principal. The oldest of all is the little chapel of St. Basil, which was partly rebuilt in the twelfth century. It is in the Roman style and quite without ornament. The floor is rudely paved, the roof supported by heavy pillars of rough freestone,. and the general effect is somewhat sepulchral, as of a church. buried in the earth. Above it is the Chapel of the Holy Blood, where some drops of the blood of Christ are preserved in a vial which once a year is carried through the streets of the city. This is the famous ecclesiastical procession of the Holy Blood, and takes place always on the first Monday after the 2nd of May. A lengthy history is attached to this famousrelic. It is related that when Joseph of Arimathaea washed. the body of Christ, he preserved the mingled blood and water, and it is a portion of this that Thierry of Alsace brought to Bruges in 1149.* After a time the relic was discovered to have dried up, but, according to Pope Clement V., it miraculously liquefied every Friday, usually about six o'clock. This weekly miracle continued until 1325. Since then it has only occurred once, in 1388, when the vial containing the relic was being transferred to a new crystal tube. Many miracles have been performed by its aid, the most striking being one which took place in December 1689, when a fire that had broken out close to the Hôtel de Ville threatened to destroy that magnificent building. All efforts to put it out were unavailing until a priest brought the sacred relic and held it up before the flames, which were instantly extinguished. In Bruges not only the churches and public buildings, such as the splendid Hôtel de Ville I have just mentioned, but many of the ordinary dwelling-houses, are extremely beautiful, with their high, stepped gables, and picturesquefacades. The old gate-houses, above all, are superb both in form and colour. The buildings rise up directly from the canals whose dark green water washes their basements. Creepers drop from hidden gardens as if to drink the water, their vivid delicate green tendrils spreading out over grey stone or red brick. From the quays and from the old stone bridges, such as the Pont des Lions, one gets marvellous views; but there are exquisite things that can only be seen * See "Le Précieux Sang à Bruges," by Canon van Haecke. from the water. When I first went to Bruges no boats were ever to be found on the inner canals. I made enquiries for one, but they were fruitless, and I had given up hope when one day I happened to pass a yard whose door stood open, and saw inside a kind of roughly-made canoe. It proved, when I had persuaded its owner to lend it to me, much better than I had expected, being steady enough so long as one sat still; and presently I found myself sharing with the swans the whole of this watery world. When I returned a year or two later, an Italian had appeared upon the scene with a ridiculous gondola. On the narrow canals it looked gigantic and absurd. I do not think the Italian did much business, which is the more to be regretted because he furnished a delightful and original if not very refined pastime to the youthful Brugeois, who used to assemble on the bridges and spit down on the heads of the passing tourists. A year or two ago a motor-boat took the place of the gondola, and I trust proved equally unlucrative. This, like the train which runs through the Grande Place, is the kind of mistake that one would have thought even a City Corporation might have avoided. But the authorities in Bruges are progressive, and in a report I read some time ago they express their determination to make their town. more popular. What dire threats lurk behind that ominous phrase I cannot think. Even during the Exhibition of the Toison d'Or the city lost much of its peculiar character, just as it does on the day of a procession. As a matter of fact the poverty of Bruges has been its salvation. I have been told that two-thirds of the population are paupers, and without money vandalism becomes difficult. At the first hint of commercial prosperity the old buildings would be swept away. A prosperous Bruges would simply be another Ghent, a commercial town with a few interesting buildings and pictures. As it is now, it is a city of religious houses and of charitable asylums. The Godshuisen are everywhere, and of all sizes. "In 1894," one reads, "there were twenty-one of them," and there are probably more to-day. Each Saturday morning the Grande Place, which is the great open square in front of the Belfry, is turned into a market place. The ground is covered with stalls, and the VOL. XLIII.-No. 503. 22 whole effect is of some huge but far from gorgeous bazaar, where all sorts of cheap goods, new and second-hand, are displayed. The people who assemble here to do their marketing speak for the most part Flemish, though some can speak a kind of bastard French. The same people gather in the same place now and then on summer evenings to listen to the band playing. The bandstand is erected in the middle of the square, and everyone walks round and round it in a slowly revolving circle, or sits at one of the three or four cafés, which produce for the occasion an unsuspected quantity of chairs and tables that sprawl all over the side-paths. The art treasures of Bruges are not to be found in the -churches. There is a statue of the Madonna and Child by Michael Angelo in Notre Dame, and a charming Madonna of the della Robbia school in St. Jacques, but almost all the pictures are aesthetically valueless. The precious Van Eycks and Davids and Memlincs are to be found in the Academy or in the Hospital of St. John. Jan van Eyck and Hans Memlinc are the two great masters with whom Bruges is associated, and though I am inclined to think that the only authentic work of the former is the superb altar-piece in the Academy, certainly the most beautiful picture the city possesses, Memline can be studied here as nowhere else in the world. And among all his works I would single out a small square picture hanging in the Hospital of St. John, the portrait of Martin Newenhoven, painted, as the inscription tells us, when the sitter was 23 years of age. He is standing, though only the head and torso are given, before an open lattice window, through which one sees a pleasant green landscape divided by a stream whose blue water winds away among distant meadows. Flemish in type, the face has a kind of grave beauty, at once strong and delicate. The lips are slightly parted, and the brown hair waves to the shoulders, falling obliquely on either side of the russet-coloured cheeks. The eyes are brown and clear, the nose strong, the complexion delicately embrowned. The light comes through the grey window, and one can see the faint shadow of down on the upper lip, save for which the face is smooth as a boy's. The hands are folded: an open book with jewelled clasps rests before him. His dress is of purple velvet, the brown sleeves trimmed with black fur. The picture would be quite perfect if it were not for a panel in the window showing a knight on horseback. Painted in blue and red and white, this is wholly out of tone with the rest of the scheme. It strikes a false note, and one must cover it over if one is to feel the harmonyactually musical, as in all fine painting of the subdued and somewhat sombre colouring. It is among the best of Memlinc's portraits, and gives us an idea of what the people were like who once walked the streets of this exquisite city, who created its beauty, and to whom that beauty was one of the necessities of life. EXILES Super flumina Babylonis. Ps. 136. We sat by the waters of Babylon's tide; Mutely our harps on her willows we hung. They asked us to sing them the songs of our land, To sing them the wonders of God's mighty Hand, Oh, Daughter of Peace on the sacred hill's crest- Beginning of joys! may the soul know no rest If I should forget thee, thou consecrate spot! R. O'K. THE GIFT OF THE BLESSED ONE WR E must travel back along the far road that leads to the sixteenth century, until we find ourselves in mediæval Brittany. On the top of a hill stands a little church built by the pious Seigneur of the Manor, and its massive walls-which in the twentieth century, weather-beaten and filmed with moss, still resist the salt winds, and heavy storms-were then clean and sharply chiselled. Old Marie Dulac lived by herself in a tiny cottage on the slope of the hill, her nearest neighbours being the villagers, whose homes clustered in the valley below. It was a lonely spot, but when her husband died and was buried in the churchyard beside their only babe, she refused to leave the grey stone hut, and eked out a scanty living by working in the fields, as many a Breton woman does at the present day. It was hard work, for Marie was nearing the allotted span of years, but, winter and summer, she toiled on, and Jean Valpré found her constant employment on his farm, so she lived free from charity or debt. Whenever it was possible, she attended Mass in the church dedicated to St. Anne, and in the summer evenings as she returned home, hungry and weary, she would often enter the cool building, and kneeling, say a little Vesper prayer, for religion was very real to Mère Marie. Each time she bought a cask of rough cider, a large jarpaid for out of the hard-earned sous she had dropped each week into a cracked mug-was put aside "for the Lord," and many a tired traveller, many a pilgrim to a distant Pardon, had been refreshed out of Mère Marie's jar. One June afternoon, she was returning early from field work, for the day had been unbearably hot, and her master, noticing how weary she looked, had kindly released her an hour before the usual time. She passed the church without going in, for her legs had a strange uncertain feeling that was new to her, and on reaching her home, she took out the coarse bread, and set the vegetable soup to heat on the wood ashes, before going to draw a mug of cider to refresh her, and |