Soignies (In Flemish Zirick),
Roughly Half-Way Between Mons And Brussels, And Probably Little
Visited, Has A Sombre Old Abbey
Church, of St. Vincent Maldegaire,
that was built in the twelfth century, and that is enriched inside
with such a
Collection of splendidly carved classical woodwork -
stalls, misericordes, and pulpit - as you will scarcely find
elsewhere even in Belgium. The pulpit in particular is wonderful,
with its life-sized girl supporters, with their graceful and
lightly poised figures, and pure and lovely faces. Namur,
strangely enough, has really nothing of antiquity outside the
doors of its Archaeological Museum, but is worth a visit if only
for the pleasure of promenading streets which, if almost wholly
modern, are unusually clean and bright. Tirlemont, again, has two
old churches that will not delay you long, though Notre Dame de
Lac has remarkably fine confessionals of the dawn of the
seventeenth century, and though the splendid brass-work of the
font and baptistery lectern at St. Germains would alone be worth a
visit; but Leau, for which Tirlemont is the junction, is so quaint
and curious a little town, and comes so much in the guise of a
pleasant discovery - since Baedeker barely mentions it - that, even
apart from its perfect wealth of wood and brass work in the fine
thirteenth-century church of St. Leonhard, it might anyhow be
thought to justify a visit to this little visited corner of South
Brabant. I do not know that the brass-work could be easily matched
elsewhere:
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