LETTER VI.
In my last, I carried you past a ferocious, impertinent sentinel, into the town of Bruges; and now, having got you there, I must endeavour, from the loose materials I have been able to collect, to give you a short description of it.
I had heard much of Bruges, its grandeur and its opulence; you will guess my surprise then, when, on entering it, I found nothing but an old-fashioned, ill-built, irregular town; the streets, in general, narrow and dirty, and most of the houses strongly expressive of poverty and squalid wretchedness: yet this was anciently a most flourishing city. Did the difference between the town at this time, and its state as it is represented of old, consist only in its external appearance, we might readily account for that, in the great improvements made by the Moderns in the art of house-building; but its present inferiority goes deeper, and is the result of departed commerce——commerce, that fluctuating will-with-a-wisp, that leads States in hot pursuit after it, to entrap them ultimately into mires and precipices, and which, when caught, stays till it extinguishes the spirit of Freedom in a Nation, refines its People into feeble slaves, and there leaves them to poverty and contempt.
Perhaps there is no subject that affords an ampler field for a speculative mind to expatiate upon, than the various, and, I may say, incongruous revolutions which have chequered the progress of human society from the first records of History down to the present time. It is indeed a speculation which not only tends to improve the understanding, by calling in experience to correct the illusions of theory, but is highly instructive in a moral point of view, by pointing out the instability of the very best strictures of human wisdom, and teaching us how little reliance is to be placed upon human casualties, or earthly contingencies. Look to Greece, once, the fountain-head of Arts, Eloquence, and Learning, and the mother of Freedom——her Poets, her Legislators, her Soldiers, and her Patriots, even to this day considered the brightest[brightest] examples of earthly glory!——see her now sunk in slavery, ignorance, sloth, and imbecillity, below any petty Nation of Europe. Look to Rome—in her turn, the queen of Arms and Arts, the land of Liberty, the nurse of Heroes—the stage on which inflexible Patriots, accomplished Philosophers, and a free People, acted for centuries a drama that elevated Man almost above his nature!——see her now reduced to the last stage of contemptibility——even below it, to ridicule and laughter——swayed by the most contemptible imposture, and sunk into the most despicable enslavement, both of person and opinion——the offices of her glorious Senate performed by a kind of heteroclite being, an hermaphroditical imposter, who, deducing his right from the very dregs and offscourings of superstition and fanaticism, and aided by a set of disciples worthy of such a master, rules the People, not with the terrors of the Tarpeian rock, nor yet with that which to a Roman bosom was more terrible, banishment——but with the horrors of eternal damnation!——see her valiant, vigorous Soldiery converted into a band of feeble fidlers and music-masters, and the clangor of her arms into shrill concerts of squeaking castratoes; those places where her Cicero poured forth eloquence divine, and pointed out the paths that led to true morality——where her Brutus and her Cato marshalled the forces of Freedom, and raised the arm of Justice against Tyrants, over-run by a knavish host of ignorant, beggarly, bald-pated Friars, vomiting, to a crowd of gaping bigots, torrents of fanatical bombast, of miracles never performed, of Gods made of wood or copper, and of Saints, that, like themselves, lived by imposture and deception!——see her triumphs and military trophies changed into processions of Priests singing psalms round wafers and wooden crucifixes; and that code of Philosophy and Religion, which operated so effectually upon the morals of her People that there was none among them found so desperate or so base as to break an oath, exchanged for the Roman Catholic branch of the Christian Faith——for dispensations for incest, indulgences for murder, fines for fornication, and an exclusive patent for adultery in their priesthood. Then look to England!——see her, who once stooped beneath the yoke of Rome, whose Chief, Caractacus, was carried there in chains to grace his conquerors[conquerors] triumphs, while herself was made the meanest of the Roman Provinces, now holding the balance of the world, the unrivalled mistress of Arms, Arts, Commerce——every thing.
It was in this irresistible mutation of things, that Bruges sunk from the high state of a most flourishing city, where there are still (unless the French have destroyed them) to be seen the remains of seventeen palaces, anciently the residences of Consuls of different Nations, each of which had distinct houses, magnificently built and furnished, with warehouses for their merchandises: and such was the power and wealth of the Citizens in those days, that it is an indubitable fact, they kept their Sovereign, the Archduke Maximilian, prisoner, affronted his servants, and abused his officers; nor would they release him until he took an oath to preserve inviolate the laws of the State. Even so late as the time I was there, Bruges had some trade——indeed as good a foreign trade as most cities in Flanders. The people seemed cheerful and happy, and the markets were tolerably supplied.
Several fine canals run in a variety of directions from Bruges: by one of them, boats can go, in the course of a summer’s day, to Ostend, Nieuport, Furnes, and Dunkirk; and vessels of four hundred tuns can float in the bason of this town. Another canal leads to Ghent, another to Damme, and another to Sluys. The water of those canals is stagnant, without the least motion; yet they can, in half an hour, be all emptied, and fresh water brought in, by means of their well-contrived sluices. This water, however, is never used for drinking, or even for culinary purposes; a better sort being conveyed through the town by pipes from the two rivers Lys and Scheldt, as in London; for which, as there, every house pays a certain tax.
Although the trade of this city has, like that of all the Low Countries, been gradually declining, and daily sucked into the vortices of British and Dutch commerce, there were, till the French entered it, many rich Merchants there, who met every day at noon in the great market-place, to communicate and transact business, which was chiefly done in the Flemish language, hardly any one in it speaking French; a circumstance that by this time is much altered——for they have been already made, if not to speak French, at least to sing Ca-ira, and dance to the tune of it too, to some purpose.
The once-famed grandeur of this city consisted chiefly, like that of all grand places in the dark periods of Popery, of the gloomy piles, the ostentatious frippery and unwieldy[unwieldy] masses of wealth, accumulated by a long series of Monkish imposture——of Gothic structures, of enormous size and sable aspect, filled with dreary cells, calculated to strike the souls of the ignorant and enthusiastic with holy horror, to inspire awe of the places, and veneration for the persons who dared to inhabit them, and, by enfeebling the reason with the mixed operations of horror, wonder and reverence, to fit the credulous for the reception of every imposition, however gross in conception, or bungled in execution. Those are the things which constituted the greatness and splendor of the cities of Ancient Christendom; to those has the sturdiest human vigour and intellect been forced to bend the knees: they were built to endure the outrages of time; and will stand, I am sure, long, long after their power shall have been annihilated.
What a powerful engine has superstition been, in the cunning management of Priests! How lamentable it is to think, that not only all who believed, but all who had good sense enough not to believe, should, for so many centuries, have been kept in prostrate submission to the will and dominion of an old man in Rome!——My blushes for the folly and supineness of Mankind, however, are lost in a warm glow of transport at the present irradiation of the human mind; and though I can scarcely think with patience of that glorious, Godlike being, Henry the Second of England, being obliged by the Pope to lash himself naked at the tomb of that saucy, wicked Priest, Thomas a Becket, I felicitate myself with the reflection, that the Pope is now the most contemptible Sovereign in Europe, and that the Papal authority, which was once the terror and the scourge of the earth, is now not only not recognised, but seldom thought of, and, when thought of, only serves to excite laughter or disgust.