The Treasure Of The Church Is The Great "Crucifixion" By Van Dyck, Which Is Hung In The South Transept, But Generally Kept Covered.

To see other stately pictures you must go to the church of St. Jean, where is a splendid altar

Triptych by Rubens, the centre panel of which is the "Adoration of the Magi"; or to the fifteenth-century structure of Notre Dame au dela de la Dyle (the clumsy title is used, I suppose, for the sake of distinction from the classical Notre Dame d'Hanswyck), where Rubens' "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is sometimes considered the painter's masterpiece. It is not yet clear whether this noble picture has been destroyed in the recent bombardment. Even to those who care little for art, a stroll to these two old churches through the sleepy back-streets of Malines, with their white and sunny houses, can hardly fail to gratify.

If Malines is a backwater of the Middle Time, as somnolent or as dull (so some, I suppose, would call it) as the strange dead towns of the Zuyder Zee, or as Coggeshall or Thaxted in our own green Essex, Antwerp, at any rate, which lies only some fifteen miles or so to the north of it, is very much awake, and of aspect mostly modern, though not without some very curious and charming relics of antiquity embedded in the heart of much recent stone and mortar. Perhaps it will be well to visit one of these at once, taking the tram direct from the magnificent Gare de l'Est (no lesser epithet is just) to the Place Verte, which may be considered the real centre of the city; and making our way thence by a network of quieter back-streets to the Musee Plantin- Moretus, which is the goal of our immediate ambition. I bring you here at once, not merely because the place itself is quite unique and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes precisely that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern din and bustle of Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we listen needfully. Happy, indeed, was the inspiration that moved the city to buy this house from its last private possessor, Edward Moretus, in 1876. To step across this threshold is to step directly into the merchant atmosphere of the sixteenth century. The once great printing house of Plantin-Moretus was founded by the Frenchman, Christopher Plantin, who was born at St. Aventin, near Tours, in 1514, and began his business life as a book-binder at Rouen. In 1549 he removed to Antwerp, and was there innocently involved one night in a riot in the streets, which resulted in an injury that incapacitated him for his former trade, and necessitated his turning to some new employment. He now set up as printer, with remarkable success, and was a sufficiently important citizen at the date of his death, in 1589, to be buried in his own vault under a chapel in the Cathedral. The business passed, on his decease, to his son-in-law, Jean Moertorf, who had married his daughter, Martine, in 1570, and had Latinized his surname to Moretus in accordance with the curious custom that prevailed among scholars of the sixteenth century. Thus Servetus was really Miguel Servete, and Thomas Erastus was Thomas Lieber. The foundation of the fortunes of the house was undoubtedly its monopoly - analogous to that enjoyed by the English house of Spottiswoode, and by the two elder Universities - of printing the liturgical works - Missals, Antiphons, Psalters, Breviaries, etc. - that were used throughout the Spanish dominions. No attempt, however, seems to have been made in the later stages of the history of the house to adopt improved machinery, or to reconstruct the original, antiquated buildings. The establishment, accordingly, when it was taken over by the city in 1876, retained virtually the same aspect as it had worn in the seventeenth century, and remains to the present day perhaps the best example in the world of an old-fashioned city business house of the honest time when merchant-princes were content to live above their office, instead of seeking solace in smug suburban villas. The place has been preserved exactly as it stood, and even the present attendants are correctly clad in the sober brown garb of the servants of three hundred years since. It is interesting, not only in itself, but as an excellent example of how business and high culture were successfully combined under the happier economic conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Plantin-Moretus family held a high position in the civic life of Antwerp, and mixed in the intellectual and artistic society for which Antwerp was famed in the seventeenth century - the Antwerp of Rubens (though not a native) and Van Dyck, of Jordaens, of the two Teniers, of Grayer, Zegers, and Snyders. Printing, indeed, in those days was itself a fine art, and the glories of the house of Plantin-Moretus rivalled those of the later Chiswick Press, and of the goodly Chaucers edited in our own time by Professor Skeat, and printed by William Morris. Proof- reading was then an erudite profession, and Francois Ravelingen, who entered Plantin's office as proof-reader in 1564, and assisted Arias Montanus in revising the sheets of the Polyglot Bible, is said to have been a great Greek and Oriental scholar, and crowned a career of honourable toil, like Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, by marrying his master's eldest daughter, Marguerite, in 1565. The room in which these scholars worked remains much in its old condition, with the table at which they sat, and some of their portraits on the wall. Everything here, in short, is interesting: the press-room, which was used almost continuously and practically without change - two of the antiquated presses of Plantin's own time remain - for nearly three centuries; the Great and Little Libraries, with their splendid collection of books; the archive room, with its long series of business accounts and ledgers; the private livingrooms of the Moretus family; and last, but not least, the modest little shop, where books still repose upon the shelves, which looks as though the salesman might return at any moment to his place behind the counter.

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