THE FALL OF CHARLES THE BOLD--MEMLING AT BRUGES
There are few careers in history more fascinating, more spectacular,
more dramatic, than that of the last Duke of Burgundy who ruled over
Flanders--Charles the Bold. Heir to dominions that included all of
what is now Belgium and Holland, nearly a third of France, and
portions of what is now Germany, Charles was by far the most powerful
of the feudal lords of his day, surpassing the King of France, and
even the Emperor in the splendour and wealth of his court and in the
number of feudal princes and knights whom he could summon to his
standard. He not only had dreams of becoming a king himself, but was,
on one occasion, offered a crown--the Emperor Frederick III proposing
to make him King of Brabant. This he refused--a serious error, for he
could easily have extended his royal title, once legally acquired,
over the rest of his dominions.
In "all the pomp and pageantry of power," however, Charles was every
inch a king--magnificent in his hospitality, exceedingly ceremonious
and punctilious in court etiquette, and fond of showing his vast power
on every occasion. On the other hand, he was profoundly ignorant of
the fact that the real source of his wealth and strength was in the
great industrial communes of Flanders, Brabant and Liége, and the
cruelty with which he destroyed the cities of Liége and Dinant cost
him the affection and good will of all his people. His great
antagonist was Louis XI of France--also one of the most picturesque
figures in history--but the exact antithesis of Charles in almost
every respect. While Charles never received a delegation unless seated
on a throne, the loftiness and grandeur of which filled every eye,
Louis dressed plainly--often wearing the grey cloak of a pilgrim, and
almost invariably a pilgrim's hat, with a leaden image of some saint
in the hat-band. On one occasion, when he paid a visit to his subjects
in Normandy, riding in company with the gorgeous Duke of Burgundy, the
peasants exclaimed, "Is that a King of France? Why, the whole outfit,
man and horse, is not worth twenty francs!"
Charles, like his father, held his ducal court wherever he might
happen to be--both princes often carrying a lengthy train of baggage,
including even furniture and tapestries, from one castle to another.
Bruges, however, is identified with some of the most important events
of his career, and he held his court there much oftener than at the
ancestral capital of Burgundy, Dijon. During the last years of the
reign of his father, Philip the Good, Charles acted as Regent, and it
was during this period of his rule that he astonished and terrified
Europe by the ferocity with which he avenged an insult to his parents'
honour by utterly destroying the prosperous city of Dinant and
slaughtering most of its male inhabitants. On his accession to the
ducal throne, however, the great communes of Ghent, Bruges, Malines
and Brussels were able to extort from their new Duke all of the
privileges that his father had taken away during his long reign.
Charles granted these with fury in his heart, vowing openly that
before long he would humble these presumptuous burghers. Fortunately
for the liberties of the Flemish towns, their Duke's attentions were
speedily called elsewhere and he found no opportunity to carry out his
threats.
Fomented by the emissaries of Louis XI, the turbulent citizens of
Liége--already a large and prosperous manufacturing town, as advanced
in the metallurgical arts as the Flemish cities were in the textile
industries--rose in insurrection against their Bishop-Prince, an ally
of Charles. With an army of one hundred thousand feudal levies Charles
quickly suppressed this revolt. The following year Louis ventured to
place himself in Charles' power by paying him a visit at his powerful
castle of Péronne. This famous historical incident is brilliantly
described by Sir Walter Scott in _Quentin Durward_. To the king's
alarm and very extreme personal danger, the people of Liége took the
moment of this visit to rise again. Charles was furious, and, not
unjustly considering Louis to be the author of this attack on his
authority, had that monarch locked up in a room in the castle. Nor was
he placated until Louis signed a treaty still further extending the
power of the Dukes of Burgundy in France, and agreed to join Charles
in the expedition to punish his unruly subjects. This time the city
after being captured was given over to the half-savage Burgundian
soldiery to be sacked, some forty thousand of its inhabitants
perishing.
Returning to Flanders, Charles bitterly denounced the cautious policy
of the burghers in refusing to pay tax levies for his armies unless
they knew how the money was to be spent. "Heavy and hard Flemish heads
that you are," he cried to a delegation from Ghent, "you always remain
fixed in your bad opinions, but know that others are as wise as you.
You Flemings, with your hard heads, have always either despised or
hated your princes. I prefer being hated to being despised. Take care
to attempt nothing against my highness and lordship, for I am powerful
enough to resist you. It would be the story of the iron and the
earthen pots."
Presently Louis, repudiating the recent treaty as being extorted by
force, invaded Charles' dominions and captured several cities on the
Somme. Charles sought to retake them and was repulsed both at Amiens
and Beauvais, the defenders at the latter place being urged to
stronger resistance by Jeanne Hachette, one of the heroic figures of
French history. Charles now turned his attention to the German side of
his dominions, and here also the implacable enmity of Louis stirred up
enemies for him in every direction. In Alsace the people rose in
revolt and slew the cruel governor Charles had set over them, while
the Swiss defeated the Marshal of Burgundy. Charles set forth to
re-establish his authority with an army of thirty thousand men, the
flower of his feudal levies. The Swiss, alarmed, sued for peace,
assuring the powerful Duke that there was more gold in the spurs and
bridles of his horsemen than could be found in all of Switzerland.
Charles, however, was bent on punishing these impudent mountaineers
and ordered the invasion of their country. The defenders of the little
fortress of Granson surrendered on the approach of his army, but in
flagrant violation of the terms he had just granted the Duke of
Burgundy ordered the entire garrison to be hanged. This act was
speedily avenged, for the Swiss a few days later utterly routed the
Burgundian forces just outside of Granson. The mountaineers in this
battle advanced in a solid phalanx against which Charles' horsemen and
archers could make no impression. The blow to the pride and prestige
of the Duke was far more serious than the loss of the engagement and
the scattering of his army. With great difficulty he raised fresh
levies, the Flemish communes granting aid only on condition that no
further subsidies should be demanded for six years to come. The battle
of Granson took place March 2, 1476. By June he had raised another
and a larger army, and on the 22nd met the Swiss again at Morat. On
reviewing his host before the battle, Charles is said to have
exclaimed, "By St. George, we shall now have vengeance!" but the
vengeance was not to be always on one side, for the Swiss, making
their battle-cry "Granson! Granson!" in remembrance of their
countrymen, whom Charles had treacherously slain, almost annihilated
his army. The Swiss showed no mercy and took no prisoners, while the
number of killed on the Burgundian side amounted to eighteen thousand.
Charles escaped with his life, accompanied by a small body of his
knights.
For a time it seemed as if his rage and despair at these two defeats
would cause the proud Duke to lose his reason, nor could his threats
or entreaties secure more assistance from Flanders. He managed,
however, to keep the field, and with a small force sat down to besiege
Nancy--which had been lost to him again after Morat. The town held out
stubbornly, as all towns did, now that Charles' cruelty and treachery
to those who surrendered were known, and the Burgundian forces
suffered much hardship from the cold, for it was now mid-winter. On
January 5th Charles gave battle to an advancing force of Swiss, was
again crushed and the greater part of his little army killed. After
the battle the Duke could not be found, and no man knew what had
become of him. The following day a page reported that he had seen his
master fall, and could find the place. He led the searchers to a
little pond called the Etang de St. Jean. Here, by the border of a
little stream, they found a dozen despoiled bodies, naked and frozen
in the mud and ice. One by one they turned these over. "Alas," said
the little page presently, "here is my good master!" Disfigured, with
two fearful death wounds, and with part of his face eaten by wolves,
it was indeed the body of the great Duke.
Even his enemies did honour to the dead prince. Clothed in a robe of
white satin, with a crimson satin mantle, his body was borne in state
into the town he had vainly sought to conquer, and placed in a velvet
bed under a canopy of black satin. His remains were interred in the
church of St. George at Nancy, where they remained for more than fifty
years. The Emperor, Charles V, then had them brought to Bruges and
placed in the church of St. Donatian. His son, Philip II, removed
them, five years later, to the wonderful shrine in the Church of
Notre Dame where they remained until the French Revolution, when they
were scattered to the winds as the bones of a tyrant. The sarcophagus,
however, of the Duke and his gentle daughter, Marie, still remain, as
we have seen, and are among the finest in existence.
The death of the powerful Duke of Burgundy made a profound impression
throughout Europe, and still remains, as Mr. Boulger in his admirable
_History of Belgium_ says, "one of the tragedies of all history." His
downfall was mainly due to the implacable hostility of Louis XI, whom
he had once publicly humiliated at Péronne and affected at all times
to despise. Many of the Swiss and Germans who fought against him in
his last fatal campaign were hired mercenaries in the pay of the King
of France, while some of his most trusted followers and advisers were
traitors in constant correspondence with his wily and unscrupulous
antagonist. Had Charles sought to conciliate his great Flemish
communes instead of intimidate them his reign might have been
prolonged by their powerful aid, and his dream of establishing a
kingdom of Burgundy have been realised. As it was, he failed signally
in most of his undertakings, and with all his fury and vainglory and
cruelty lost in ten years the huge power that his father had taken
fifty years to accumulate.
Marie, Charles' only daughter, was left by his sudden and unexpected
death "the greatest heiress in Christendom," but also well-nigh
helpless to rule over or even hold her widespread dominions. To
prevent the King of France from taking advantage of this situation her
Flemish counsellors advised her to accept an offer of marriage from
Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick III, and in August of the
same year that saw the battle of Granson they were quietly married at
Bruges. This event made Flanders a still smaller unit than before in a
vast aggregation of states that in the course of events was being
combined under the rule of the House of Hapsburg, nor did Marie's
untimely death, less than five years later, in any wise delay the
process of consolidation.
Bruges, during the stormy reign of Charles the Bold and the quarter of
a century of anxiety and troubles for its burghers that followed after
the battle of Nancy, was steadily losing its population and material
prosperity, and, at the same time, acquiring its greatest claim to
fame--for it was between the year 1462 and 1491 that Memling, the
foremost of the early Flemish painters, executed the wonderful series
of masterpieces that have come down to us. And it is to Bruges that
the student of art must come to see the famous Fleming at his best,
for there are more of his important works here than in all the rest of
the world put together.
In common with many others in the early Gothic school very little is
known of the early life of Hans Memling, but the recent discovery in
an old manuscript of a note stating that he was born at or near
Mayence gives a most interesting clue both as to his birthplace and
the origin of his name. In the Rhineland district near Mayence there
is a small tributary to the great river called Memling, and a village
named Memlingen. It is probable, therefore, that--just as the brothers
Van Eyck called themselves Hubert and Jean of Eyck--so their most
famous successor called himself Hans of Memling. For lack of authentic
details regarding his early career legend has supplied a most
interesting history--that he was wild and dissolute in his younger
days, was wounded while fighting with Charles the Bold at Nancy,
dragged himself to the door of the hospital of St. Jean at Bruges, and
was there tenderly nursed back to health and strength, in gratitude
for which he painted for the kind sisters the little gallery of fine
works that are still preserved in the original chapter house of the
institution. All of this romance, and that of his love for one of the
sisters, makes a charming background for many of the accounts of his
life and work, but the painstaking scholarship of modern days has
shown that at the time when he was supposed to be lying wounded and
destitute at the hospital he was in fact very prosperous, having
lately bought the house in which he lived and his name appearing as
one of the leading citizens of whom the commune had borrowed money. It
is perhaps pleasanter on the whole to think of the artist as rich and
honoured instead of at the other extreme of the social scale--but the
legend is, after all, so much more romantic that we cannot give it up
without regret.
At Bruges the first spot for the admirer of Memling to visit is, of
course, the hospital of St. Jean, and at the hospital the first thing
to see is the world-famous shrine of St. Ursula. Little it is, yet
beyond price in value. It was constructed as a casket to contain the
relics of the Saint and was completed in 1489. In design it is a
miniature Gothic chapel two feet ten inches high and three feet
long, with three little panels on each side which contain Memling's
famous pictures setting forth the life and martyrdom of the Saint and
the eleven thousand other virgins who shared her fate. The story of
the famous pilgrimage to Rome and its melancholy ending at Cologne has
been told so often that it need not be repeated here. Ask one of the
sisters to tell it to you in her charming broken French--for they are
Flemish, these sweet-faced sisters, and, as a rule, understand neither
French nor English.
[Illustration: SHRINE OF ST. URSULA, HOSPITAL OF ST. JEAN, BRUGES.]
This fact is said to have served them in good stead on the terrible
day when the bandit-soldiery of the French Republic clamoured at the
doors of the hospital in 1494. "The shrine! the shrine!" they cried,
"give us the shrine!" ("_La châsse, la châsse, donnez nous la
châsse!_") The nuns, who had never heard it called by that name, but
knew it only by its Flemish name of _Ryve_, replied that they did not
possess such a thing as a _châsse_, and their voices and expressions
so clearly showed their truthfulness and innocence of any deceit that
the rabble of soldiers went away and the shrine was saved. Early in
the nineteenth century the Mother Superior refused a most tempting
offer to purchase the shrine, replying, "We are poor, but the
greatest riches in the world would not tempt us to part with it."
While the paintings on the shrine are the most famous of Memling's
works, they are not regarded by the critics as being his best. As Mr.
Rooses expresses it, "The artist seems to have been less intent on
perfection of detail for each figure than on the marvellous polychromy
of the whole." The hospital of St. Jean possesses three of the
master's greatest works--two triptychs entitled "The Marriage of St.
Catherine" and "The Adoration of the Magi," and the diptych
representing the Madonna and Martin Van Nieuwenhove. The museum at
Bruges contains still another masterpiece, a picture showing in the
centre St. Christopher, St. Maurus and St. Giles--the first bearing
the Infant Christ upon his shoulders--while the two shutters contain
the usual portraits of the donors. One of Memling's most important
works was a picture of "The Last Judgment" which was painted for an
Italian, Jacopo Tani, and placed on board ship to be sent to Florence
by sea. The ship was captured by privateers in the English Channel,
and as its owners were citizens of Dantzig it was presented by them to
the Church of Our Lady in that city, where it still remains. There
are several admirable works by this master at the museums of Brussels
and Antwerp, while others are scattered throughout Europe, and one
particularly fine example of his art was brought to America by the
late Benjamin Altman and now hangs in the Altman collection at the
Metropolitan Museum at New York.
While the chief interest to the visitor at the hospital of St. Jean is
the remarkable collection of works by Memling, the old buildings
themselves merit more than a casual glance. Some of them date from the
twelfth century, and the view looking back at the ancient waterfront
from the bridge by which the rue St. Catherine here crosses the river
is particularly picturesque. The old brick structures go down to the
very water's edge, and sometimes below it, and the entire pile from
this side must look much as it did in Memling's day.
Another artist whose work sheds lustre on the old town of Bruges was
Gheerhardt David. For nearly four centuries his name and even his very
existence were forgotten, his paintings being attributed to
Memling--in itself a high evidence of their merit. Recent studies by
James Weale and other scholars have given us quite a complete life of
this artist, who lived between 1460 and 1523, and a number of his
works have been identified. All of these seem to have been painted at
Bruges, and some of the more notable ones still remain there. The
municipal authorities commissioned him to paint two great pictures
representing notable examples of justice such as Van der Weyden had
done for the Hotel de Ville at Brussels. These depict the flaying
alive of the unjust Judge Sisamnes by Cambyses, King of Persia, and
are still preserved in the museum at Bruges. The museum also possesses
another masterpiece by this artist, "The Baptism of Christ." Others
that have been identified through painstaking study of the old
archives of the city and contemporary sources are located in the
National Gallery at London and in the museum of Rouen.
The prosperity of Bruges was declining very fast while David was
painting the last of his religious pictures and the merchants were
steadily leaving the city for Antwerp, which was now rising into
importance. The artists, whose prosperity depended upon the wealth of
the burghers were also drifting to the new commercial metropolis on
the Scheldt and the famous school of Bruges was near its end by the
middle of the sixteenth century. The last artists who worked at
Bruges were of minor interest. Adriaen Ysenbrant, Albert Cornelis and
Jean Prévost belong to this period, and their most important works are
still preserved in the city where they were executed. "The Virgin of
the Seven Sorrows," in the church of Notre Dame, is attributed to the
first, a triptych in the church of St. Jacques to the second, while
the museum has several pictures by Prévost, including an interesting
"Last Judgment," and another striking representation of the same
subject by Pieter Pourbus, of which there is a copy in the Palais du
Franc. The masterpieces by Jean Van Eyck in this museum have already
been mentioned, and the small but exceedingly rich collection also
includes a fine production entitled "The Death of the Virgin," which
is now generally attributed to Hugo Van der Goes--one of the
comparatively few works by that master that have come down to us.
There are also several other works by P. Pourbus, and a powerful
allegorical picture by Jean Prévost representing Avarice and Death.
There is undoubtedly no collection of paintings in the world of which
the average value is so great as that of the little group in the
hospital of St. Jean, and the one in the Bruges museum--while it has
quite a few of minor interest and value--would also bring a very high
average if subjected to the bidding of the world's millionaire art
lovers.
[Illustration: _An Illumination by Gheerhardt David of Bruges, 1498;
St. Barbara_]
Bruges possesses another museum of great interest which dates from the
days of the last Dukes of Burgundy. This is the Gruuthuise mansion, of
which the oldest wing was built in 1420, and much of the finer portion
about 1470 by Louis, or Lodewyk, Van der Gruuthuise, who here
entertained Charles the Bold and his pretty daughter--becoming one of
the latter's chief advisers on the death of her father and one of the
two Flemish noblemen who witnessed her marriage. The stately old
palace is therefore rich with historic associations. As we entered its
broad courtyard, however, we were most unfavourably impressed by its
rough-paved surface with the grass growing thick between the stones.
Surely this must have looked very different in the days when knights
and fair ladies swarmed here like bees, and the city, which has so
carefully restored everything else, would do well to at least park
this otherwise very pretty little enclosure. The interior is both
pleasing and disappointing. The edifice itself is superb as a survival
of a nobleman's palace of the fifteenth century, and as an example of
Flemish interior architecture. The grand stone staircase, the massive
fireplaces, also in white stone, and one or two of the rooms in their
entirety give a fine impression of the splendour of the establishment
maintained by the great Lord of Gruuthuise in the days when he counted
King Edward IV of England and Richard Crookback among his guests, and
was engaged in collecting the marvellous library now in Paris.
Everywhere, over the fireplaces, and in various stone carvings, one
reads the proud motto of the powerful builders of this palace, _Plus
est en nous_.
When the palace was in course of restoration some years ago the
workmen uncovered a secret chamber behind the great stone fireplace in
the kitchen, concealed within the masonry of the huge chimney, and
within it the skeleton of a man. A secret staircase was also
discovered here which led to two underground passages branching off in
opposite directions. Strangely enough neither of them has ever been
explored, but one is supposed to lead to the vaults beneath the
adjoining church of Notre Dame, and the other to some point outside
the city walls. Some have conjectured that it leads to the Château of
Maele, some four miles distant, but probably it went to the manor of
the Lords of Gruuthuise at Oostcamp. Within this mansion a modern Sir
Walter Scott could easily conjure forth a new series of Waverley
novels treating of the stirring days when Bruges was virtually the
capital of Flanders and Flanders was the brightest jewel in the
Burgundian crown.
All this is most fascinating, and, as far as it goes, helps us to
reconstruct in fancy the great days of the past. The disappointing
feature about the palace is the museum itself, which, although
interesting and valuable, utterly spoils many of the fine rooms by
converting them into mere exhibition places. In a measure the
authorities have followed the admirable plan of the owners of the
Hotel Merghelynck at Ypres, and the immense kitchen, for example,
contains only kitchen utensils of the Middle Ages--a most complete and
interesting collection. The same is also true of the large dining-room
on the same floor, but as one proceeds farther the atmosphere of
antiquity becomes lost and it is all nothing but museum. The palace
contains a splendid collection of old lace, the gift of the Baroness
Liedts, but it seemed to us that it would have been much better to
have housed this and the various collections of antiquities in some
less famous and historic structure and endeavoured to restore all of
these rooms to approximately their condition when Charles the Bold
stalked through them.
The period of Philip the Good and his terrible son was the one in
which mediæval Bruges took on substantially its present form. In
addition to the Gruuthuise Palace scores of important edifices, public
and private, were built or rebuilt at this time, while hundreds of
smaller houses were constructed--of which many remain in existence
to-day. The greatest and most famous edifice dating in large part from
this epoch is the cathedral of St. Sauveur whose grim, castle-like
tower dominates the entire city. The lowest part of the tower dates
from 1116-1127--as already related in the chapter on Bruges under
Charles the Good--when the church was rebuilt after a fire that
destroyed the primitive structure erected on the site a century or
more earlier. Between 1250 and 1346, or for almost a century, the men
of Bruges were slowly piling up a noble church in the early Gothic
style, but another fire in 1358 necessitated rebuilding the nave and
transept--a task which occupied the next ten or fifteen years. In 1480
work was begun upon the five chapels of the choir and nine years later
the Pope, Innocent VIII, granted a special Bull of Indulgence in
favour of benefactors of this work, which appears to have been delayed
for lack of funds. Work of various kinds was continued until the
middle of the sixteenth century, but, in the main, the great church
was nearly as we see it now by the year 1511. The upper part of the
tower is comparatively modern, dating from 1846, and the spire from
1871. While it has been criticised by some as ungainly and cumbrous,
the effect of this tower, from whatever angle it may be viewed, is
very pleasing. The high lights and shadows on a sunny morning, or late
in the afternoon, make it far more beautiful than its sister of Notre
Dame, while against the grey cloud masses of a typical Flemish sky its
huge tawny mass stands out sharp and clear, the embodiment of majesty
and strength.
The interior of the church is very large, measuring three hundred and
thirty-one feet by one hundred and twenty-five feet, with an extreme
width of one hundred and seventy-four feet across the transepts. Its
polychrome decorations and stained glass windows are modern. In
another place the wealth of art treasures in this church would merit a
chapter, but in Bruges they are so overshadowed by the many
masterpieces to be seen elsewhere that we felt somewhat satiated
after such a feast and spent very little time looking at the pictures
here. The most famous one is a "Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus," by
Dierick Bouts, which is interesting because so few examples of this
primitive master are in existence. It is a triptych, the central panel
showing the saint about to be torn to pieces by wild horses, on the
left an incident in the life of the saint, and on the right the
donors. The last picture has been attributed by many critics to Hugo
Van der Goes, and for many years the entire picture was thought to be
the work of Memling. Bouts delighted in unpleasant subjects, which he
depicted with great realism.
[Illustration: "THE LAST SUPPER."--THIERRY BOUTS.]
Dierick, or Thierry, Bouts settled at Louvain about the middle of the
fifteenth century. Beyond the fact that he came from Haarlem nothing
is known of his early life and training, but as Van der Weyden of
Tournai had done some important work at Louvain it is likely that
Bouts may have derived some of his inspiration from studying the
methods of that master. He was a contemporary of Memling. Two of his
paintings, "The Last Supper" and the gruesome "Martyrdom of St.
Erasmus," were executed for the wealthy brotherhood of the Holy
Sacrament and were hung in the church of St. Peter.[2] Bouts became
the official painter for the city of Louvain and produced a "Last
Judgment" for the hall of the échevins which has since been lost, and
two panels for the council-room of the Hotel de Ville representing
"The Judgment of Otho." These are now in the museum at Brussels. The
Queen having accused an earl of offending her honour, the latter is
decapitated. The head is then given to his Countess, together with a
glowing bar of iron. In the second panel she is shown triumphantly
holding both, the hot iron refusing to burn her and thereby
vindicating her husband's innocence. The result of the ordeal is shown
in the distance where the false Queen is being executed at the stake.
These pictures were ordered, in imitation of those painted by Van der
Weyden for the Hotel de Ville at Brussels, as part of a series of
panels designed to instill the love of virtue and justice into the
minds of the magistrates and people. The artist's death prevented his
completing two other panels that the archives of Louvain show had been
ordered. Besides this "Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus" a comparatively
small number of other works from his brush are listed in the
catalogues of various European museums.
[Footnote 2: They were probably destroyed during the burning of
Louvain by the Germans.]
Of the other structures in Bruges of to-day there are a score that
merit a visit from those who are interested in the city's splendid
past, and that date for the most part from the last years of the
Burgundian period. In the rue des Aiguilles there still exists a
fragment of the Hotel Bladelin, the town house of Peter Bladelin, who
was for many years Controller-General of Finance, Treasurer of the
Order of the Golden Fleece, and the trusted agent of the Dukes in all
manner of business and private affairs. Peter subsequently built the
town of Middleburg, for the church in which Van der Weyden painted one
of his most famous pictures. The Ghistelhof in the same street also
dates from this epoch, and was built by the Lords of Ghistelle. Then
there is the Hotel d'Adornes and the church of Jerusalem, which was
formerly the private chapel of the rich brothers Anselm and John
Adornes. There is still a fine mediæval atmosphere lingering about
this group of buildings, although much altered from what they were in
their prime. The church itself is most curious, and beneath the choir
is a crypt that leads to a reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre, said to
be a facsimile of the one in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea. It
would take a volume to cite all of the fine old structures of which
traces still exist in this, the most picturesque of all the Flemish
cities. The reader who desires to find them all cannot do better than
to take Ernest Gilliat-Smith's brilliant _Story of Bruges_ with him
and look for them, one by one. For those who cannot devote a week or
more to this delightful task a quicker way to see the Bruges of
Charles the Bold is to stroll slowly along the Quai Vert, the Quai des
Marbriers and the Quai du Rosaire and let the beautiful vistas of the
Vieux Bourg with its quaint red roofs and noble towers become engraved
upon the memory, for here, more completely than anywhere else, one can
see the Bruges of the past much as it looked in the day of its
greatest splendour when it was about to sink into its long sleep.
Thus far Bruges has not suffered seriously from the war, and it is
profoundly to be hoped that no bombardment such as crumbled its fair
neighbour Termonde into utter ruin will create similar havoc amid
these indescribably beautiful scenes. A few hours would suffice to
destroy artistic and architectural treasures of a value that would
make the destruction of Louvain seem of little consequence in
comparison.
[Illustration: QUAI VERT, BRUGES.]