Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

three might be accommodated by a skilful management of the door and the corners. Everything in it was on the smallest practicable scale, but wonderfully complete. Two little tables covered with baize; a grand glass case on one of them containing figures in wax, artificial flowers, and similar spruce specimens of innocent finery which we did not care particularly to examine, and on the other a handsome glass bowl, in which were gambolling about the sprightliest of gold and silver fish. In a cage in the window, bounding madly up and down from perch to perch, was a bright canary that the Beguin assured us sang charmingly, regretting that the bird just then happened to be losing its feathers, which spoiled its music. Several little prints in black and gilt frames hung upon the walls, exclusively religious subjects, such as miracles and martyrdoms, and portraits of popes and confessors, some of them painted in colours, with very blue skies, very red faces, and robes of bright amber, crimson, and green. Dwarf Crucifixions, Virgins, and Ascensions cut out in paper, or carved in wood, or made of wax, and dressed out with bits of ribbon, lace and tinfoil were pinned about in every available nook; and the room altogether looked delightfully clean and cosy, with its nice warm matting, its cheerful curtains, and an English stove. Instead of being gloomy or mean, it had a light and pleasant air, for which it was materially indebted to some creeping plants which dropped into gay festoons outside the window. Close at hand was the kitchen, furnished with an excellent range, and all other necessary means of comfort, constructed on a scale to suit the limited demands of the ménage.

The lives of these nuns, notwithstanding their seclusion, or rather in consequence of it, pass away in a course of uninterrupted tranquillity. The exemption from common cares and distractions, the consciousness of always performing strictly the routine of duties and obligations marked out for them, and the ready resource in the confessional (to which they resort weekly) of acquiring renewed motives for vanquishing any flitting weaknesses or misgivings which may disturb them-all help to render them contented and cheerful, to keep their days in an "even tenor," and to revive their strength in moments of failure and despondency. They rise at half-past four, and go to bed at nine. The intervening hours are engrossed in prayer and good works. Absolved from their relations with society, and having no sorrows of their own, they devote themselves to the alleviation of the sorrows of others. They listen daily to histories of woe and crime; they pity and advise; help the distressed, soothe the afflicted, and watch by the bed-side of the sick and dying. Whatever we may think of some of their articles of faith, their pictures, images, reliques, and penances, we cannot deny that their lives are pure and useful. Their order is peculiar in this respect, that the obligations they undertake are entirely voluntary, and may be relinquished at pleasure. The Beguin may return to the world whenever she chooses, without violating a single vow, or even incurring a reproach. But it is the boast of the sisterhood that no Beguin has ever yet availed herself of the privilege, although the institution has been in existence on this spot upwards of six hundred years.

Our Englishwoman told us her whole story. She embraced the conventual life against the entreaties of her family. She had literally

fallen in love with it, and the impulse was too strong to be resisted. After having spent six years within the walls of the convent, where the observances are strict and austere, she was permitted to come out and live in one of the houses, where, in her domestic habits, she was as much her own mistress as if she lived in the town. The regulations of these houses are so liberal that a sister is allowed to have a female relative to reside with her as a companion. Two or three sisters generally live together, but they are perfectly independent of each other, and may form a mess, or keep to their separate apartments if they please. If a Beguin (as we were happy to discover was the case with our cordial friend) happens to possess any private property, she is at liberty to spend it in any way she thinks proper. She may live as luxuriously as she chooses, within the dietary rules of the church, or she may live with rigid economy, and give away her money. In a community of this kind, however, where a sentiment of active piety is paramount over all personal considerations, none will be found to run into any indulgences beyond mere comfort in living; but as there are great differences in the circumstance of the Beguins, some being comparatively rich, and some miserably poor, great differences exist in their dwellings and modes of life. The poor Beguins are allowed to recruit their finances by menial labours; they go out to attend the sick, and are permitted to receive trifling gratuities as nurses; they wash, and get up lace, and otherwise employ their leisure as advantageously as they can. Our Beguin, fortunately, was above all necessity of that sort. She kept her own servant, and evidently enjoyed all the ease and independence consistent with the meekness and charities of her profession.

But to resume her story. After having been many years in the Beguinage, she felt a strong desire to see her friends in England. The regularity with which she had fulfilled her duties appeared to the Supérieure to entitle her to some indulgence, and, as the Beguins are occasionally suffered to go amongst their friends, she was allowed three weeks to pay her anxious visit to England. But the Supérieure prescribed, as a strict condition, that for that period she should lay aside her Beguin dress, and appear in the ordinary costume. This would have been a great trouble to her, had she not been commanded by the Supérieure to abandon her beloved habit; and she submitted to the penalty with implicit obedience, but not without many a secret pang. The next embarrassment of the good Beguin was how to get to England. She could not travel alone. What was to be done? Luckily there was a poor Englishwoman living in Ghent, who had an earnest wish to revisit her native country, but who had not the means of defraying the costs of the journey. The Beguin gladly undertook to pay her expenses, and they travelled together. In twelve hours they reached London, where they separated, the Beguin for Birmingham and the poor woman for some place in the suburbs of town, agreeing to meet again at a certain hour, on a certain day to return to Belgium.

When the Beguin got to her friends at Birmingham, she found their way of life very perplexing at first. Instead of getting up at halfpast four, nobody was down to breakfast till ten or eleven. Instead of dinner at twelve-dinner at six. Instead of tea and supper and bed, and all over by nine-tea at nine and bed at twelve or one.

For a few days this was very difficult; but her elastic habits of discipline soon enabled her to adapt herself to new modes; and she became so reconciled to their music and dancing and gaiety that she could at last laugh at the goodnatured family joke about the nun that came over to see her friends, and left her veil behind her.

At the end of the three weeks, the appointment was punctually kept between the Beguin and the poor woman. They met precisely at the hour and spot agreed upon, and started immediately to retrace their happy journey. On her return the nun resumed her convent dress and Beguin usages, and has continued in them ever since, and likes them all the better because of the brief glimpse she had of

freedom.

We were interested in the sincerity and frankness of her manners, and volunteered to take letters for her to her English friends, an offer which she eagerly accepted, inviting us to come to her for them the next day. When we called the next day, she could not restrain her emotion-her hand shook and her face flushed. It was like a breath of air from the old country which recalled a thousand memories. We sat an hour or two with her, and parted from her deeply impressed with the simplicity and truthfulness of a mode of life so rarely ruffled by external sympathies.

The trekschuyt was, at that time, the favourite way of travelling in Belgium, and is still the pleasantest. It is very neatly, even elegantly fitted up, the charges are moderate, and the accommodation is unexceptionable. These light pretty boats, with their colours and awnings, are drawn by horses through the canals; and the great canal of Ghent, as it is called, which branches off to Antwerp, Ostend, Dunkirk, and other places, is exceedingly picturesque throughout its course to Bruges. As you leave Ghent, the scenery on the banks (which are planted, without a break, with regular lines of trees) is full of variety, and rich in foliage, through which you get numerous sylvan perspectives, interspersed with scattered villas, windmills, and farmhouses. The departure from Ghent and the approach to Bruges are equally striking; the spires of the churches and public buildings rising above the woods, and marking the site at either extremity of the populous towns.

VII.-COURTRAI

Courtrai has been very shabbily treated in the guide-books. To be sure, it lies on the remote and somewhat dismal confines of Belgium, on the way to France, out of the track of tourists, and is celebrated for nothing but its great flax-market, which, in its actual developement as a market, interests nobody but buyers and sellers, and the hotel-keepers, who on this busy occasion, which returns every Monday, expand their table-d'hôtes to the utmost possible capability of their salles. Yet Courtrai has some claims on our attention. It is a very old place, brings out old Flanders revived and perked up for a modern holiday, and enjoys the historical distinction of having witnessed from its ancient ramparts the famous Battle of the Spurs. Seven hundred gold spurs are said to have been taken on the field from the French, and hung up in the Church of Notre Dame, from whence, as far as we could learn, they have

long since disappeared. Moreover, Courtrai is a wonderfully bright, clean, little town, with some wide streets (and some very narrow ones); two convents; several handsome churches; a few fine houses rearing their grand façades amongst the shops; a terribly old tumble-down hotel de ville, very crazy and dirty, but containing some stone carvings of great antiquity and rare beauty; a museum with pictures which nobody need be at the trouble to visit unless they find time hanging fearfully on their hands; and a diminutive park laid out with walks, and trees, and water, and ambuscades with statues in them, and rustic bridges under shadowy willows, and stretches of green sward, apparently never cropped nor swept, with dead leaves and broken boughs lying about in charming disorder.

His

But the one grand thing which has altogether escaped notice, and which has thus tempted me to invite the reader to an excursion of two minutes to remote Courtrai, is a Vandyk in one of the churches. A stranger would as soon think of looking for a Michael Angelo under a paving-stone as for a Vandyk in Courtrai; yet here is an unmistakable, veritable Crucifixion by that master. hand is so clearly in it, that you may detect him at a single glance. The figure of the Christ is fine, and the head, and the heads of the figures all about; but, for Vandyk, in whose great pictures there is always an epic sense of repose, a solemn purity of treatment, and lofty grandeur of expression, the composition is more elaborate and crowded than might have been anticipated. For this reason, perhaps, people may have passed by this Vandyk, and thought it a capital picture by some obscure artist, and so left it. But expend a little time over it, and by degrees you will find the figures coming alive out of the canvas, and the various characteristics and modifications of the emotion in each palpably individualized. Still, there is too much effort in it, too many arms straining upwards, too much physical movement; and one cannot help regretting, notwithstanding the melancholy beauty with which the principal figure is invested, that Vandyk did not more strictly follow the suggestions of his own chaste judgment in a picture which he appears to have entered upon with a bold conception and more than ordinary enthusiasm. No doubt the greatest of his Crucifixions is that at St. Michael's in Ghent, which, defaced and retouched and injured as it is, still retains, like the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci at Milan, vivid traces of the force, invention, and originality of the master. His genius seems to have reached its happiest achievement in that famous picture, which, spoiled as it has been by bungling attempts at restoration, is not so much spoiled, after all, as Sir Joshua has represented it to be. The amateur of high art will be better able to appreciate its merits by a peep at this other Crucifixion, in which the subject is treated in a different manner, and with greater variety. After he has seen this picture, he will not think that he has thrown away an hour or two in the little excursion by railroad from Ghent to Courtrai.

VIII.-WATERLOO.

The site of a gorgeous temple, the mere earth over which the Grecian squadrons swept, are like unto thee, Marathon of modern Europe! There is nothing left of Waterloo, but that which nothing can destroy-the field where the battle was fought. To be sure, at

the foot of the mound (which looks like what it is, a fiction) there stands an impoverished cabin, with an aspect as Irish as if it were squatted on the margin of the bog of Allen; and as you pass its low door two or three squalid children start out upon you with bags and aprons full of buttons and buckles, fragments of belts and pouches, and even the wadding of guns, which they coolly tell you were gathered on the ground immediately after the battle! When I first visited Waterloo, I was conducted over the plain by SergeantMajor Cotton, who had been with the army through that memorable campaign, and could map out its incidents step by step. Being an active and intelligent man, the Sergeant-Major had retired from the service to settle down in the more profitable occupation of guide over this historical scene, a function which he discharged with such soldierly knowledge and veracity that when, at the close of the day be collected some bones of the slain for one of our party who had a taste for such curiosities, and assured us that cart-loads of similar remains might be procured, although twenty years had then elapsed since the battle was fought, we implicitly believed him. The same trade in bones and flattened bullets and other fragments has been carried on ever since, and if you have sufficient credulity, and an easy way of gulping local fabrications, or, as Swift says, believing "the thing that is not," you may imagine yourself standing here surrounded by associations which will put you back some four-andthirty years of your life, with as much facility as you can put back the hand of the clock. If, however, you refuse to be deluded by this impudent manufacture of reliques you will see nothing in the whole outspread scene but a monotonous, dead level, hardly relieved by an undulation, and dotted only at great intervals with a few trees that have a heart-broken air of funereal loneliness.

Oh! it was a brave place to fight in! There was "ample room and verge" for horse and foot; and if ever any patriotic poet should put it into an epic he will assuredly make the God of Battles clap on his spurs, and call for his thunder-proof shield, in ecstasy at the sight of so many thousands of human beings brought together in deadly collision on a spot so favourable to mutual destruction. On the surface of the globe, Belgium always excepted, in honour of its unrivalled flats, there is not such another place for waging a great battle. It is the cock-pit of Europe. We may get places quite as level, but then the industry of man has interrupted the view with buildings, or broken up the surface with drains and walls and predial boundaries; now there was literally nothing to check the headlong gallop of the dragoon, or to turn aside the march of the infantry, on the inviting plain of Waterloo. It was apparently designed by nature to be consecrated to a solemn spectacle of deliberate slaughter.

I have read several descriptions of Waterloo, but never met one that conveyed a just idea of its desolate aspect. The reason why these accounts of Waterloo are false as pictures, is because the writers of them, absorbed by an overwhelming sense of the grandeur of the occasion, could not resist the temptation to exaggerate the features of the scene. Instead of depicting this dreary waste of Waterloo, exactly as it is, they appear to have been carried away by magnificent reminiscences of the overthrow of Napoleon, the restoration of legitimacy, and the glory of England. Leaving

« AnteriorContinuar »