It Is Hard, Indeed, That Necessities Of Space Should Compel Us To Pass So Lightly Over Other Towns In Flanders

- Over Courtrai, with its noble example of a fortified bridge, and with its great picture, by Van Dyck, of the

"Raising of the Cross" that was stolen mysteriously a few years ago from the church of Notre Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at the Louvre, been recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two fine churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half- deserted churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish mediaevalism. Of the short strip of Flemish coast, from near Knocke, past the fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst, Blankenberghe, and Ostende, to a point beyond La Panne - from border to border it measures roughly only some forty miles, and is almost absolutely straight - I willingly say little, for it seems to me but a little thing when compared with this glorious inland wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it has developed in every direction, and is now almost continuously a thin, brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and lodging- houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, where only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of rolling sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only with rushes and coarse grass.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 22 of 44
Words from 5960 to 6238 of 12374