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.
GHENT AND ANTWERP
What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memory recall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, though one thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its merchants were princes.On the shabby old belfry-tower is the gilt dragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumph from Bruges.It was originally fetched from a Greek church in Constantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall to us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East traded up the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of India and Persia.The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers together on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower.What fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuries ago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square of old-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen hundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds of fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires of the Inquisition.Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery, used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,--a hammered-iron hooped affair, eighteen feet long.But why mention this, or the magnificent town hall, or St.Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to put you back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclasts sacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?
Up to Antwerp toward evening.All the country flat as the flattest part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals, picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in rows.It has been all day hot and dusty.The country everywhere seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is sharply defined against the red western sky.
Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, very strongly.It is still the home of wealth.It has stately buildings, splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charms more than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.
It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which the broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of the unstable state of Europe.While Berlin is only a vast camp of soldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call its muster-roll.From the tower here one looks upon the cockpit of Europe.And yet Antwerp ought to have rest: she has had tumult enough in her time.Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old, comparative splendor can never come back.In the sixteenth century there was no richer city in Europe.
We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in the richest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into an exquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.