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+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: 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
+
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