Beautiful Europe - Belgium | Page 6

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