwards by the single, +huge, square tower of Malines (or Mechlin) Cathedral, which dominates +the plain from enormous distances, like the towers of Ely or Lincoln, +though not, like these last, by virtue of position on a hill, but +solely by its own vast height and overwhelming massiveness. Malines, +though certainly containing fewer objects of particular interest than +Bruges, and though certainly on the whole a less beautiful city, +strikes one as hardly less dead-and-alive, and altogether may fairly +claim second place among the larger Belgian cities (it houses more than +fifty thousand souls) in point of mediaeval character. The great +thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral of St. Rombaut has been the +seat of an archbishopric since the sixteenth century, and is still the +metropolitan church of Belgium. Externally the body, like the +market-hall at Bruges, is almost entirely crushed into insignificance +by the utterly disproportionate height and bulk of the huge west tower, +the top of which, even in its present unfinished state (one almost +hopes that it may never be finished), is actually three hundred and +twenty-four feet high. Boston "Stump" is only two hundred and eighty +feet to the top of the weather vane, but infinitely slimmer in +proportion; whilst even Salisbury spire is only about four hundred odd +feet. Immediately below the parapet is the enormous skeleton +clock-face, the proportions of which are reproduced on the pavement of +the market-place below. The carillons in this tower are an extravagant +example of the Belgian passion for chiming bells. Once safely inside +the church, and the monster tower forgotten, and we are able to admire +its delicate internal proportions, and the remarkable ornament of the +spandrels in the great main arcades of the choir. Unfortunately, much +of this interior, like that of St. Pierre at Louvain, is smothered +under half an inch of plaster; but where this has been removed in +tentative patches, revealing the dark blue "drums" of the single, +circular columns of the arcades, the general effect is immensely +improved. One would also like to send to the scrap-heap the enormous +seventeenth-century figures of the Apostles on their consoles on the +piers, which form so bad a disfigurement in the nave. The treasure of +the church is the great "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, which is hung in the +south transept, but generally kept covered. To see other stately +pictures you must go to the church of St. Jean, where is a splendid +altar triptych by Rubens, the centre panel of which is the "Adoration +of the Magi"; or to the fifteenth-century structure of Notre Dame au +dela de la Dyle (the clumsy title is used, I suppose, for the sake of +distinction from the classical Notre Dame d'Hanswyck), where Rubens' +"Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is sometimes considered the painter's +masterpiece. It is not yet clear whether this noble picture has been +destroyed in the recent bombardment. Even to those who care little for +art, a stroll to these two old churches through the sleepy back-streets +of Malines, with their white and sunny houses, can hardly fail to +gratify. + +If Malines is a backwater of the Middle Time, as somnolent or as dull +(so some, I suppose, would call it) as the strange dead towns of the +Zuyder Zee, or as Coggeshall or Thaxted in our own green Essex, +Antwerp, at any rate, which lies only some fifteen miles or so to the +north of it, is very much awake, and of aspect mostly modern, though +not without some very curious and charming relics of antiquity embedded +in the heart of much recent stone and mortar. Perhaps it will be well +to visit one of these at once, taking the tram direct from the +magnificent Gare de l'Est (no lesser epithet is just) to the Place +Verte, which may be considered the real centre of the city; and making +our way thence by a network of quieter back-streets to the Musee +Plantin-Moretus, which is the goal of our immediate ambition. I bring +you here at once, not merely because the place itself is quite unique +and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes precisely +that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern din and bustle of +Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we listen needfully. Happy, +indeed, was the inspiration that moved the city to buy this house from +its last private possessor, Edward Moretus, in 1876. To step across +this threshold is to step directly into the merchant atmosphere of the +sixteenth century. The once great printing house of Plantin-Moretus was +founded by the Frenchman, Christopher Plantin, who was born at St. +Aventin, near Tours, in 1514, and began his business life as a +book-binder at Rouen. In 1549 he removed to Antwerp, and was there +innocently involved one night in a riot in the streets, which resulted +in an injury that incapacitated him for his former trade, and +necessitated his turning to some new employment. He now set up as +printer, with remarkable success, and was a sufficiently important +citizen at the date of his death, in 1589, to be buried in his own +vault under a chapel in the Cathedral. The business passed, on his +decease, to his son-in-law, Jean Moertorf, who had married his +daughter, Martine, in 1570, and had Latinized his surname to Moretus in +accordance with the curious custom that prevailed among scholars of the +sixteenth century. Thus Servetus was really Miguel Servete, and Thomas +Erastus was Thomas Lieber. The foundation of the fortunes of the house +was undoubtedly its monopoly--analogous to that enjoyed by the English +house of Spottiswoode, and by the two elder Universities--of printing +the liturgical works--Missals, Antiphons, Psalters, Breviaries, +etc.--that were used throughout the Spanish dominions. No attempt, +however, seems to have been made in the later stages of the history of +the house to adopt improved machinery, or to reconstruct the original, +antiquated buildings. The establishment, accordingly, when it was taken +over by the city in 1876, retained virtually the same aspect as it had +worn in the seventeenth century, and remains to the present day perhaps +the best example in the world of an old-fashioned city business house +of the honest time when merchant-princes were content to live above +their office, instead of seeking solace in smug suburban villas. The +place has been preserved exactly as it stood, and even the present +attendants are correctly clad in the sober brown garb of the servants +of three hundred years since. It is interesting, not only in itself, +but as an excellent example of how business and high culture were +successfully combined under the happier economic conditions of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Plantin-Moretus family held a +high position in the civic life of Antwerp, and mixed in the +intellectual and artistic society for which Antwerp was famed in the +seventeenth century--the Antwerp of Rubens (though not a native) and +Van Dyck, of Jordaens, of the two Teniers, of Grayer, Zegers, and +Snyders. Printing, indeed, in those days was itself a fine art, and the +glories of the house of Plantin-Moretus rivalled those of the later +Chiswick Press, and of the goodly Chaucers edited in our own time by +Professor Skeat, and printed by William Morris. Proof-reading was then +an erudite profession, and Francois Ravelingen, who entered Plantin's +office as proof-reader in 1564, and assisted Arias Montanus in revising +the sheets of the Polyglot Bible, is said to have been a great Greek +and Oriental scholar, and crowned a career of honourable toil, like +Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, by marrying his master's eldest +daughter, Marguerite, in 1565. The room in which these scholars worked +remains much in its old condition, with the table at which they sat, +and some of their portraits on the wall. Everything here, in short, is +interesting: the press-room, which was used almost continuously and +practically without change--two of the antiquated presses of Plantin's +own time remain--for nearly three centuries; the Great and Little +Libraries, with their splendid collection of books; the archive room, +with its long series of business accounts and ledgers; the private +livingrooms of the Moretus family; and last, but not least, the modest +little shop, where books still repose upon the shelves, which looks as +though the salesman might return at any moment to his place behind the +counter. England has certainly nothing like it, though London had till +recently in Crosby Hall a great merchant's house of the fifteenth +century, though stripped of all internal fittings and propriety. +Luckily this last has been re-erected at Chelsea, though robbed by the +change of site of half its authenticity and value. + +I have chosen to dwell on this strange museum at length that seems +disproportionate, not merely because of its unique character, but +because it seems to me full of lessons and reproach for an age that has +subordinated honest workmanship to cheap and shoddy productiveness, and +has sacrificed the workman to machinery. Certainly no one who visits +Antwerp can afford to overlook it; but probably most people will first +bend their steps towards the more popular shrine of the great +cathedral. Here I confess myself utter heretic: to call this church, as +I have seen it called, "one of the grandest in Europe," seems to me +pure Philistinism--the cult of the merely big and obvious, to the +disregard of delicacy and beauty. Big it is assuredly, and +superficially astonishing; but anything more barn-like architecturally, +or spiritually unexalting, I can hardly call to memory. Outside it +lacks entirely all shadow of homogeneity; the absence of a central +tower, felt perhaps even in the great cathedrals of Picardy and the Ile +de France, just as it is felt in Westminster and in Beverley Minster, +is here actually accentuated by the hideous little cupola--I hardly +know how properly to call it--that squats, as though in derision, above +the crossing; whilst even the natural meeting and intersection at this +point of high roofs, which in itself would rise to dignity, is wantonly +neglected to make way for this monstrosity. The church, in fact, looks, +when viewed externally, more like four separate churches than one; and +when we step inside, with all the best will in the world to make the +best of it, it is hard to find, much to admire, and anything at all to +love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long, feeble +lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of Belgian +architecture--its lack of really beautiful detail, and its fussy +superfluity of pinnacle and panelling--seems to me here to culminate. +Belgium has really beautiful churches--not merely of the thirteenth +century, when building was lovely everywhere, but later buildings, like +Mons, and St. Pierre at Louvain; but Antwerp is not of this category. +Architecturally, perhaps, the best feature of the whole church is the +lofty spire (over four hundred feet), which curiously resembles in +general outline that of the Hotel de Ville at Brussels (three hundred +and seventy feet), and dates from about the same period (roughly the +middle of the fifteenth century). As usual in Belgium, it is quite out +of scale; it is lucky, indeed, that the corresponding south-west tower +has never been completed, for the combination of the two would be +almost overwhelming. It is curious and interesting as an example of a +tower tapering upwards to a point in a succession of diminishing +stages, in contrast with tower and spire. France has something like it, +though far more beautiful, in the thirteenth-century tower at Senlis; +but England affords no parallel. I am not sure who invented the quite +happy phrase, "Confectioner's Gothic," but this tower at Antwerp is not +badly described by it. It is altogether too elaborate and florid, like +the sugar pinnacle of a wedding-cake. + +This cathedral of Antwerp, however, though at the time that it was +built a mere collegiate church of secular canons, and only first +exalted to cathedral rank in 1559, is one of the largest churches in +superficial area in the world, a result largely due to its possession, +uniquely, of not less than six aisles, giving it a total breadth of one +hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two transepts respectively are +the two great pictures by Rubens--the "Elevation of the Cross" and the +"Descent from the Cross"--that are described at such length, and with +so much critical enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to +Flanders and Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens +in 1612, when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more +splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which the +artist has successfully ventured (what "none but great colourists can +venture") "to paint pure white linen near flesh." His Christ, continues +Sir Joshua, "I consider as one of the finest figures that ever was +invented: it is most correctly drawn, and I apprehend in an attitude of +the utmost difficulty to execute. The hanging of the head on His +shoulder, and the falling of the body on one side, gives such an +appearance of the heaviness of death, that nothing can exceed it." +Antwerp, of course, is full of magnificent paintings by Rubens, though +unfortunately the house in which he lived in the Place de Meir (which +is traversed by the tram on its way from the Est Station to the Place +Verte), which was built by him in 1611, and in which he died in 1640, +was almost entirely rebuilt in 1703. There is another great Crucifixion +by the master in the Picture Gallery, or Palais des Beaux Arts, which +illustrates his exceptional power as well as his occasional brutality." +The centurion, with his hands on the nape of his horse's neck, is +gazing with horror at the writhings of the impenitent thief, whose legs +are being broken with an iron bar, which has so tortured the unhappy +man that in his agony he has torn his left foot from the nail." It is +questionable whether any splendour of success can ever justify a man in +thus condescending to draw inspiration from the torture-room or +shambles. + +One would gladly spend more time in this Antwerp gallery, which +exceeds, I think, in general magnificence the collections at Brussels +and Amsterdam; and gladly would one visit the great fifteenth and +sixteenth century churches of St. Jacques, St. Andre, and St. Paul, +which not merely form together architecturally an important group of a +strongly localized character, but are also, like the cathedral, +veritable museums or picture galleries. It is necessary, however, to +conclude this section, to say a few words about Louvain, which, lying +as it does on the main route from Brussels to Liege, may naturally be +considered on our way to the northern Ardennes. + +Louvain, on the whole, has been much more modernized than other Belgian +cities of corresponding bulk, such as Bruges or Malines. The road from +the railway-station to the centre of the town is commonplace indeed in +its lack of picturesque Flemish house-fronts or stepped, "corbie," +Flemish gables. Louvain, in fact, unlike the two "dead" cities of West +Flanders and Brabant, wears a briskly business-like aspect, and pulses +with modern life. I suppose that I ought properly to have written all +this in the past tense, for Louvain is now a heap of smoking cinders. +The famous Town Hall has, indeed, so far been spared by ruffians who +would better have spared the magnificent Cloth Hall at Ypres; between +these two great buildings, the products respectively of the Belgian +genius of the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries, "culture" could +hardly hesitate. The Hotel-de-Ville at Louvain is, indeed, an +astonishing structure, just as the cathedral at Antwerp is astonishing; +but one has to be very indulgent, or very forgetful of better models, +not to deprecate this absolutely wanton riot of overladened panelling +and bulging, top-heavy pinnacles. The expiring throes of Belgian Gothic +were a thousand degrees less chaste than the classicism of the early +Renaissance: few, perhaps, will prefer the lacelike over-richness of +this midfifteenth century town hall at Louvain to the restraint of the +charming sixteenth-century facade of the Hotel de Ville at Leiden. +Opposite the town hall is the huge fifteenth-century church of St. +Pierre, the interior of which, still smothered in whitewash in 1910, +was remarkable for its florid Gothic rood-screen and soaring +Tabernacle, or Ciborium. The stumpy fragment of tower at the west end +is said once to have been five hundred and thirty feet high! It is not +surprising to read that this last, and crowning, manifestation of a +familiar Belgian weakness was largely wrecked by a hurricane in 1604. + + + + +IV. + + +One has left oneself all too little space to say what ought to be said +of the Belgian Ardennes. Personally I find them a trifle disappointing; +they come, no doubt, as a welcome relief after the rest of Belgian +landscape, which I have heard described, not altogether unjustly, as +the ugliest in the world; but the true glory and value of Belgium will +always be discovered in its marvellously picturesque old towns, and in +its unrivalled wealth of painting, brass-work, and wood-carving. +Compared with these last splendours the low, wooded wolds of the +Ardennes, with their narrow limestone valleys, seem a little thing +indeed. Dinant, no doubt, and Rochefort would be pleasant places enough +if one were not always harking back in memory to Malines and Ypres, or +longing to be once more in Ghent or Bruges. + +The traveller by railway between Brussels and Liege passes, soon after +leaving the station of Ans, a point of great significance in the study +of Belgian landscape. Hitherto from Brussels, or for that matter from +Bruges and Ostend, the country, though studded at frequent intervals +with cities and big towns, has been curiously and intensely rural in +the tracts that lie between; but now, as we descend the steep incline +into the valley of the Meuse, we enter on a scene of industrial +activity which, if never quite as bad as our own Black Country at home, +is sufficiently spoilt and irritating to all who love rustic grace. The +redeeming point, as always, is that infinitely superior good taste +which presents us, in the midst of coal-mines and desolation, not with +our own unspeakably squalid Sheffields or Rotherhams, but with a +queenly city, with broad and handsome streets, with a wealth of public +gardens, and with many stately remnants of the Renaissance and Middle +Time. It is possible in Liege to forget--or rather impossible to +recall--the soiled and grimy country that stretches from its gates in +the direction of Seraing. Even under the sway of the Spanish tyranny +this was an independent state under the rule of a Bishop Prince, who +was also an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Its original cathedral, +indeed, has vanished, like those at Cambrai and Bruges, in the +insensate throes of the French Revolution; and the existing church of +St. Paul, though dating in part from the thirteenth century, and a fine +enough building in its way, is hardly the kind of structure that one +would wish to associate with the seat of a bishopric that is still so +historic, and was formerly so important and even quasi-regal. Here, +however, you should notice, just as in the great neighbour church of +St. Jacques, the remarkable arabesque-pattern painting of the severies +of the vault, and the splendour of the sixteenth-century glass. St. +Jacques, I think, on the whole is the finer church of the two, and +remarkable for the florid ornament of its spandrels, and for the +elaborate, pendent cusping of the soffits of its arches--features that +lend it an almost barbaric magnificence that reminds one of Rosslyn +Chapel. Liege, built as it is exactly on the edge of the Ardennes, is +far the most finely situated of any great city in Belgium. To +appreciate this properly you should not fail to climb the long flight +of steps--in effect they seem interminable, but they are really about +six hundred--that mounts endlessly from near the Cellular Prison to a +point by the side of the Citadelle Pierreuse. Looking down hence on the +city, especially under certain atmospheric conditions--I am thinking of +a showery day at Easter--one is reminded of the lines by poor John +Davidson: + + "The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm; + Clouds scattered largesses of rain; + The sounding cities, rich and warm, + Smouldered and glittered in the plain." + +It is not often that one is privileged to look down so directly, and +from so commanding a natural height, on to so vast and busy a +city--those who like this kind of comparison have styled it the Belgian +Birmingham--lying unrolled so immediately, like a map, beneath our feet. + +From Liege, if you like, you may penetrate the Ardennes--I do not know +whether Shakespeare was thinking in "As You Like It" of this woodland +or of his own Warwickshire forest of Arden; perhaps he thought of +both--immediately by way of Spa and the valley of the Vesdre, or by the +valleys of the Ourthe and of its tributary the Ambleve; or you may +still cling for a little while to the fringe of the Ardennes, which is +also the fringe of the industrial country, and explore the valley of +the Meuse westward, past Huy and Namur, to Dinant. Huy has a noble +collegiate church of Notre Dame, the chancel towers of which (found +again as far away as Como) are suggestive of Rhenish influence, but +strikes one as rather dusty and untidy in itself. Namur, on the +contrary, we have already noted with praise, though it has nothing of +real antiquity. The valley of the Meuse is graced everywhere at +intervals with fantastic piles of limestone cliff, and certainly, in a +proper light, is pretty; but there is far too much quarrying and +industrialism between Liege and Namur, and far too many residential +villas along the banks between Namur and Dinant, altogether to satisfy +those who have high ideals of scenery. Wordsworth, in a prefatory note +to a sonnet that was written in 1820, and at a date when these signs of +industrialism were doubtless less obtrusive, says: "The scenery on the +Meuse pleases one more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, though +the river itself is much inferior in grandeur"; but even he complains +that the scenery is "in several places disfigured by quarries, whence +stones were taken for the new fortifications." Dinant, in particular, +has an exceptionally grand cliff; but the summit is crowned (or was) by +an ugly citadel, and the base is thickly clustered round with houses +(not all, by any means, mediaeval and beautiful) in a way that calls to +mind the High Tor at Matlock Bath. Dinant, in short, is a kind of +Belgian Matlock, and appeals as little as Matlock to the "careful +student" of Nature. If at Dinant, however, you desert the broad valley +of the Meuse for the narrow and secluded limestone glen of the Lesse, +with its clear and sparkling stream, you will sample at once a kind of +scenery that reminds you of what is best in Derbyshire, and is also +best and most characteristic in the Belgian Ardennes. The walk up the +stream from Dinant to Houyet, where the valley of the Lesse becomes +more open and less striking, is mostly made by footpath; and the +pellucid river is crossed, and recrossed, and crossed again, by a +constant succession of ferries. Sometimes the white cliff rises +directly from the water, sheer and majestic, like that which is crowned +by the romantic Chateau Walzin; sometimes it is more broken, and rises +amidst trees from a broad plinth of emerald meadow that is interposed +between its base and the windings of the river. Sometimes we thread the +exact margin of the stream, or traverse in the open a scrap of level +pasture; sometimes we clamber steeply by a stony path along the sides +of an abrupt and densely wooded hillside, where the thicket is yellow +in spring with Anemone Ranunculoides, or starred with green Herb Paris. +This is the kind of glen scenery that is found along the courses of the +Semois, Lesse, and Ourthe, recalling, with obvious differences, that of +Monsal Dale or Dovedale, but always, perhaps, without that subtle note +of wildness that robes even the mild splendours of Derbyshire with a +suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in short--and this is +their scenic weakness--never attain to the proper mountain spirit. +There is a further point, however, in which they also recall +Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast +agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes--like those in Craven, but +here called etonnoirs--that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. +Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of +which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated +myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized +of its character and scale merely by visiting its gaping mouth at +Eprave. This is the exit of the Lesse, which, higher up the vale, at +the curious Perte de Lesse, swerves suddenly from its obvious course, +down the bright and cheerful valley, to plunge noisily through a narrow +slit in the rock-- + + "Where Alph, the sacred river, ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea." + +Rochefort, which itself has a considerable cave, is a pleasant centre +for the exploration of these subterranean marvels. Altogether this +limestone region of the Ardennes, though certainly not remarkable for +mountain or forest splendour, comes as a somewhat welcome relief after +the interminable levels and chessboard fields of East and West +Flanders, or of the provinces of Limburgh and Antwerp. + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Beautiful Europe - Belgium, by Joseph E. Morris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL EUROPE - BELGIUM *** + +***** This file should be named 4242.txt or 4242.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/4242/ + +Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. 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Tragic +indeed in the profoundest sense--in the sense of Aristotle--more +tragic than the long ruin of the predestined house of Oedipus--is +this accumulated tragedy of a small and helpless people, whose +sole apparent crime is their stern determination to cling at any +cost to their plighted word of honour. I have been lately glancing +into a little book published about five years ago, in which a view +is taken of the Belgian character that no one could term +indulgent. "It is curious," says the writer in one place, "how few +Belgians, old or young, rich or poor, consider the feelings or +convenience of others. They are intensely selfish, and this is +doubtless caused by the way in which they are brought up." And, +again, in another chapter, he insinuates a doubt as to whether the +Belgians, if ever called on, would even prove good soldiers. "But +whether the people of a neutral State are ever likely to be brave +and self-sacrificing is another thing." Such a writer certainly +does not shrink--as Burke, we know, once shrank--from framing an +indictment against an entire people. Whether Belgium, as a nation, +is self-sacrificing and brave may safely be left to the judgment +of posterity. There is a passage in one of Mr. Lecky's books--I +cannot put my finger on the exact reference--in which he +pronounces that the sins of France, which are many, are forgiven +her, because, like the woman in the Gospels, she has loved much. +It is not our business now, if indeed at any time, to appraise the +sins of Belgium; but surely her love, in anguish, is manifest and +supreme. When we contemplate these firstfruits of German "kultur"- +-this deluge of innocent blood, and this wreckage of ancient +monuments--who can hesitate for a moment to belaud this little +people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the spirit of +purest sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and +frightful Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent +creed, exemplified perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek +Adonis, now of Persian Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the +Nennian lake, that it is only through the gates of sacrifice and +death that the world moves on triumphant to rejuvenation and life. +Is it, in truth, through the blood of a bruised and prostrate +Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a rescued European +civilization will spring presently from the soaked and untilled +soil? + +Yet even if German "kultur" in the end sweep wholly into ruin the +long accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and +painting--if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to- +morrow be reckoned with Dinant and Louvain--yet it would still be +worth while to set before a few more people this record of +vanished splendour, that they may better appreciate what the world +has lost through lust of brutal ambition, and better be on guard +in the future to protect what wreckage is left. All these +treasures were bequeathed to us--not to Belgium alone, but to the +whole world--by the diligence and zeal of antiquity; and we have +seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment into dust beneath the +heel of an insolent and degraded militancy. Belgium, in very +truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of other +nations, has lavishly wrecked her own. "They made me keeper of the +vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." + +Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the "work of +waste and ruin" is wholly irreparable. One sees in the illustrated +English papers pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches +at Dixmude, Dinant, and Louvain, made evidently from photographs, +that suggest at least that it is not impossible still to rebuild +the walls of Jerusalem. Dixmude, indeed--I judge from an interior +view--is possibly shattered past hope; but Dinant and St. Pierre, +at Louvain, so far at least as their fabrics are concerned, seem +to lack little but the woodwork of their roofs. It is only a few +years ago since the writer stood in the burnt-out shell of Selby +Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though some ancient fittings +of inestimable value have irreparably perished, is in some ways +not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, than its +imperfect predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the thought of +York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single madman +Martin in 1829, and of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in +nave and chancel, whilst the great gallery of painted glass, by +some odd miracle, escaped. Is it too much to hope that this +devil's work of a million madmen at Dixmude or Nieuport may prove +equally incomplete? + +In the imperfect sketch that follows I write of the aspect of +Belgium--of its cities, that were formerly the most picturesque in +Europe; of its landscapes, that range from the level fens of +Flanders to the wooded limestone wolds of the Ardennes--as I knew +these, and loved them, in former years, before hell was let loose +in Europe. And perhaps, the picture here presented will in time be +not altogether misrepresentative of the regenerated Belgium that +will certainly some day arise. + + + + + +II. + + +It is not merely in its quality of unredeemed and absolute +flatness that the great fen country of Flanders is so strongly +reminiscent of the great fen country of the Holland parts of +Lincolnshire. Each of these vast levels is equally distinguished +by the splendour and conspicuousness of its ancient churches. +Travelling by railway between Nieuport and Dixmude, you have on +every side of you, if the day be clear, a prospect of innumerable +towers and spires, just as you have if you travel by railway +between Spalding and Sleaford, or between Spalding and King's +Lynn. The difference, perhaps, is that the Lincolnshire churches +present finer architectural feature, and are built of stone, +floated down in barges, by dyke or fen, from the famous inland +quarries of Barnack, in Northamptonshire; whilst most of those in +Flanders are built of local brick, though the drums of the piers +and the arches are often of blue limestone. It is remarkable, +certainly, that these soaring spires should thus chiefly rise to +eminence in a setting of dead, flat plain. It may well be, indeed, +as some have suggested, that the character of architecture is +unconsciously determined by the type of surrounding scenery; that +men do not build spires in the midst of mountains to compete with +natural sublimity that they cannot hope to emulate, but are +emboldened to express in stone and mortar their own heavenward +aspirations in countries where Nature seems to express herself in +less spiritual, or at any rate in less ambitious, mood. + +As we cross the level prairie between these two little towns of +West Flanders (we hope to visit them presently), a group of lofty +roofs and towers is seen grandly towards the west, dominating the +fenland with hardly less insistency than Boston "Stump," in +Lincolnshire, as seen across Wash and fen. This is the little town +of Furnes, than which one can hardly imagine a quainter place in +Belgium, or one more entirely fitted as a doorway by which to +enter a new land. Coming straight from England by way of Calais +and Dunkirk, the first sight of this ancient Flemish market-place, +with its unbroken lines of old white-brick houses, many of which +have crow-stepped gables; with the two great churches of St. +Nicholas, with its huge square tower, and of St. Walburge, with +its long ridge of lofty roof; and with its Hotel de Ville and +Palais de Justice of about the dawn of the seventeenth century, is +a revelation, in its atmosphere of sleepy evening quiet, to those +who rub their eyes with wonder, and find it hard to credit that +London, "with its unutterable, external hideousness," was actually +left behind them only that very morning, and is actually at +present not two hundred miles distant. Furnes, in short, is an +epitome, and I think a very charming one, of all that is most +characteristic in Flanders; and not the less charming because here +the strong currents of modern life that throb through Ghent and +Antwerp extend only to its threshold in the faintest of dying +ripples, and because you do not need to be told that in its town +hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish leather, and that +the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the ante-chamber of +the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to throw +yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness +from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which +Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed. + +Furnes--in Flemish Veurne--is an excellent centre from which to +explore the extreme west point of Belgian Flanders, which is also +the extreme west point of Belgium as a whole. Flanders, be it +always remembered, does not terminate with mere, present-day, +political divisions, but spreads with unbroken character to the +very gateways of Calais and Lille. Hazebrouck, for example, is a +thoroughly Flemish town, though nearly ten miles, in a beeline, +inside the French border--Flemish not merely, like Dunkirk, in the +architecture of its great brick church, but also actually Flemish +in language, and in the names that one reads above its shop doors. +In particular, excursions may be pleasantly made from Furnes-- +whose principal inn, the Noble Rose, is again a quaint relic of +the sixteenth century--to the two delightful little market-towns +of Dixmude and Nieuport-Ville: I write, as always, of what was +recently, and of what I have seen myself; to-day they are probably +heaps of smoking ruin, and sanguinary altars to German "kultur." +Nieuport-Ville, so called in distinction from its dull little +watering-place understudy, Nieuport-les-Bains, which lies a couple +of miles to the west of it, among the sand-dunes by the mouth of +the Yser, and is hardly worth a visit unless you want to bathe-- +Nieuport-Ville, in addition to its old yellow-brick Halles, or +Cloth Hall, and its early Tour des Templiers, is remarkable for +its possession of a fascinating church, the recent restoration of +which has been altogether conservative and admirable. Standing +here, in this rich and picturesque interior, you realize strongly +the gulf in this direction between Belgium and France, in which +latter country, in these days of ecclesiastical poverty, loving +restoration of the kind here seen is rare, and whose often +neglected village churches seldom, or never, exhibit that wealth +of marble rood-screen and sculptured woodwork--of beaten brass +and hammered iron--that distinguishes Belgian church interiors +from perhaps all others on earth. The church has also some highly +important brasses, another detail, common of course in most +counties of England, that is now never, or hardly ever, found in +France. Chief, perhaps, among these is the curious, circular brass +--I hope it has escaped--with figures of husband, wife, and +children, on a magnificently worked background, that is now +suspended on the northwest pier of the central crossing. Very +Belgian, too, in character is the rood-beam, with its three +figures of Our Lord in Crucifixion, of the Virgin, and of St. +John; and the striking Renaissance rood-screen in black and white +marble, though not as fine as some that are found in other +churches. Rood-screens of this exact sort are almost limited to +Belgium, though there is one, now misplaced in the west end of the +nave, and serving as an organ-loft, in the church of St. Gery at +Cambrai--another curious link between French and Belgian Flanders. +Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuide), nine and a half miles south from +Nieuport, is an altogether bigger and more important place, with a +larger and more important church, of St. Nicholas, to match. My +recollection of this last, on a Saturday afternoon of heavy +showers towards the close of March, is one of a vast interior +thronged with men and women in the usual dismal, black Flemish +cloaks, kneeling in confession, or waiting patiently for their +turn to confess, in preparation for the Easter Mass. Here the best +feature, till lately, was the glorious Flamboyant rood-screen, +recalling those at Albi and the church of Brou, in France; and +remarkable in Belgium as one of the very few examples of its sort +(there is, or was, another in St. Pierre, at Louvain) of so early +a period, in a land where rood-screens, as a body, are generally +much later in date. + +It is difficult, in dealing with Flanders, to avoid a certain +amount of architectural description, for architecture, after all, +is the chief attraction of the country, save perhaps in Ghent and +Bruges, where we have also noble pictures. Even those who do not +care to study this architecture in detail will be gratified to +stroll at leisure through the dim vastness of the great Flemish +churches, where the eye is satisfied everywhere with the wealth of +brass and iron work, and where the Belgian passion for wood- +carving displays itself in lavish prodigality. Such wealth, +indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will hardly find elsewhere +in Western Europe--font covers of hammered brass, like those at +Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits, new and +old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall +tabernacles for the reception of the Sacred Host, like those at +Louvain and Leau, that tower towards the roof by the side of the +High Altars. Most of this work, no doubt, is post-Gothic, except +the splendid stalls and canopies (I wonder, do they still survive) +at the church of St. Gertrude at Louvain; for Belgium presents few +examples of mediaeval wood-work like the gorgeous stalls at +Amiens, or like those in half a hundred churches in our own land. +Much, in fact, of these splendid fittings is more or less +contemporary with the noble masterpieces of Rubens and Vandyck, +and belongs to the same great wave of artistic enthusiasm that +swept over the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Belgian +pulpits, in particular, are probably unique, and certainly, to my +knowledge, without parallel in Italy, England, or France. +Sometimes they are merely adorned, like the confessionals at St. +Charles, at Antwerp, and at Tirlemont, with isolated figures; but +often these are grouped into some vivid dramatic scene, such as +the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, at St. Andrew's, at Antwerp, or +the Conversion of St. Norbert, in the cathedral at Malines. +Certainly the fallen horseman in the latter, if not a little +ludicrous, is a trifle out of place. + +From Furnes to Ypres it is a pleasant journey across country by +one of those strange steam-trams along the road, so common in +Belgium and Holland, and not unknown in France, that wind at +frequent intervals through village streets so narrow, that you +have only to put out your hand in passing to touch the walls of +houses. This is a very leisurely mode of travelling, and the halts +are quite interminable in their frequency and length; but the +passenger is allowed to stand on the open platform at the end of +the carriage--though sometimes nearly smothered with thick, black +smoke--and certainly no better method exists of exploring the +short stretches of open country that lie between town and town. +Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground--you are +hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out +of Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of +Europe, perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you +find so many big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of +country that lie between, though often intolerably dull, are +(unlike the strips in Yorkshire) intensely rural in character. +Belgian towns do not sprawl in endless, untidy suburbs, as +Sheffield sprawls out towards Rotherham, and Bradford towards +Leeds. Belgian towns, moreover--again unlike our own big cities in +England--are mostly extremely handsome, and generally contrive, +however big, to retain, at any rate in their heart, as at Antwerp, +or in the Grande Place at Brussels, a striking air of antiquity; +whilst some fairly big towns, such as Malines and Bruges, are +mediaeval from end to end. This, of course, is not true of Belgian +Luxembourg and the region of the Ardennes, where the population is +much more sparse; where we do not stumble, about every fifteen +miles or so, on some big town of historic name; and where the +endless chessboard of little fields that lies, for example, +between Ghent and Oudenarde, or between Malines and Louvain, is +replaced by long contours of sweeping limestone wold, often +covered with rolling wood. + +Ypres is distinguished above all cities in Belgium by the huge +size and stately magnificence of its lordly Cloth Hall, or Halles +des Drapiers. So vast, indeed, is this huge building, and so flat +the surrounding plain, that it is said that it is possible from +the strangely isolated hill of Cassel, which lies about eighteen +miles away to the west, just over the border, in France, on a +really clear day--I have only climbed it myself, unluckily, in a +fog of winter mist--to distinguish in a single view, by merely +turning the head, the clustering spires of Laon, the white chalk +cliffs of Kent, and this vast pile of building, like a ship at +sea, that seems to lie at anchor in the heart of the "sounding +plain." Nothing, perhaps, in Europe is so strangely significant of +vanished greatness--not even Rome, with its shattered Forum, or +Venice, with a hundred marble palaces--as this huge fourteenth- +century building, with a facade that is four hundred and thirty- +six feet long, and with its lofty central tower, that was built +for the pride and need of Ypres, and as a market for the barter of +its priceless linens, at a time when Ypres numbered a population +of two hundred thousand souls (almost as big as Leicester at the +present day), and was noisy with four thousand busy looms; whereas +now it has but a beggarly total of less than seventeen thousand +souls (about as big as Guildford), and is only a degree less +sleepy than Malines or Bruges-la-Morte. Ypres, again, like Arras, +has lent its name to commerce, if diaper be really rightly derived +from the expression "linen of Ypres." The Cloth Hall fronts on to +the Grande Place, and, indeed, forms virtually one side of it; and +behind, in the Petite Place, is the former cathedral of St. +Martin. This is another fine building, though utterly eclipsed by +its huge secular rival, that was commenced in the thirteenth +century, and is typically Belgian, as opposed to French, in the +character of its architecture, and not least in its possession of +a single great west tower. This last feature is characteristic of +every big church in Belgium--one can add them up by the dozen: +Bruges, Ghent, Louvain (though ruined, or never completed), +Oudenarde, Malines, Mons--save Brussels, where the church of Ste. +Gudule, called persistently, but wrongly, the cathedral, has the +full complement of two, and Antwerp, where two were intended, +though only one has been actually raised. This tower at Ypres, +however, fails to illustrate--perhaps because it is earlier, and +therefore in better taste--that astounding disproportion in height +that is so frequently exhibited by Belgian towers, as at Malines, +or in the case of the famous belfry in the market-place at Bruges, +when considered with reference to the church, or town hall, below. +In front of the High Altar, in the pavement, is an inconspicuous +square of white stone, which marks the burial-place of Cornelius +Jansen, who died of the plague, as Bishop of Ypres, in 1638. The +monument, if you can call it monument, is scarcely less +insignificant than the simple block, in the cemetery of +Plainpalais at Geneva, that is traditionally said to mark the +resting-place of Calvin. Yet Jansen, in his way, proved almost a +second Calvin in his death, and menaced the Church from his grave +with a second Reformation. He left behind in manuscript a book +called "Augustinus," the predestinarian tenor of which was +condemned finally, though nearly a century later, by Pope Clement +XI., in 1713, in the Bull called Unigenitus. Jansenism, however, +had struck deep its roots in France, and still survives in Holland +at the present day, at Utrecht, as a sect that is small, indeed, +but not altogether obscure. Jansen himself, it may be noted, was a +Hollander by birth, having been born in 1585 at Akkoi in that +kingdom. + +If Ypres is to be praised appropriately as a still delightful old +city that has managed to retain to a quite singular degree the +outward aspect and charm of the Middle Ages, one feels that one +has left one's self without any proper stock of epithets with +which to appraise at its proper value the charm and romance of +Bruges. Of late years, it is true, this world-famed capital of +West Flanders has lost something of its old somnolence and peace. +Malines, in certain quarters, is now much more dead-alive, and +Wordsworth, who seems to have visualized Bruges in his mind as a +network of deserted streets, "whence busy life hath fled," might +perhaps be tempted now to apply to it the same prophetic outlook +that he imagined for Pendragon Castle: + + "Viewing + As in a dream her own renewing." + +One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed +too zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour +of crisis. Perhaps there is no big city in the world--and Bruges, +though it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great +estate in the Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand +souls--that remains from end to end, in every alley, and square, +and street, so wholly unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the +modern spirit, or that presents so little unloveliness and squalor +in its more out-of-the-way corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course, +like Venice, and half a dozen towns in Holland, is a strangely +amphibious city that is intersected in every direction, though +certainly less persistently than Venice, by a network of stagnant +canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the splendour of +the better parts of Venice--the Piazza and the Grand Canal--and +lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if somewhat +faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of the +Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her +monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so +dilapidated, and tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one +stumbles against in Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and +in sailing up almost every canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say, +what Byron said of Greece, that + + "Hers is the loveliness in death + That parts not quite with parting breath"; + +whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all, +but the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital +old age. + +We cannot, of course, attempt, in a mere superficial sketch like +this, even to summarize briefly the wealth of objects of interest +in Bruges, or to guide the visitor in detail through its maze of +winding streets. Two great churches, no doubt, will be visited by +everyone--the cathedral of St. Sauveur and the church of Notre +Dame--both of which, in the usual delightful Belgian fashion, are +also crowded picture-galleries of the works of great Flemish +masters. The See of Bruges, however, dates only from 1559; and +even after that date the Bishop had his stool in the church of St. +Donatian, till this was destroyed by the foolish Revolutionaries +in 1799. In a side-chapel of Notre Dame, and carefully boarded up +for no reason in the world save to extort a verger's fee for their +exhibition, are the splendid black marble monuments, with +recumbent figures in copper gilt, of Charles the Bold, who fell at +Nancy in 1477 (but lives for ever, with Louis XI. of France, in +the pages of "Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, the +wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by +being thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482. These two +tombs are of capital interest to those who are students of Belgian +history, for Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of +Burgundy, and it was by the marriage of his daughter that the +Netherlands passed to the House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately +fell under the flail of religious persecution during the rule of +her grandson, Spanish Philip. Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St. +Catherine, is the famous old Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick +walls of which rise sleepily from the dull waters of the canal, +just as Queens' College, or St. John's, at Cambridge, rise from +the sluggish Cam. Here is preserved the rich shrine, or chasse, +"resembling a large Noah's ark," of St. Ursula, the sides of which +are painted with scenes from the virgin's life by Hans Memling, +who, though born in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and thus really +by birth a German, lived for nearly a quarter of a century or more +of his life in Bruges, and is emphatically connected, like his +master Roger van der Weyden and the brothers Van Eyck, with the +charming early Flemish school. There is a story that he was +wounded under Charles le Temeraire on the stricken field of Nancy, +and painted these gemlike pictures in return for the care and +nursing that he received in the Hospital of St. Jean, but "this +story," says Professor Anton Springer, "may be placed in the same +category as those of Durer's malevolent spouse, and of the +licentiousness of the later Dutch painters." These scenes from the +life of St. Ursula are hardly less delightfully quaint than the +somewhat similar series that was painted by Carpaccio for the +scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now preserved in the +Accademia. Early Flemish painting, in fact, in addition to its own +peculiar charm of microscopic delicacy of finish, is hardly +inferior, in contrast with the later strong realism and occasional +coarseness of Rubens or Rembrandt, to the tender poetic dreaminess +of the primitive Italians. Certainly these pictures, though +finished to the minutest and most delicate detail, are lacking in +realism actually to a degree that borders on a delicious +absurdity. St. Ursula and her maidens--whether really eleven +thousand or eleven--in the final scene of martyrdom await the +stroke of death with the stoical placidity of a regiment of dolls. +"All the faces are essentially Flemish, and some of the virgins +display to great advantage the pretty national feature of the +slight curl in one or in both lips." A little farther along the +same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small but +admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St. +Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on +either side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks +as one of his best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon +Van de Paelen, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing +an old churchman with a typically heavy Flemish face; and the +rather unpleasant picture by Gerard David of the unjust judge +Sisamnes being flayed alive by order of King Cambyses. By a +turning to the right out of the Rue St. Catherine, you come to the +placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far from the shores of +which is one of those curious beguinages that are characteristic +of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little houses, +grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine, or +less strict kind of nun. In the house of the Lady Superior is +preserved the small, but very splendid, memorial brass of a former +inmate, who died at about the middle of the fifteenth century. + +Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you +will not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of +antiquity, or to stumble at every street corner on some new and +charming combination of old houses, with their characteristic +crow-stepped, or corbie, gables. New houses, I suppose, there must +really be by scores; but these, being built with inherent good +taste (whether unconscious or conscious I do not know) in the +traditional style of local building, and with brick that from the +first is mellow in tint and harmonizes with its setting, +assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and left, and +fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness. +Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm; +but the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two +market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place +du Bourg. In the former are the brick Halles, with their famous +belfry towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian +disregard for proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower +piled on tower, till one is almost afraid lest the final octagon +should be going to topple over! In the Place du Bourg is a less +aspiring group, consisting of the Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du +Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, and the Palais de +Justice--all very Flemish in character, and all, in combination, +elaborately picturesque. In the Chapel of the Holy Blood is +preserved the crystal cylinder that is said to enshrine certain +drops of the blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the Holy +Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and installed in the +Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt +of which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been +rebuilt, in the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the +relic is exhibited to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to +kiss it. Some congealed blood of Our Lord is also said to be +preserved, after remarkable vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in +the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and mediaeval Gloucestershire once +boasted as big a treasure, which brought great concourse and +popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles. Pass beneath the +archway of the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, cross the sluggish +canal, and turn sharply to the left, and follow, first the cobbled +Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai +Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble +cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the +adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and +gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in +mellow charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford +whose presence Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, +to overpower his "soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says +elsewhere in his journal, "the modern taste in costume, +architecture, etc., has got the mastery; in Ghent there is a +struggle; but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air +of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a thinly-peopled +city is inexpressibly soothing. A pensive grace seems to be cast +over all, even the very children." This estimate, after the lapse +of considerably more than half a century, still, on the whole, +stands good. + +"In Ghent there is a struggle." Approaching Ghent, indeed, by +railway from Bruges, and with our heads full of old-world romance +of Philip van Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers +(for whom Ghent was rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse +without peer," "brought good news from Ghent," one is rather +shocked at first, as we circle round the suburbs, at the rows of +aggressive new houses, and rather tempted to conclude that the +struggle has now ended, and that modernity, as at Brussels, has +won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt is dissipated as we quit +the splendid Sud station--and Belgium, one may add in parenthesis, +has some of the most palatial railway-stations in the world--and +find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of ancient +thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet, and +in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at +every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six +great things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon +(and in the cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the +Lamb," by Hubert and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel, +with a "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful +old houses on the Quai des Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry; +and possibly the Grande Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town. +The cathedral has the usual solitary west tower, as at Ely, that +we have now come to associate--at Ypres and Bruges--with typical +Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is hung in a chapel on the +south of the choir, and the services of the verger must be sought +for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters are merely +copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture Gallery +in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a +fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany +owes to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work +of the early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been +begun by Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre- +piece is in illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12): +"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, +and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." +One may question, indeed, if figurative language of the kind in +question can ever be successfully transferred to canvas; whether +this literal lamb, on its red-damasked table, in the midst of +these carefully marshalled squadrons of Apostles, Popes, and +Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something ludicrous. One +may question all this, yet still admire to the full both the +spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its +miracle of minute and jewel-like execution. There are scores of +other good pictures in Ghent, including (not even to go outside +St. Bavon's) the "Christ among the Doctors" by Francis Pourbus, +into which portraits of Philip II. of Spain, the Emperor Charles +V., and the infamous Duke of Alva--names of terrible import in +the sixteenth-century history of the Netherlands--are introduced +among the bystanders; whilst to the left of Philip is Pourbus +himself, "with a greyish cap on which is inscribed Franciscus +Pourbus, 1567." But it is always to the "Adoration of the Mystic +Lamb" that our steps are first directed, and to which they always +return. + +It is hard, indeed, that necessities of space should +compel us to pass so lightly over other towns in Flanders--over +Courtrai, with its noble example of a fortified bridge, and with +its great picture, by Van Dyck, of the "Raising of the Cross" that +was stolen mysteriously a few years ago from the church of Notre +Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at the Louvre, been +recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two fine +churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour +even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most +elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in +Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the +north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half- +deserted churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish +mediaevalism. Of the short strip of Flemish coast, from near +Knocke, past the fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst, +Blankenberghe, and Ostende, to a point beyond La Panne--from +border to border it measures roughly only some forty miles, and is +almost absolutely straight--I willingly say little, for it seems +to me but a little thing when compared with this glorious inland +wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it has developed in +every direction, and is now almost continuously a thin, +brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and lodging- +houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, where +only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of rolling +sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only +with rushes and coarse grass. About tastes there is no disputing; +and there are people, no doubt, who, for some odd reason, find +this kind of aggressive modernity in some way more attractive in +Belgium than in Kent. For myself, I confess, it hardly seems worth +while to incur the penalty of sea-sickness merely to play golf on +the ruined shore of Flanders. + + + + + +III. + + +Of Brussels I do not propose to say very much, because Brussels, +although the brightest and gayest town in Belgium, and although +retaining in its Grande Place, and in the buildings that +immediately surround this last, as well as in its great church of +St. Gudule (which, in spite of popular usage, is not, and never +was, in the proper sense a cathedral), relics of antiquity of the +very highest value and interest, yet Brussels, as a whole, is so +distinctively a modern, and even cosmopolitan city, and has so +much general resemblance to Paris (though its site is far more +picturesque, and though the place, to my mind at least, just +because it is smaller and more easily comprehensible, is a much +more agreeable spot to stay in), that it seems better in a sketch +that is principally devoted to what is old and nationally +characteristic in Belgium to give what limited space one has to a +consideration rather of towns like Louvain or Malines, in which +the special Belgian flavour is not wholly overwhelmed by false and +extraneous influences. St. Gudule, of course, should certainly be +visited, not only for the sake of the general fabric, which, +notwithstanding its possession of TWO west towers, is typically +Belgian in its general character, but also for the sake of its +magnificent sixteenth and seventeenth century glass, and +especially for the sake of the five great windows in the Chapelle +du Saint Sacrement, which illustrate in a blaze of gorgeous colour +the story of how Jonathan the Jew bribed Jeanne de Louvain to +steal the three Consecrated Wafers, from which oozed, when +sacrilegiously stabbed by the sceptical Jew, the Sacred Blood of a +world's redemption. This story is told again--or rather, perhaps, +a similar story--in the splendid painted glass from the church of +St. Eloi that is now preserved at Rouen in the Archaeological +Museum. As for the Grande Place, or original market-place of the +city, which is bounded on one side by the magnificent Hotel de +Ville, on the opposite side by the rather heavy, rebuilt Maison du +Roi, and on the remaining two sides chiefly by the splendid old +seventeenth-century Corporation Houses of the various ancient city +guilds--Le Renard, the house of the silk-mercers and haberdashers; +Maison Cornet, the house of the boatmen, or "batelliers"; La +Louvre, the house of the archers; La Brouette, the house of the +carpenters; Le Sac, the house of the printers and booksellers; the +Cygne, the house of the butchers; and other houses that need not +be specified at any greater length, of the tailors, painters, and +brewers--this is probably the completest and most splendid example +of an ancient city market-square that now remains in Europe, and +absolutely without rival even in Belgium itself, though similar +old guild-houses, in the same delightful Flemish fashion, may +still be found (though in this case with admixture of many modern +buildings) in the Grande Place at Antwerp. It was in this splendid +square at Brussels that the unhappy Counts of Egmont and Horn were +brutally done to death, to glut the sinister tyranny of Spanish +Philip, on June 5, 1568. + +Also, in addition to these two superlative antiquities, two modern +buildings in Brussels, though for widely different reasons, can +hardly be passed over under plea of lack of space. Crowning the +highest point of the city, and towering itself towards heaven in a +stupendous pile of masonry, is the enormous new Palais de Justice, +probably the most imposing law courts in the world. English Law +undoubtedly is housed with much greater modesty, though not +without due magnificence, in the altogether humbler levels of the +Strand. Also in the High Town--which is the modern quarter of +Brussels, in contrast with the mediaeval Low Town, which lies in +the flat below--is the Royal Museum of Ancient Paintings, which +probably divides honours with the Picture Gallery at Antwerp as +the finest and most representative collection of pictures of the +Netherlandish school in the world. Here you may revel by the hour +in a candlelight effect by Gerard Dow; in the poultry of Melchior +d'Hondecoeter; in a pigsty of Paul Potter's; in landscapes by +Meindert Hobbema; in a moonlight landscape of Van der Neer's; in a +village scene by Jan Steen; in the gallant world of Teniers; and +in the weird imaginings of Pieter Brueghel the younger. The +greatest pictures in the whole collection, I suppose, are those by +Rubens, though he has nothing here that is comparable for a moment +with those in the Picture Gallery and Cathedral at Antwerp. Very +magnificent, however, is the "Woman taken in Adultery," the +"Adoration of the Magi," the "Interceder Interceded" (the Virgin, +at the prayer of St. Francis d'Assisi, restrains the angry Saviour +from destroying a wicked world), and the "Martyrdom of St. +Livinius." This last, however--like the "Crucifixion" in the +Antwerp Gallery; like Van Dyck's picture in this collection of the +drunken Silenus supported by a fawn; and like Rubens' own +disgusting Silenus in our National Gallery at home--illustrates +unpleasantly the painful Flemish facility to condescend to +details, or even whole conceptions, the realism of which is +unnecessarily deliberate and coarse. Here, in this death of St. +Livinius, the executioner is shown in the act of presenting to a +dog with pincers the bleeding tongue that he has just cut out of +the mouth of the dying priest. + +Brussels itself, as already intimated, is an exceedingly pleasant +city for a more or less prolonged stay; and, owing at once to the +admirable system of "Rundreise" tickets that are issued by the +State railways at an uncommonly low price, to the rather dubious +quality of the hotels in some of the smaller towns, and to the +cardinal fact that Brussels is a centre from which most of the +other great cities of Belgium--Malines, Ghent, Antwerp, and Liege, +not to mention smaller towns of absorbing interest, such as Mons, +Namur, Hal, Tirlemont, Leau, and Soignies--may be easily visited, +more or less completely, in the course of a single day--owing to +all these facts many people will be glad to make this pleasant +city their centre, or headquarters, for the leisurely exploration +of most of Belgium, with the exception of the more distant and +out-of-the-way districts of West Flanders and the Ardennes. All +the places enumerated are thoroughly worth visiting, but obviously +only the more important can be dealt with more than just casually +here. Mons, on a hill overlooking the great coalfield of the +Borinage, with its strange pyramidal spoil-heaps, is itself +curiously free from the dirt and squalor of an English colliery +town; and equally worth visiting for the sake of its splendid +cathedral of St. Wandru, the richly polychromatic effect of whose +interior, due to the conjunction of deep red-brick vaulting with +the dark blue of its limestone capitals and piers, illustrates +another pleasant phase of Belgian ecclesiastical architecture, as +well as for the sake of a contest, almost of yesterday, that has +added new and immortal laurels to the genius of British battle. +Tournai, on the upper Scheldt, or Escaut, is remarkable for the +heavy Romanesque nave of its cathedral, which is built of the +famous local black marble, as well as for its remarkable central +cluster of five great towers. Soignies (in Flemish Zirick), +roughly half-way between Mons and Brussels, and probably little +visited, has a sombre old abbey church, of St. Vincent Maldegaire, +that was built in the twelfth century, and that is enriched inside +with such a collection of splendidly carved classical woodwork-- +stalls, misericordes, and pulpit--as you will scarcely find +elsewhere even in Belgium. The pulpit in particular is wonderful, +with its life-sized girl supporters, with their graceful and +lightly poised figures, and pure and lovely faces. Namur, +strangely enough, has really nothing of antiquity outside the +doors of its Archaeological Museum, but is worth a visit if only +for the pleasure of promenading streets which, if almost wholly +modern, are unusually clean and bright. Tirlemont, again, has two +old churches that will not delay you long, though Notre Dame de +Lac has remarkably fine confessionals of the dawn of the +seventeenth century, and though the splendid brass-work of the +font and baptistery lectern at St. Germains would alone be worth a +visit; but Leau, for which Tirlemont is the junction, is so quaint +and curious a little town, and comes so much in the guise of a +pleasant discovery--since Baedeker barely mentions it--that, even +apart from its perfect wealth of wood and brass work in the fine +thirteenth-century church of St. Leonhard, it might anyhow be +thought to justify a visit to this little visited corner of South +Brabant. I do not know that the brass-work could be easily matched +elsewhere: the huge standard candelabrum to the north of the +altar, with its crowning Crucifixion; the lectern, with its +triumphant eagle and prostrate dragon; the font, with its cover, +and the holy-water stoup almost as big as a small font (in +Brittany I have seen them as big as a bath); and the beautiful +brass railings that surround the splendid Tabernacle that was +executed in 1552 by Cornelius de Vriendt, the brother of the +painter Frans Floris, and that towers high into the vaulting to a +height of fifty-two feet. One realizes more completely in a quiet +village church like this the breadth and intensity of the wave of +artistic impulse that swept through the Lowlands in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries than is possible in half a dozen hurried +visits to a picture gallery at Antwerp or Brussels. Finally Hal, +to conclude our list of minor places, has a grand fourteenth- +century church, with a miracle-working Virgin, and a little red- +brick town hall of characteristically picturesque aspect. + +The railway journey from Brussels to Antwerp traverses a typical +bit of Belgian landscape that is as flat as a pancake; and the +monotony is only relieved, first by the little town of Vilvoorde, +where William Tyndale was burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536, +though not alive, having first been mercifully strangled, and +afterwards by the single, huge, square tower of Malines (or +Mechlin) Cathedral, which dominates the plain from enormous +distances, like the towers of Ely or Lincoln, though not, like +these last, by virtue of position on a hill, but solely by its own +vast height and overwhelming massiveness. Malines, though +certainly containing fewer objects of particular interest than +Bruges, and though certainly on the whole a less beautiful city, +strikes one as hardly less dead-and-alive, and altogether may +fairly claim second place among the larger Belgian cities (it +houses more than fifty thousand souls) in point of mediaeval +character. The great thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral +of St. Rombaut has been the seat of an archbishopric since the +sixteenth century, and is still the metropolitan church of +Belgium. Externally the body, like the market-hall at Bruges, is +almost entirely crushed into insignificance by the utterly +disproportionate height and bulk of the huge west tower, the top +of which, even in its present unfinished state (one almost hopes +that it may never be finished), is actually three hundred and +twenty-four feet high. Boston "Stump" is only two hundred and +eighty feet to the top of the weather vane, but infinitely slimmer +in proportion; whilst even Salisbury spire is only about four +hundred odd feet. Immediately below the parapet is the enormous +skeleton clock-face, the proportions of which are reproduced on +the pavement of the market-place below. The carillons in this +tower are an extravagant example of the Belgian passion for +chiming bells. Once safely inside the church, and the monster +tower forgotten, and we are able to admire its delicate internal +proportions, and the remarkable ornament of the spandrels in the +great main arcades of the choir. Unfortunately, much of this +interior, like that of St. Pierre at Louvain, is smothered under +half an inch of plaster; but where this has been removed in +tentative patches, revealing the dark blue "drums" of the single, +circular columns of the arcades, the general effect is immensely +improved. One would also like to send to the scrap-heap the +enormous seventeenth-century figures of the Apostles on their +consoles on the piers, which form so bad a disfigurement in the +nave. The treasure of the church is the great "Crucifixion" by Van +Dyck, which is hung in the south transept, but generally kept +covered. To see other stately pictures you must go to the church +of St. Jean, where is a splendid altar triptych by Rubens, the +centre panel of which is the "Adoration of the Magi"; or to the +fifteenth-century structure of Notre Dame au dela de la Dyle (the +clumsy title is used, I suppose, for the sake of distinction from +the classical Notre Dame d'Hanswyck), where Rubens' "Miraculous +Draught of Fishes" is sometimes considered the painter's +masterpiece. It is not yet clear whether this noble picture has +been destroyed in the recent bombardment. Even to those who care +little for art, a stroll to these two old churches through the +sleepy back-streets of Malines, with their white and sunny houses, +can hardly fail to gratify. + +If Malines is a backwater of the Middle Time, as somnolent or as +dull (so some, I suppose, would call it) as the strange dead towns +of the Zuyder Zee, or as Coggeshall or Thaxted in our own green +Essex, Antwerp, at any rate, which lies only some fifteen miles or +so to the north of it, is very much awake, and of aspect mostly +modern, though not without some very curious and charming relics +of antiquity embedded in the heart of much recent stone and +mortar. Perhaps it will be well to visit one of these at once, +taking the tram direct from the magnificent Gare de l'Est (no +lesser epithet is just) to the Place Verte, which may be +considered the real centre of the city; and making our way thence +by a network of quieter back-streets to the Musee Plantin- +Moretus, which is the goal of our immediate ambition. I bring you +here at once, not merely because the place itself is quite unique +and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes +precisely that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern +din and bustle of Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we +listen needfully. Happy, indeed, was the inspiration that moved +the city to buy this house from its last private possessor, Edward +Moretus, in 1876. To step across this threshold is to step +directly into the merchant atmosphere of the sixteenth century. +The once great printing house of Plantin-Moretus was founded by +the Frenchman, Christopher Plantin, who was born at St. Aventin, +near Tours, in 1514, and began his business life as a book-binder +at Rouen. In 1549 he removed to Antwerp, and was there innocently +involved one night in a riot in the streets, which resulted in an +injury that incapacitated him for his former trade, and +necessitated his turning to some new employment. He now set up as +printer, with remarkable success, and was a sufficiently important +citizen at the date of his death, in 1589, to be buried in his own +vault under a chapel in the Cathedral. The business passed, on his +decease, to his son-in-law, Jean Moertorf, who had married his +daughter, Martine, in 1570, and had Latinized his surname to +Moretus in accordance with the curious custom that prevailed among +scholars of the sixteenth century. Thus Servetus was really Miguel +Servete, and Thomas Erastus was Thomas Lieber. The foundation of +the fortunes of the house was undoubtedly its monopoly--analogous +to that enjoyed by the English house of Spottiswoode, and by the +two elder Universities--of printing the liturgical works--Missals, +Antiphons, Psalters, Breviaries, etc.--that were used throughout +the Spanish dominions. No attempt, however, seems to have been +made in the later stages of the history of the house to adopt +improved machinery, or to reconstruct the original, antiquated +buildings. The establishment, accordingly, when it was taken over +by the city in 1876, retained virtually the same aspect as it had +worn in the seventeenth century, and remains to the present day +perhaps the best example in the world of an old-fashioned city +business house of the honest time when merchant-princes were +content to live above their office, instead of seeking solace in +smug suburban villas. The place has been preserved exactly as it +stood, and even the present attendants are correctly clad in the +sober brown garb of the servants of three hundred years since. It +is interesting, not only in itself, but as an excellent example of +how business and high culture were successfully combined under the +happier economic conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries. The Plantin-Moretus family held a high position in the +civic life of Antwerp, and mixed in the intellectual and artistic +society for which Antwerp was famed in the seventeenth century-- +the Antwerp of Rubens (though not a native) and Van Dyck, of +Jordaens, of the two Teniers, of Grayer, Zegers, and Snyders. +Printing, indeed, in those days was itself a fine art, and the +glories of the house of Plantin-Moretus rivalled those of the +later Chiswick Press, and of the goodly Chaucers edited in our own +time by Professor Skeat, and printed by William Morris. Proof- +reading was then an erudite profession, and Francois Ravelingen, +who entered Plantin's office as proof-reader in 1564, and assisted +Arias Montanus in revising the sheets of the Polyglot Bible, is +said to have been a great Greek and Oriental scholar, and crowned +a career of honourable toil, like Hogarth's Industrious +Apprentice, by marrying his master's eldest daughter, Marguerite, +in 1565. The room in which these scholars worked remains much in +its old condition, with the table at which they sat, and some of +their portraits on the wall. Everything here, in short, is +interesting: the press-room, which was used almost continuously +and practically without change--two of the antiquated presses of +Plantin's own time remain--for nearly three centuries; the Great +and Little Libraries, with their splendid collection of books; the +archive room, with its long series of business accounts and +ledgers; the private livingrooms of the Moretus family; and last, +but not least, the modest little shop, where books still repose +upon the shelves, which looks as though the salesman might return +at any moment to his place behind the counter. England has +certainly nothing like it, though London had till recently in +Crosby Hall a great merchant's house of the fifteenth century, +though stripped of all internal fittings and propriety. Luckily +this last has been re-erected at Chelsea, though robbed by the +change of site of half its authenticity and value. + +I have chosen to dwell on this strange museum at length that seems +disproportionate, not merely because of its unique character, but +because it seems to me full of lessons and reproach for an age +that has subordinated honest workmanship to cheap and shoddy +productiveness, and has sacrificed the workman to machinery. +Certainly no one who visits Antwerp can afford to overlook it; but +probably most people will first bend their steps towards the more +popular shrine of the great cathedral. Here I confess myself utter +heretic: to call this church, as I have seen it called, "one of +the grandest in Europe," seems to me pure Philistinism--the cult +of the merely big and obvious, to the disregard of delicacy and +beauty. Big it is assuredly, and superficially astonishing; but +anything more barn-like architecturally, or spiritually +unexalting, I can hardly call to memory. Outside it lacks entirely +all shadow of homogeneity; the absence of a central tower, felt +perhaps even in the great cathedrals of Picardy and the Ile de +France, just as it is felt in Westminster and in Beverley Minster, +is here actually accentuated by the hideous little cupola--I +hardly know how properly to call it--that squats, as though in +derision, above the crossing; whilst even the natural meeting and +intersection at this point of high roofs, which in itself would +rise to dignity, is wantonly neglected to make way for this +monstrosity. The church, in fact, looks, when viewed externally, +more like four separate churches than one; and when we step +inside, with all the best will in the world to make the best of +it, it is hard to find, much to admire, and anything at all to +love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long, +feeble lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of +Belgian architecture--its lack of really beautiful detail, and +its fussy superfluity of pinnacle and panelling--seems to me here +to culminate. Belgium has really beautiful churches--not merely of +the thirteenth century, when building was lovely everywhere, but +later buildings, like Mons, and St. Pierre at Louvain; but Antwerp +is not of this category. Architecturally, perhaps, the best +feature of the whole church is the lofty spire (over four hundred +feet), which curiously resembles in general outline that of the +Hotel de Ville at Brussels (three hundred and seventy feet), and +dates from about the same period (roughly the middle of the +fifteenth century). As usual in Belgium, it is quite out of scale; +it is lucky, indeed, that the corresponding south-west tower has +never been completed, for the combination of the two would be +almost overwhelming. It is curious and interesting as an example +of a tower tapering upwards to a point in a succession of +diminishing stages, in contrast with tower and spire. France has +something like it, though far more beautiful, in the thirteenth- +century tower at Senlis; but England affords no parallel. I am not +sure who invented the quite happy phrase, "Confectioner's Gothic," +but this tower at Antwerp is not badly described by it. It is +altogether too elaborate and florid, like the sugar pinnacle of a +wedding-cake. + +This cathedral of Antwerp, however, though at the time that it was +built a mere collegiate church of secular canons, and only first +exalted to cathedral rank in 1559, is one of the largest churches +in superficial area in the world, a result largely due to its +possession, uniquely, of not less than six aisles, giving it a +total breadth of one hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two +transepts respectively are the two great pictures by Rubens--the +"Elevation of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross"--that +are described at such length, and with so much critical +enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to Flanders and +Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens in 1612, +when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more +splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which +the artist has successfully ventured (what "none but great +colourists can venture") "to paint pure white linen near flesh." +His Christ, continues Sir Joshua, "I consider as one of the finest +figures that ever was invented: it is most correctly drawn, and I +apprehend in an attitude of the utmost difficulty to execute. The +hanging of the head on His shoulder, and the falling of the body +on one side, gives such an appearance of the heaviness of death, +that nothing can exceed it." Antwerp, of course, is full of +magnificent paintings by Rubens, though unfortunately the house in +which he lived in the Place de Meir (which is traversed by the +tram on its way from the Est Station to the Place Verte), which +was built by him in 1611, and in which he died in 1640, was almost +entirely rebuilt in 1703. There is another great Crucifixion by +the master in the Picture Gallery, or Palais des Beaux Arts, which +illustrates his exceptional power as well as his occasional +brutality." The centurion, with his hands on the nape of his +horse's neck, is gazing with horror at the writhings of the +impenitent thief, whose legs are being broken with an iron bar, +which has so tortured the unhappy man that in his agony he has +torn his left foot from the nail." It is questionable whether any +splendour of success can ever justify a man in thus condescending +to draw inspiration from the torture-room or shambles. + +One would gladly spend more time in this Antwerp gallery, which +exceeds, I think, in general magnificence the collections at +Brussels and Amsterdam; and gladly would one visit the great +fifteenth and sixteenth century churches of St. Jacques, St. +Andre, and St. Paul, which not merely form together +architecturally an important group of a strongly localized +character, but are also, like the cathedral, veritable museums or +picture galleries. It is necessary, however, to conclude this +section, to say a few words about Louvain, which, lying as it does +on the main route from Brussels to Liege, may naturally be +considered on our way to the northern Ardennes. + +Louvain, on the whole, has been much more modernized than other +Belgian cities of corresponding bulk, such as Bruges or Malines. +The road from the railway-station to the centre of the town is +commonplace indeed in its lack of picturesque Flemish house-fronts +or stepped, "corbie," Flemish gables. Louvain, in fact, unlike the +two "dead" cities of West Flanders and Brabant, wears a briskly +business-like aspect, and pulses with modern life. I suppose that +I ought properly to have written all this in the past tense, for +Louvain is now a heap of smoking cinders. The famous Town Hall +has, indeed, so far been spared by ruffians who would better have +spared the magnificent Cloth Hall at Ypres; between these two +great buildings, the products respectively of the Belgian genius +of the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries, "culture" could hardly +hesitate. The Hotel-de-Ville at Louvain is, indeed, an astonishing +structure, just as the cathedral at Antwerp is astonishing; but +one has to be very indulgent, or very forgetful of better models, +not to deprecate this absolutely wanton riot of overladened +panelling and bulging, top-heavy pinnacles. The expiring throes of +Belgian Gothic were a thousand degrees less chaste than the +classicism of the early Renaissance: few, perhaps, will prefer the +lacelike over-richness of this midfifteenth century town hall at +Louvain to the restraint of the charming sixteenth-century facade +of the Hotel de Ville at Leiden. Opposite the town hall is the +huge fifteenth-century church of St. Pierre, the interior of +which, still smothered in whitewash in 1910, was remarkable for +its florid Gothic rood-screen and soaring Tabernacle, or Ciborium. +The stumpy fragment of tower at the west end is said once to have +been five hundred and thirty feet high! It is not surprising to +read that this last, and crowning, manifestation of a familiar +Belgian weakness was largely wrecked by a hurricane in 1604. + + + + + +IV. + + +One has left oneself all too little space to say what ought to be +said of the Belgian Ardennes. Personally I find them a trifle +disappointing; they come, no doubt, as a welcome relief after the +rest of Belgian landscape, which I have heard described, not +altogether unjustly, as the ugliest in the world; but the true +glory and value of Belgium will always be discovered in its +marvellously picturesque old towns, and in its unrivalled wealth +of painting, brass-work, and wood-carving. Compared with these +last splendours the low, wooded wolds of the Ardennes, with their +narrow limestone valleys, seem a little thing indeed. Dinant, no +doubt, and Rochefort would be pleasant places enough if one were +not always harking back in memory to Malines and Ypres, or longing +to be once more in Ghent or Bruges. + +The traveller by railway between Brussels and Liege passes, soon +after leaving the station of Ans, a point of great significance in +the study of Belgian landscape. Hitherto from Brussels, or for +that matter from Bruges and Ostend, the country, though studded at +frequent intervals with cities and big towns, has been curiously +and intensely rural in the tracts that lie between; but now, as we +descend the steep incline into the valley of the Meuse, we enter +on a scene of industrial activity which, if never quite as bad as +our own Black Country at home, is sufficiently spoilt and +irritating to all who love rustic grace. The redeeming point, as +always, is that infinitely superior good taste which presents us, +in the midst of coal-mines and desolation, not with our own +unspeakably squalid Sheffields or Rotherhams, but with a queenly +city, with broad and handsome streets, with a wealth of public +gardens, and with many stately remnants of the Renaissance and +Middle Time. It is possible in Liege to forget--or rather +impossible to recall--the soiled and grimy country that stretches +from its gates in the direction of Seraing. Even under the sway of +the Spanish tyranny this was an independent state under the rule +of a Bishop Prince, who was also an Elector of the Holy Roman +Empire. Its original cathedral, indeed, has vanished, like those +at Cambrai and Bruges, in the insensate throes of the French +Revolution; and the existing church of St. Paul, though dating in +part from the thirteenth century, and a fine enough building in +its way, is hardly the kind of structure that one would wish to +associate with the seat of a bishopric that is still so historic, +and was formerly so important and even quasi-regal. Here, however, +you should notice, just as in the great neighbour church of St. +Jacques, the remarkable arabesque-pattern painting of the +severies of the vault, and the splendour of the sixteenth-century +glass. St. Jacques, I think, on the whole is the finer church of +the two, and remarkable for the florid ornament of its spandrels, +and for the elaborate, pendent cusping of the soffits of its +arches--features that lend it an almost barbaric magnificence that +reminds one of Rosslyn Chapel. Liege, built as it is exactly on +the edge of the Ardennes, is far the most finely situated of any +great city in Belgium. To appreciate this properly you should not +fail to climb the long flight of steps--in effect they seem +interminable, but they are really about six hundred--that mounts +endlessly from near the Cellular Prison to a point by the side of +the Citadelle Pierreuse. Looking down hence on the city, +especially under certain atmospheric conditions--I am thinking of +a showery day at Easter--one is reminded of the lines by poor John +Davidson: + + "The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm; + Clouds scattered largesses of rain; + The sounding cities, rich and warm, + Smouldered and glittered in the plain." + +It is not often that one is privileged to look down so directly, +and from so commanding a natural height, on to so vast and busy a +city--those who like this kind of comparison have styled it the +Belgian Birmingham--lying unrolled so immediately, like a map, +beneath our feet. + +From Liege, if you like, you may penetrate the Ardennes--I do not +know whether Shakespeare was thinking in "As You Like It" of this +woodland or of his own Warwickshire forest of Arden; perhaps he +thought of both--immediately by way of Spa and the valley of the +Vesdre, or by the valleys of the Ourthe and of its tributary the +Ambleve; or you may still cling for a little while to the fringe +of the Ardennes, which is also the fringe of the industrial +country, and explore the valley of the Meuse westward, past Huy +and Namur, to Dinant. Huy has a noble collegiate church of Notre +Dame, the chancel towers of which (found again as far away as +Como) are suggestive of Rhenish influence, but strikes one as +rather dusty and untidy in itself. Namur, on the contrary, we have +already noted with praise, though it has nothing of real +antiquity. The valley of the Meuse is graced everywhere at +intervals with fantastic piles of limestone cliff, and certainly, +in a proper light, is pretty; but there is far too much quarrying +and industrialism between Liege and Namur, and far too many +residential villas along the banks between Namur and Dinant, +altogether to satisfy those who have high ideals of scenery. +Wordsworth, in a prefatory note to a sonnet that was written in +1820, and at a date when these signs of industrialism were +doubtless less obtrusive, says: "The scenery on the Meuse pleases +one more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, though the river +itself is much inferior in grandeur"; but even he complains that +the scenery is "in several places disfigured by quarries, whence +stones were taken for the new fortifications." Dinant, in +particular, has an exceptionally grand cliff; but the summit is +crowned (or was) by an ugly citadel, and the base is thickly +clustered round with houses (not all, by any means, mediaeval and +beautiful) in a way that calls to mind the High Tor at Matlock +Bath. Dinant, in short, is a kind of Belgian Matlock, and appeals +as little as Matlock to the "careful student" of Nature. If at +Dinant, however, you desert the broad valley of the Meuse for the +narrow and secluded limestone glen of the Lesse, with its clear +and sparkling stream, you will sample at once a kind of scenery +that reminds you of what is best in Derbyshire, and is also best +and most characteristic in the Belgian Ardennes. The walk up the +stream from Dinant to Houyet, where the valley of the Lesse +becomes more open and less striking, is mostly made by footpath; +and the pellucid river is crossed, and recrossed, and crossed +again, by a constant succession of ferries. Sometimes the white +cliff rises directly from the water, sheer and majestic, like that +which is crowned by the romantic Chateau Walzin; sometimes it is +more broken, and rises amidst trees from a broad plinth of emerald +meadow that is interposed between its base and the windings of the +river. Sometimes we thread the exact margin of the stream, or +traverse in the open a scrap of level pasture; sometimes we +clamber steeply by a stony path along the sides of an abrupt and +densely wooded hillside, where the thicket is yellow in spring +with Anemone Ranunculoides, or starred with green Herb Paris. This +is the kind of glen scenery that is found along the courses of the +Semois, Lesse, and Ourthe, recalling, with obvious differences, +that of Monsal Dale or Dovedale, but always, perhaps, without that +subtle note of wildness that robes even the mild splendours of +Derbyshire with a suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in +short--and this is their scenic weakness--never attain to the +proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in +which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far +preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical +potholes--like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs--that +riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is +the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said +to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into +its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized of its +character and scale merely by visiting its gaping mouth at Eprave. +This is the exit of the Lesse, which, higher up the vale, at the +curious Perte de Lesse, swerves suddenly from its obvious course, +down the bright and cheerful valley, to plunge noisily through a +narrow slit in the rock-- + + "Where Alph, the sacred river, ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea." + +Rochefort, which itself has a considerable cave, is a pleasant +centre for the exploration of these subterranean marvels. +Altogether this limestone region of the Ardennes, though certainly +not remarkable for mountain or forest splendour, comes as a +somewhat welcome relief after the interminable levels and +chessboard fields of East and West Flanders, or of the provinces +of Limburgh and Antwerp. + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Beautiful Europe - Belgium, by Joseph E. 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