In The Chapel Of The Holy Blood Is
Preserved The Crystal Cylinder That Is Said To Enshrine Certain
Drops Of
The blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the Holy
Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and
Installed in the
Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt
of which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been
rebuilt, in the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the
relic is exhibited to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to
kiss it. Some congealed blood of Our Lord is also said to be
preserved, after remarkable vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in
the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and mediaeval Gloucestershire once
boasted as big a treasure, which brought great concourse and
popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles. Pass beneath the
archway of the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, cross the sluggish
canal, and turn sharply to the left, and follow, first the cobbled
Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai
Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble
cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the
adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and
gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in
mellow charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford
whose presence Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet,
to overpower his "soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says
elsewhere in his journal, "the modern taste in costume,
architecture, etc., has got the mastery; in Ghent there is a
struggle; but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air
of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a thinly-peopled
city is inexpressibly soothing.
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