The Church, In Fact, Looks, When Viewed Externally,
More Like Four Separate Churches Than One; And When We Step
Inside,
With all the best will in the world to make the best of
it, it is hard to find, much
To admire, and anything at all to
love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long,
feeble lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of
Belgian architecture - its lack of really beautiful detail, and
its fussy superfluity of pinnacle and panelling - seems to me here
to culminate. Belgium has really beautiful churches - not merely of
the thirteenth century, when building was lovely everywhere, but
later buildings, like Mons, and St. Pierre at Louvain; but Antwerp
is not of this category. Architecturally, perhaps, the best
feature of the whole church is the lofty spire (over four hundred
feet), which curiously resembles in general outline that of the
Hotel de Ville at Brussels (three hundred and seventy feet), and
dates from about the same period (roughly the middle of the
fifteenth century). As usual in Belgium, it is quite out of scale;
it is lucky, indeed, that the corresponding south-west tower has
never been completed, for the combination of the two would be
almost overwhelming. It is curious and interesting as an example
of a tower tapering upwards to a point in a succession of
diminishing stages, in contrast with tower and spire. France has
something like it, though far more beautiful, in the thirteenth-
century tower at Senlis; but England affords no parallel.
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