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Lord Jesus was displeased

That such thing were;
And opened His rose-red mantle
To hide him there.

And Gregory thus He brings
In His Paradise to be,

For He saith, "My glorious Heaven

I tell you, is verily

For the little ones, yea,

Marry, yea!"

EMILY HICKEY.

BRUGES

By FORREST REID

WRITE of Bruges as it was, as it still is; but in a year from now, six months perhaps, everything may be changed. A few shells, a few bombs, and all that I have written of here will fall into ruin; the most perfect survival from mediaeval Europe be nothing more than a memory.

On entering Bruges one seems to lose the sense of time, though in no other city is one so constantly reminded of the passing of time. For all day long the carillon, which is the voice of Bruges, marking off the hours, the half hours, and the quarter hours, breaks through the silence of that dreamy city; and if one wakens in the night one hears it. A strange, sweet, soon very familiar music, with now and then an odd jangling in the tune that never becomes unmelodious-it sounds far and faint, curiously ethereal, when one is wandering along the outer canals; loud, but not too loud, when one sits in the afternoon at a café in the great Belfry Square; almost deafening if one ascends the many steps of the tower where two fantastic little men, like gnomes, pass their days in looking after the bells.

The carillon accents the quiet of Bruges-that quiet which is its soul. The clear notes spread out upon the air in circling

waves of sound which gradually diminish and die into a silence that seems but the deeper for this brief disturbance of it. Almost immediately one begins to be conscious of the curious beauty of this quietness, but it is not until the sights are seen, the churches, the galleries visited, that it really begins to produce its peculiar effect, which is, as I have said, of a gradual blotting out, as by some great soft sponge, of the sense of time.

Bruges is a small city: every place is just round the corner from everywhere else. You may easily see all that the guidebooks mention in a few hours; yet if you wait over the second day you will probably stay for weeks. Then it is that day follows day and one never quite knows whether it is Tuesday or Friday. There is nothing to tell you, because there is nothing to do; each morning, each afternoon, is the exact counterpart of the last.

I have never been at Bruges during the winter, but I have been there in the spring, and in the summer, and in the autumn, and though each season has its appropriate beauty, the impression left upon my mind is somehow of an endless autumn. The colouring of the city itself is autumnal, rich and dark and splendid, its grey stone-work toned and mellowed and stained by age, its brick-work and wood-work all reds and browns and deepening, blending shades of green and yellow. Yet its beauty is not a fixed and monotonous beauty. It alters, like a smooth sheet of water, with each change in the sky; is extraordinarily responsive to the different lights of morning, of afternoon, of twilight. I have seen it on a cloudless June day when the heavy sunlight, baking the old crumbling bricks and stones, and casting a trail of liquid fire upon the water of the canals, brought out its immense. antiquity by revealing each crack and cranny, as a strong light reveals the wrinkles and lines in an aged human countenance and I have seen it under a mist of rain, when its beauty was grey and delicate and, as it were, spiritualized, the whole city seeming hardly more solid than the mist itself.

Bruges has been called-probably by the guide-books-the Venice of the north; but no town could be less like Venice. It is true that it is threaded by canals, but they are silent and dark and sluggish, in autumn strewn with dead leaves; and

The

the white swans that now and then float down them pass noiselessly as ghosts. Beside the canals are roughly cobbled streets. On a wet day, with the rain pattering on one's umbrella, and on the water, and running down the gutters and between the stones, one sees Bruges almost at its best. For its charm is of an exquisite melancholy that even in the dismalest weather never becomes depressing. From that it is saved by its beauty-a beauty so rare and admirable that it gives something of the delight of a work of art and by the fact that all life here is tuned naturally to a minor key, is a little tinged with languor, withdrawing instinctively from any form of exuberance, or high spirits, or excessive vitality. This beauty, unlike that of Venice, is very largely a beauty of atmosphere. In this respect at least Bruges is unrivalled. A night it becomes wonderful. At night it is transformed, and seems to waken to a mysterious ghostly life. strange, insidious, sleepy influence that all day long rises from the nearly stagnant waters which the swans scarcely ruffle, and which seems to touch one almost physically, as with a faint caress, has disappeared. Towards ten o'clock if one wanders out into the dark streets one finds them deserted. A flickering lamp-flame at each street corner gives little light, but flings abroad fantastic shadows, and the whole city appears a creation of magic, or of one's own imagination in a singularly vivid dream. One might be back in the Middle Ages. The moonlight, white and cold, touches the figures of the Madonna and Child set in some high niche in the wall. By the Lac d'Amour the frogs cry shrilly. And one feels that a certain quality of the maccabre has entered into this enchantment. Wild tales of impossible happenings rise with a curious persuasiveness in one's memory; a silhouette behind a blind in the single lighted window of a dark narrow street seems fraught with a sinister suggestiveness.

But all day long the prevailing spirit is of something infinitely peaceful and soothing. The trouble and noise and competition of the world seem remote and unreal. To walk under the yellowing lime-trees, over the faded, damp grass, to enter for a few minutes into the silent fragrant dimness of the Church of St. Anne, to come out into the dimness of dusk and wander homeward across the deserted park-all

this is to feel as if life itself lay utterly behind one, still and faint as the shadow of a dream.

There is an enervation in this atmosphere, a subtle persistent enervation that one may easily allow to gain too strong a hold upon one's mind. To live in it perpetually would be to make of life a kind of waiting upon death. I had imagined that Bruges would be an ideal place to work in, yet I found that what one did was to dream of the work one was going to begin to-morrow. I carried a note-book and a pencil, but I seldom used them. Instead, I lay on the grass under the elms in the Béguinage, and watched the demure Sisters moving quietly to and fro on their business there, utterly incurious, going into, and coming out from, the Church of St. Elizabeth (usually escorted by a vivacious little dog which appeared to attend all the religious services), carrying a roll of lace or embroidery in their hands, for they do very beautiful work, which they sell to anyone who cares for it.

The Béguinage is the heart of Bruges. The little whitewashed, red-roofed houses are built about a large grass court where tall elm-trees throw a drowsy shade in summer. Here live the Béguines-nuns almost, though nuns free to return to the world-under the authority of a Mother Superior appointed by the Bishop of the diocese; and here they work at their lace-making, though they are not all employed thus, for some busy themselves with the education of the young Brugeois, and others visit the sick and the poor.

In spite of all these examples of industry I found it difficult to do anything but to go to sleep under their elms. In the evenings one was idle also, partly of necessity. For at the little hotel where I stayed the sun and moon were principally looked to to furnish such light as visitors required. Apart from these splendid but not always practicable lamps, a single candle was thought sufficient. I bought an ordinary lamp, but was not allowed to use it, because the patron's insurance policy forbade the burning of oil.

I have called Bruges a city of water: it is also a city of churches. The churches of St. Sauveur (now the Cathedral), of St. Jacques, of St. Anne, of St. Gilles, of Jerusalem, of Notre Dame, of Notre Dame de la Poterie-these are the

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