A Legend for Husbands.—1699.
Which Wives, Too, May Read—possibly Not Without Profit.
My story is of people that have long since passed away, so that no one need take it as personal.
American travellers sometimes differ—though for my part, I do not see why they should—as to the relative attractions of Paris and London. But they seldom fail to concur in their estimate of Brussels as one of the most interesting and agreeable cities in Europe.
And really the Flemish metropolis presents a remarkable variety of attractions. Parks, boulevards, botanic gardens, museums, quaint old streets, quainter old houses, libraries, great pictures, treasures of Rubens, wealth of old MSS., and last, not least, grand specimens of middle-age architecture, such as the Hotel de Ville and the Cathedral of St. Gudule.
Indeed, in mediaeval monuments no country in Europe is richer than Belgium.
In presence of her grand old cathedrals you can well understand the enthusiasm of those artists who maintain that our age takes entirely too much credit to itself for its encouragement of the fine arts. Neither the past nor the present century, they maintain, will leave to posterity monuments of such grandeur, boldness, beauty, and originality as have been bequeathed to us by the period that immediately followed the crusades; and strangely enough, these bequests of the "dark ages" can bear any test of critical scrutiny, even in the full blaze of our nineteenth century enlightenment.
Will our architectural legacies appear as well in the eyes of future generations?
"Why, look around you," said to me a Flemish artist; "in those days the erection of a costly edifice was not handed over to mere mechanics. The body of it was intrusted to architects. Sculptors created its woodwork. Carvers executed what is now turned out by machinery; painters gave you pictures where you now get plaster, and the Benvenuto Cellinis of the day worked their miracles of art in metals which today the blacksmith hammers out at his forge. Ah! that was the golden age of artists, when the pulpits, the altars, the stalls, and the organ-lofts were monuments; when furniture, doors, chairs, and tables were poems in wood; when the family goblets, the mere handle of a poignard or a sword were chased and embellished; when exquisite miniatures, illuminated missals, and wood engravings made a picture-gallery of the dryest chronicle; when fresco and encaustic decorated the walls and floors; when ceilings and beams shone with arabesques, windows were bright with stained glass; when, in short, all the arts brought their tribute of beauty to a church or to a palace. It was in the fading twilight of these artistic glories that sculpture in wood still flourished among the artists of ancient Flanders."