most delicate detail, are lacking in
realism actually to a degree that borders on a delicious absurdity. St.
Ursula and her maidens--whether really eleven thousand or eleven--in
the final scene of martyrdom await the stroke of death with the stoical
placidity of a regiment of dolls. "All the faces are essentially
Flemish, and some of the virgins display to great advantage the pretty
national feature of the slight curl in one or in both lips." A little
farther along the same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small
but admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St.
Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on either
side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks as one of his
best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon Van de Paelen,
painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing an old churchman with
a typically heavy Flemish face; and the rather unpleasant picture by
Gerard David of the unjust judge Sisamnes being flayed alive by order
of King Cambyses. By a turning to the right out of the Rue St.
Catherine, you come to the placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far
from the shores of which is one of those curious beguinages that are
characteristic of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little
houses, grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine,
or less strict kind of nun. In the house of the Lady Superior is
preserved the small, but very splendid, memorial brass of a former
inmate, who died at about the middle of the fifteenth century.

Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you will
not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of antiquity, or
to stumble at every street corner on some new and charming combination
of old houses, with their characteristic crow-stepped, or corbie,
gables. New houses, I suppose, there must really be by scores; but
these, being built with inherent good taste (whether unconscious or
conscious I do not know) in the traditional style of local building,
and with brick that from the first is mellow in tint and harmonizes
with its setting, assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and
left, and fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness.
Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm; but
the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two
market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place du
Bourg. In