now to apply to it the same prophetic
outlook that he imagined for Pendragon Castle:

"Viewing
As in a dream her own renewing."

One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed too
zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour of
crisis. Perhaps there is no big city in the world--and Bruges, though
it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great estate in the
Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand souls--that remains
from end to end, in every alley, and square, and street, so wholly
unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the modern spirit, or that
presents so little unloveliness and squalor in its more out-of-the-way
corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course, like Venice, and half a dozen
towns in Holland, is a strangely amphibious city that is intersected in
every direction, though certainly less persistently than Venice, by a
network of stagnant canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the
splendour of the better parts of Venice--the Piazza and the Grand
Canal--and lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if
somewhat faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of
the Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her
monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so dilapidated, and
tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one stumbles against in
Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and in sailing up almost every
canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say, what Byron said of Greece, that

"Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath";

whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all, but
the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital old age.

We cannot, of course, attempt, in a mere superficial sketch like this,
even to summarize briefly the wealth of objects of interest in Bruges,
or to guide the visitor in detail through its maze of winding streets.
Two great churches, no doubt, will be visited by everyone--the
cathedral of St. Sauveur and the church of Notre Dame--both of which,
in the usual delightful Belgian fashion, are also crowded
picture-galleries of the works of great Flemish masters. The See of
Bruges, however, dates only from 1559; and even after that date the
Bishop had his stool in the church of St. Donatian, till this was
destroyed by the foolish Revolutionaries in 1799. In a side-chapel of
Notre Dame, and carefully boarded up fo