One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed
too zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour
of crisis.
Perhaps there is no big city in the world - and Bruges,
though it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great
estate in the Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand
souls - that remains from end to end, in every alley, and square,
and street, so wholly unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the
modern spirit, or that presents so little unloveliness and squalor
in its more out-of-the-way corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course,
like Venice, and half a dozen towns in Holland, is a strangely
amphibious city that is intersected in every direction, though
certainly less persistently than Venice, by a network of stagnant
canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the splendour of
the better parts of Venice - the Piazza and the Grand Canal - and
lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if somewhat
faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of the
Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her
monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so
dilapidated, and tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one
stumbles against in Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and
in sailing up almost every canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say,
what Byron said of Greece, that
"Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath";
whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all,
but the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital
old age.
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