gin, and of St. John; and the striking Renaissance rood-screen in
black and white marble, though not as fine as some that are found in
other churches. Rood-screens of this exact sort are almost limited to
Belgium, though there is one, now misplaced in the west end of the
nave, and serving as an organ-loft, in the church of St. Gery at
Cambrai--another curious link between French and Belgian Flanders.
Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuide), nine and a half miles south from
Nieuport, is an altogether bigger and more important place, with a
larger and more important church, of St. Nicholas, to match. My
recollection of this last, on a Saturday afternoon of heavy showers
towards the close of March, is one of a vast interior thronged with men
and women in the usual dismal, black Flemish cloaks, kneeling in
confession, or waiting patiently for their turn to confess, in
preparation for the Easter Mass. Here the best feature, till lately,
was the glorious Flamboyant rood-screen, recalling those at Albi and
the church of Brou, in France; and remarkable in Belgium as one of the
very few examples of its sort (there is, or was, another in St. Pierre,
at Louvain) of so early a period, in a land where rood-screens, as a
body, are generally much later in date.

It is difficult, in dealing with Flanders, to avoid a certain amount of
architectural description, for architecture, after all, is the chief
attraction of the country, save perhaps in Ghent and Bruges, where we
have also noble pictures. Even those who do not care to study this
architecture in detail will be gratified to stroll at leisure through
the dim vastness of the great Flemish churches, where the eye is
satisfied everywhere with the wealth of brass and iron work, and where
the Belgian passion for wood-carving displays itself in lavish
prodigality. Such wealth, indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will
hardly find elsewhere in Western Europe--font covers of hammered brass,
like those at Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits,
new and old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall
tabernacles for the reception of the Sacred Host, like those at Louvain
and Leau, that tower towards the roof by the side of the High Altars.
Most of this work, no doubt, is post-Gothic, except the splendid stalls
and canopies (I wonder, do they still survive) at the church of St.
Gertrude at Louvain; for Belgium presents few examples of mediaeval
wood-work like the gorgeous s