alls, and lighted
up the head of the golden-haired Magdalen in a picture of the
entombment of Christ. Over the gallery, and, as it were, a kind
protectress to the poor below, stood the statue of the Virgin.

GHENT[A]

[Footnote A: From "Cities of Belgium."]

BY GRANT ALLEN

Flanders owes everything to its water communications. At the junction
of the Schelde with the Lys and Lei, there grew up in the very early
Middle Ages a trading town, named Gent in Flemish, and Gand in French,
but commonly Anglicized as Ghent. It lay on a close network of rivers
and canals, formed partly by these two main streams, and partly by the
minor channels of the Lieve and the Moere, which together intersect it
into several islands.

Such a tangle of inland waterways, giving access to the sea and to
Bruges, Courtrai, and Tournai, as well as less directly to Antwerp
and Brussels, ensured the rising town in early times considerable
importance. It formed the center of a radiating commerce. Westward,
its main relations were with London and English wool ports; eastward
with Cologne, Maastricht, the Rhine towns, and Italy.

Ghent was always the capital of East Flanders, as Bruges or Ypres were
of the Western province; and after the Counts lost possession of
Arras and Artois, it became in the thirteenth century their principal
residence and the metropolis of the country....

Early in the fourteenth century, the burghers of Ghent, under their
democratic chief, Jacob or Jacques Van Artevelde, attained practical
independence. Till 1322, the counts and people of Flanders had been
united in their resistance to the claims of France; but with the
accession of Count Louis of Nevers, the aspect of affairs changed.
Louis was French by education, sympathies, and interests, and
artistocratic by nature; he sought to curtail the liberties of the
Flemish towns, and to make himself despotic. The wealthy and populous
burgher republics resisted and in 1337 Van Artevelde was appointed
Captain of Ghent. Louis fled to France and asked the aid of Philip of
Valois.

Thereupon, Van Artevelde made himself the ally of Edward III. of
England, then beginning his war with France; but as the Flemings did
not like entirely to cast off their allegiance--a thing repugnant to
medieval sentiment--Van Artevelde persuaded Edward to put forward his
trumped-up claim to the crown of France, and thus induced the towns
to transfer their fealty from Philip to his English ri