es, Popes, and Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something
ludicrous. One may question all this, yet still admire to the full both
the spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its
miracle of minute and jewel-like execution. There are scores of other
good pictures in Ghent, including (not even to go outside St. Bavon's)
the "Christ among the Doctors" by Francis Pourbus, into which portraits
of Philip II. of Spain, the Emperor Charles V., and the infamous Duke
of Alva--names of terrible import in the sixteenth-century history of
the Netherlands--are introduced among the bystanders; whilst to the
left of Philip is Pourbus himself, "with a greyish cap on which is
inscribed Franciscus Pourbus, 1567." But it is always to the "Adoration
of the Mystic Lamb" that our steps are first directed, and to which
they always return.

It is hard, indeed, that necessities of space should compel us to pass
so lightly over other towns in Flanders--over Courtrai, with its noble
example of a fortified bridge, and with its great picture, by Van Dyck,
of the "Raising of the Cross" that was stolen mysteriously a few years
ago from the church of Notre Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at
the Louvre, been recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two
fine churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour
even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most
elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in
Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the
north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half-deserted
churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish mediaevalism. Of
the short strip of Flemish coast, from near Knocke, past the
fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst, Blankenberghe, and Ostende,
to a point beyond La Panne--from border to border it measures roughly
only some forty miles, and is almost absolutely straight--I willingly
say little, for it seems to me but a little thing when compared with
this glorious inland wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it
has developed in every direction, and is now almost continuously a
thin, brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and
lodging-houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos,
where only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of
rolling sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only
with rushes and coarse gr