me, I could not see that any one of them mattered:
bread was just as dear, and sleep was just as sweet, whichever of the
three was uppermost."

_A DOG OF FLANDERS._

In the spring and summer especially were they glad. Flanders is not a
lovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely
of all.

Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the
characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt grey
tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart
the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's
faggot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who
has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by
imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary
level.

But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide horizons that have a
certain charm of their own even in their dulness and monotony; and
amongst the rushes by the water-side the flowers grow, and the trees
rise tall and fresh where the barges glide with their great hulks black
against the sun, and their little green barrels and vari-coloured flags
gay against the leaves.

Anyway, there is a greenery and breadth of space enough to be as good as
beauty to a child and a dog; and these two asked no better, when their
work was done, than to lie buried in the lush grasses on the side of the
canal, and watch the cumbrous vessels drifting by, and bringing the
crisp salt smell of the sea amongst the blossoming scents of the country
summer.

* * *

Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every turn of old piles of
stones, dark and ancient and majestic, standing in crooked courts,
jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water's edge, with
bells ringing above them in the air, and ever and again out of their
arched doors a swell of music pealing.

There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst
the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce of
the modern world; and all day long the clouds drift and the birds
circle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their
feet there sleeps--RUBENS.

And the greatness of the mighty Master still rests upon Antwerp;
wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that
all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through
the winding ways, and by