ror Maximilian was imprisoned by his
rebellious Flemings; and next it, with a carved lion, that in which
Charles II. of England lived after the martyrdom of that patient and
virtuous ruler, whom the English Prayerbook calls that "blessed
martyr, Charles the First." In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charles
the Bold and Mary his daughter.

We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. Here died Jan
van Eyck, the father of oil painting; and here, in the hospital of
St. John, are the most celebrated pictures of Hans Memling. The most
exquisite in color and finish is the series painted on the casket
made to contain the arm of St. Ursula, and representing the story of
her martyrdom. You know she went on a pilgrimage to Rome, with her
lover, Conan, and eleven thousand virgins; and, on their return to
Cologne, they were all massacred by the Huns. One would scarcely
believe the story, if he did not see all their bones at Cologne.

GHENT AND ANTWERP

What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memory
recall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, though
one thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its
merchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry-tower is the gilt
dragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumph
from Bruges. It was originally fetched from a Greek church in
Constantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall to
us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East traded
up the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of India
and Persia. The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers
together on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. What
fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuries
ago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square of
old-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen
hundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds
of fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires
of the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery,
used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,--a hammered-iron hooped
affair, eighteen feet long. But why mention this, or the magnificent
town hall, or St. Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to put
you back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclasts
sacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?

Up to Antwerp toward evenin