The public buildings in Brussels of this period—that is within the circuit of its ancient ramparts—can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and at least, so far as concerns decoration, they have entirely lost their pristine beauty. It is not to be wondered at. First came the fury of the Calvinists—that was towards the close of the fifteen hundreds; almost all the old buildings of the Netherlands endured many things at their hands; then the French bombardment of 1695, when the Grand' Place was shattered and fourteen churches and something like four thousand houses were burnt to the ground. 'An utterly wanton piece of destruction,' notes the contemporary author of Les Délices des Pays-Bas, 'but in two years,' he continues, 'the city had risen from its ashes more beautiful than ever,' Hardly so, but still the men of Brussels had reason to be proud of their achievement: the Guild Halls in the Grand' Place date from this period. Too soon came the age of whitewash and plaster, when Gothic art was held in contempt. Much havoc was wrought then, throughout the whole country, more a few years later (1794), when the French revolutionists invaded the Netherlands. The cities suffered more from their antics than from those of any of their predecessors. Churches and convents were cast down, municipal buildings wrecked, and they carried off all the art treasures they could lay hands on. At last came the Gothic revival, and with it the restorer: he is hard at work still, and some say he has already wrought more havoc than all the iconoclasts put together, from the Gueux to the Sans-Culottes. Remarks of this kind are frequently made by little poets and by decadent painters who, because they have an eye for the picturesque, flatter themselves that they know all about architecture, and without any knowledge of the laws of construction or the principles of design, fancy that they are perfectly qualified to pass judgment on the work of professional experts who have devoted, perhaps, a lifetime to these subjects.

GUILD HOUSES IN THE GRAND' PLACE, BRUSSELS.

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Of course there have been mistakes: in the early days of the movement this was inevitable, and, even since then, and when there was less excuse, the most lamentable blunders have from time to time been committed, blunders which never ought to have been made, and which in some cases entailed mischief which is altogether past reparation.

Thus when the élite were fascinated by the great name of Ruskin, and their fingers itched to lay everything bare, there was a veritable holocaust of frescoes.

Whatever may have been the case in other countries, the mediæval architects of the Netherlands never hesitated to conceal the natural appearance of their building materials whenever it suited their purpose to do so. Rough and unsightly walls they covered with plaster, which served as a ground work for coloured decoration, and if the hue of their stone was not to their liking, they had no scruple about painting it, for in their eyes no building was complete unless it glowed with rainbow tints. Though these things are now generally acknowledged, even at the present day there are restorers in Belgium—not very many, thank God, but still there are some,—who obstinately persist in ignoring them. It is not so very long ago since the mural paintings in Ghent Cathedral were ruthlessly sacrificed in order that 'the splendour of the true' might shine forth in all its glory, and the man who did this thing now has it in his mind to flay Sainte Walburge of Furnes, a church where distinct traces of mural decoration have been found; and who shall say how many frescoes lie hid beneath the whitewash?[32] But if a few men, here and there, have occasionally been found wanting in matters of this kind and in others no less serious, we nevertheless owe a very large debt of gratitude to the restorers, for if it had not been for their efforts many of the grand old monuments which now excite our admiration would by this time have fallen down, and, on the whole, the necessary task of restoration, always a delicate and difficult one, has been carefully and conscientiously carried out. And also this should be borne in mind, the works of art which the restorers have brought to light or preserved from destruction vastly outnumber those which have perished through their carelessness or ill-judged zeal; and in the case of frescoes we are practically no worse off than we were before, for they were all of them completely obliterated by whitewash. Of course this might have been removed. The operation is not an easy one, but it has been performed in very many cases with the happiest results, notably in the Church of Our Lady at Hal and in the Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht, where some very remarkable and very beautiful mural paintings have been laid bare, and those at Anderlecht are almost in a perfect state of preservation. In Brussels itself there are no mural paintings save some faint vestiges in the Sablon and in Notre Dame de la Chapelle, and this is one reason why we said that the Burgundian buildings of the capital had lost their pristine beauty. Beautiful they are still, but for the most part they have been pitilessly scarified, and their beauty is like the faded beauty of death, cold, rigid, grey. Brussels, in a word, has lost her complexion, but he indeed would be a bold man who would set his hand to restore it.

Notre-Dame du Sablon

Of the great ecclesiastical monuments of Brussels wholly constructed during this period only one remains—the church commonly known as Notre-Dame du Sablon, but which is in reality dedicated to Our Lady of Victories. It was originally the private oratory of the great military guild of Crossbowmen—the one mediæval guild of Brussels which still exists— hence the invocation, and as most of the brethren were, by trade, either carpenters or builders, there is little doubt that this structure is the handiwork of some of them, and it is not unlikely that the master-mason who designed it was himself a Crossbowman. Nor is this all. Not only does the church on the Sablon Hill owe its foundation to the members of this guild, thanks to their prowess it passed unscathed through the religious troubles of King Philip's reign. The Calvinists had sworn its destruction, but when on the night appointed they reached the church and found it full of armed guildsmen prepared, at all costs, to defend their property, they contented themselves with howling outside, and made no further attempt to wreck it. The Crossbowmen retained possession of their beautiful oratory, and continued to administer its revenues through a committee of four members, whom they annually elected for this purpose, until the close of the seventeen hundreds, and when those stormy days had passed, and order was re-established, it became what it still is, a parish church.