Beautiful Europe - Belgium | Page 8

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