They have not yet found out the secret in France of banishing dust from
railway-carriages. Paris, late in June, was hot, but not dusty: the
country was both. There is an uninteresting glare and hardness in
a French landscape on a sunny day. The soil is thin, the trees are
slender, and one sees not much luxury or comfort. Still, one does
not usually see much of either on a flying train. We spent a night at
Amiens, and had several hours for the old cathedral, the sunset light
on its noble front and towers and spire and flying buttresses, and the
morning rays bathing its rich stone. As one stands near it in front,
it seems to tower away into heaven, a mass of carving and
sculpture,--figures of saints and martyrs who have stood in the sun and
storm for ages, as they stood in their lifetime, with a patient waiting.
It was like a great company, a Christian host, in attitudes of praise
and worship. There they were, ranks on ranks, silent in stone, when
the last of the long twilight illumined them; and there in the same
impressive patience they waited the golden day. It required little fancy
to feel that they had lived, and now in long procession came down the
ages. The central portal is lofty, wide, and crowded with figures. The
side is only less rich than the front. Here the old Gothic builders let
their fancy riot in grotesque gargoyles,--figures of animals, and imps
of sin, which stretch out their long necks for waterspouts above. From
the ground to the top of the unfinished towers is one mass of rich
stone-work, the creation of genius that hundreds of years ago knew no
other way to write its poems than with the chisel. The interior is very
magnificent also, and has some splendid stained glass. At eight o'clock,
the priests were chanting vespers to a larger congregation than many
churches have on Sunday: their voices were rich and musical, and, joined
with the organ notes, floated sweetly and impressively through the dim
and vast interior. We sat near the great portal, and, looking down the
long, arched nave and choir to the cluster of candles burning on the
high altar, before which the priests chanted, one could not but remember
how many centuries the same act of worship had been almost uninterrupted
within, while the apostles and martyrs stood without, keeping watch of
the unchanging heavens.
When I stepped in, early in the morning, the first mass was in progress.
The church was nearly empty. Looking within the choir, I saw two stout
young priests lustily singing the prayers in deep, rich voices. One
of them leaned back in his seat, and sang away, as if he had taken
a contract to do it, using, from time to time, an enormous red
handkerchief, with which and his nose he produced a trumpet obligato. As
I stood there, a poor dwarf bobbled in and knelt on the bare stones, and
was the only worshiper, until, at length, a half-dozen priests swept
in from the sacristy, and two processions of young school-girls entered
from either side. They have the skull of John the Baptist in this
cathedral. I did not see it, although I suppose I could have done so for
a franc to the beadle: but I saw a very good stone imitation of it; and
his image and story fill the church. It is something to have seen the
place that contains his skull.
The country becomes more interesting as one gets into Belgium. Windmills
are frequent: in and near Lille are some six hundred of them; and they
are a great help to a landscape that wants fine trees. At Courtrai,
we looked into Notre Dame, a thirteenth century cathedral, which has a
Vandyke (“The Raising of the Cross”), and the chapel of the Counts
of Flanders, where workmen were uncovering some frescoes that were
whitewashed over in the war-times. The town hall has two fine old
chimney-pieces carved in wood, with quaint figures,--work that one must
go to the Netherlands to see. Toward evening we came into the ancient
town of Bruges. The country all day has been mostly flat, but thoroughly
cultivated. Windmills appear to do all the labor of the people,--raising
the water, grinding the grain, sawing the lumber; and they everywhere
lift their long arms up to the sky. Things look more and more what we
call “foreign.” Harvest is going on, of hay and grain; and men and women
work together in the fields. The gentle sex has its rights here. We saw
several women acting as switch-tenders. Perhaps the use of the switch
comes natural to them. Justice, however, is still in the hands of the
men. We saw a Dutch court in session in a little room in the town hall
at Courtrai. The justice wore a little red cap, and sat informally
behind a cheap table. I noticed that the witnesses were treated with
unusual consideration, being allowed to sit down at the table opposite
the little justice, who interrogated them in a loud voice. At the
stations to-day we see more friars in coarse, woolen dresses, and
sandals, and the peasants with wooden sabots.
As the sun goes to the horizon, we have an effect sometimes produced
by the best Dutch artists,--a wonderful transparent light, in which the
landscape looks like a picture, with its church-spires of stone, its
windmills, its slender trees, and red-roofed houses. It is a good light
and a good hour in which to enter Bruges, that city of the past. Once
the city was greater than Antwerp; and up the Rege came the commerce of
the East, merchants from the Levant, traders in jewels and silks. Now
the tall houses wait for tenants, and the streets have a deserted
air. After nightfall, as we walked in the middle of the roughly paved
streets, meeting few people, and hearing only the echoing clatter of the
wooden sabots of the few who were abroad, the old spirit of the place
came over us. We sat on a bench in the market-place, a treeless square,
hemmed in by quaint, gabled houses, late in the evening, to listen to
the chimes from the belfry. The tower is less than four hundred feet
high, and not so high by some seventy feet as the one on Notre Dame near
by; but it is very picturesque, in spite of the fact that it springs out
of a rummagy-looking edifice, one half of which is devoted to soldiers'
barracks, and the other to markets. The chimes are called the finest in
Europe. It is well to hear the finest at once, and so have done with the
tedious things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes as the Dutch are of
stagnant water. We heard them everywhere in Belgium; and in some towns
they are incessant, jangling every seven and a half minutes. The chimes
at Bruges ring every quarter hour for a minute, and at the full hour
attempt a tune. The revolving machinery grinds out the tune, which is
changed at least once a year; and on Sundays a musician, chosen by the
town, plays the chimes. In so many bells (there are forty-eight),
the least of which weighs twelve pounds, and the largest over eleven
thousand, there must be soft notes and sonorous tones; so sweet jangled
sounds were showered down: but we liked better than the confused chiming
the solemn notes of the great bell striking the hour. There is something
very poetical about this chime of bells high in the air, flinging down
upon the hum and traffic of the city its oft-repeated benediction of
peace; but anybody but a Lowlander would get very weary of it. These
chimes, to be sure, are better than those in London, which became a
nuisance; but there is in all of them a tinkling attempt at a tune,
which always fails, that is very annoying.
Bruges has altogether an odd flavor. Piles of wooden sabots are for sale
in front of the shops; and this ugly shoe, which is mysteriously kept on
the foot, is worn by all the common sort. We see long, slender carts in
the street, with one horse hitched far ahead with rope traces, and no
thills or pole.
The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks of black cloth with a
silk hood thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for its beautiful women,
who are enticingly described as always walking the streets with covered
faces, and peeping out from their mantles. They are not so handsome
now they show their faces, I can testify. Indeed, if there is in Bruges
another besides the beautiful girl who showed us the old council-chamber
in the Palace of justice, she must have had her hood pulled over her
face.
Next morning was market-day. The square was lively with carts, donkeys,
and country people, and that and all the streets leading to it were
filled with the women in black cloaks, who flitted about as numerous as
the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, moving in a winged
way, their cloaks outspread as they walked, and distended with the
market-basket underneath. Though the streets were full, the town did not
seem any less deserted; and the early marketers had only come to life
for a day, revisiting the places that once they thronged. In the shade
of the tall houses in the narrow streets sat red-cheeked girls and women
making lace, the bobbins jumping under their nimble fingers. At the
church doors hideous beggars crouched and whined,--specimens of the
fifteen thousand paupers of Bruges. In the fishmarket we saw odd old
women, with Rembrandt colors in faces and costume; and while we strayed
about in the strange city, all the time from the lofty tower the chimes
fell down. What history crowds upon us! Here in the old cathedral,
with its monstrous tower of brick, a portion of it as old as the tenth
century, Philip the Good established, in 1429, the Order of the Golden
Fleece, the last chapter of which was held by Philip the Bad in 1559, in
the rich old Cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Here, on the square, is
the site of the house where the Emperor Maximilian was imprisoned by
his rebellious Flemings; and next it, with a carved lion, that in which
Charles II. of England lived after the martyrdom of that patient and
virtuous ruler, whom the English Prayerbook calls that “blessed martyr,
Charles the First.” In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charles the Bold and
Mary his daughter.
We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. Here died Jan van
Eyck, the father of oil painting; and here, in the hospital of St. John,
are the most celebrated pictures of Hans Memling. The most exquisite in
color and finish is the series painted on the casket made to contain the
arm of St. Ursula, and representing the story of her martyrdom. You
know she went on a pilgrimage to Rome, with her lover, Conan, and
eleven thousand virgins; and, on their return to Cologne, they were all
massacred by the Huns. One would scarcely believe the story, if he did
not see all their bones at Cologne.