One gazes with pleasure and some surprise at its handsome streets, where everyone seems to live and thrive. There is a general air of opulence. The new streets, built under the last empire on the Paris model, offer the same rich and effective detail of gilded inscriptions running across the houses, balconies and flowers, with the luxurious cafés below, and languid flaneurs sitting down to their absinthe or coffee among the orange-trees. These imposing mansions, built with judicious loans—the 'Obligations of the City of Lille' are quoted on the Exchanges—are already dark and rusted, and harmonize with the older portions. At every turn there is a suggestion of Brussels, and nowhere so much as on the fine place, where the embroidered old Spanish houses aforesaid are abundant.
The old cathedral, imposing with its clustered apses and great length and loftiness, and restored façade, would be the show of any English town. The Lillois scarcely appreciate it, as a few years ago they ordered a brand-new one from 'Messrs. Clutton and Burgess, of London,' not yet complete, and not very striking in its modern effects and decorations. These vast old churches of the fourth or fifth class are always imposing from their size and pretensions and elaborateness of work, and are found in France and Belgium almost by the hundred. And so I wander on through the showy streets, thinking what stirring scenes this complacent old city has witnessed, what tale of siege and battle—Spaniard, Frenchman, and Fleming, Louis the Great, the refuge of Louis XVIII. after his flight. All the time there is the pleasant musical jangle going on of tramcars below and bell-chimes aloft. But of all things in Lille, or indeed elsewhere, there is nothing more striking than the old Bourse—the great square venerable block, blackened all over with age, its innumerable windows, high roof, and cornices, all elaborately and floridly wrought in decayed carvings. With this dark and venerable mass is piquantly contrasted the garish row of glittering shops filled with gaudy wares which forms the lowest story. Within is the noble court with a colonnade of pillars and arches in the florid Spanish style; in the centre a splendid bronze statue of the First Napoleon in his robes, which is so wrought as to harmonize admirably with the rest. In the same congenial spirit—a note of Belgian art which is quite unfamiliar to us—the walls of the colonnade are decorated with memorials of famous 'Stock Exchange' worthies and merchants, and nothing could be more skilful than the enrichment of these conventional records, which are made to harmonize by florid rococo decorations with the Spanish genre and encrusted with bronzes and marbles. This admirable and original monument is in itself worth a journey to see.
Who has been at Commines? though we are all familiar enough with the name of Philip of 'that ilk.' I saw how patriarchal life must be at Commines from a family repairing thither, who filled the whole compartment. This was a lady arrayed in as much jet-work as she could well carry, and who must have been an admirable femme de ménage, for she brought with her three little girls, and two obstreperous boys who kept saying every minute 'maman!' in a sort of whine or expostulation, and two aides-de-camp maids in spotless fly-away caps. With these assistants she was on perfect terms, and the maids conversed with her and dissented from her opinions on the happiest terms of equality. When taking my ticket I was asked to say would I go to Commines in France or to Commines in Belgium, for it seems that, by an odd arrangement, half the town is in one country and half in the other! Each has a station of its own. This curious partition I did not quite comprehend at first, and I shall not forget the indignant style in which, on my asking 'was this the French Commines,' I was answered that 'of course it was Commines in Belgium.' Here was yet another piquant bell-tower seen rising above trees and houses, long before we even came near to it. I was pursued by these pretty monuments, and I could hear this one jangling away musically yet wheezily.
It is past noon now as we hurry by unfamiliar stations, where the invariable abbé waits with his bundle or breviary in hand, or peasant women with baskets stand waiting for other trains. There is a sense of melancholy in noting these strange faces and figures—whom you thus pass by, to whom you are unknown, whom you will never see again, and who care not if you were dead and buried. (And why should they?) Then we hurry away northwards.
IX.
YPRES.
s the fierce heat of the sun began to relax and the evening drew on—it was close on half-past six o'clock—we found ourselves in Belgium once more. Suddenly, on the right, I noted, with some trees interposed, a sort of clustered town with whitened buildings, which suggested forcibly the view of an English cathedral town seen from the railway. The most important of the group was a great tower with its four spires. I knew instinctively that this was the famous old town-hall, the most astonishing and overpowering of all Belgian monuments.
Here we halted half an hour. The sun was going down; the air was cool; and there was that strange tinge of sadness abroad, with which the air seems to be charged towards eventide, as we, strangers and pilgrims in a foreign country, look from afar off at some such unfamiliar objects. There were a number of Flemings here returning from some meeting where they had been contending at their national game—shooting at the popinjay. Near to every small town and village I passed, I had noted an enormously tall white post with iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old woman came to offer cakes from her basket for sale, he convulsed his friends by facetious remarks as he made his selection from the basket, depreciating or criticizing their quality with sham disgust, delighting none so much as the venerable vendor herself. Every one wore a curious black silk cap, as a gala headpiece.