the former are the brick Halles, with their famous belfry
towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian disregard for
proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower piled on tower, till
one is almost afraid lest the final octagon should be going to topple
over! In the Place du Bourg is a less aspiring group, consisting of the
Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien
Greffe, and the Palais de Justice--all very Flemish in character, and
all, in combination, elaborately picturesque. In the Chapel of the Holy
Blood is preserved the crystal cylinder that is said to enshrine
certain drops of the blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the
Holy Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and installed in the
Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt of
which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been rebuilt, in
the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the relic is exhibited
to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to kiss it. Some congealed
blood of Our Lord is also said to be preserved, after remarkable
vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and
mediaeval Gloucestershire once boasted as big a treasure, which brought
great concourse and popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles. Pass
beneath the archway of the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, cross the
sluggish canal, and turn sharply to the left, and follow, first the
cobbled Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai
Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble
cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the
adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and
gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in mellow
charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford whose presence
Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, to overpower his
"soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says elsewhere in his journal,
"the modern taste in costume, architecture, etc., has got the mastery;
in Ghent there is a struggle; but in Bruges old images are still
paramount, and an air of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a
thinly-peopled city is inexpressibly soothing. A pensive grace seems to
be cast over all, even the very children." This estimate, after the
lapse of considerably more than half a century, still, on the whole,
stands good.

"In Ghent there is a struggle."