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 XI. of France, in
the pages of "Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, the
wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by
being thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482. These two
tombs are of capital interest to those who are students of Belgian
history, for Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of
Burgundy, and it was by the marriage of his daughter that the
Netherlands passed to the House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately
fell under the flail of religious persecution during the rule of
her grandson, Spanish Philip.
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