IV.
One Has Left Oneself All Too Little Space To Say What Ought To Be
Said Of The Belgian Ardennes.
Personally I find them a trifle
disappointing; they come, no doubt, as a welcome relief after the
rest of
Belgian landscape, which I have heard described, not
altogether unjustly, as the ugliest in the world; but the true
glory and value of Belgium will always be discovered in its
marvellously picturesque old towns, and in its unrivalled wealth
of painting, brass-work, and wood-carving. Compared with these
last splendours the low, wooded wolds of the Ardennes, with their
narrow limestone valleys, seem a little thing indeed. Dinant, no
doubt, and Rochefort would be pleasant places enough if one were
not always harking back in memory to Malines and Ypres, or longing
to be once more in Ghent or Bruges.
The traveller by railway between Brussels and Liege passes, soon
after leaving the station of Ans, a point of great significance in
the study of Belgian landscape. Hitherto from Brussels, or for
that matter from Bruges and Ostend, the country, though studded at
frequent intervals with cities and big towns, has been curiously
and intensely rural in the tracts that lie between; but now, as we
descend the steep incline into the valley of the Meuse, we enter
on a scene of industrial activity which, if never quite as bad as
our own Black Country at home, is sufficiently spoilt and
irritating to all who love rustic grace. The redeeming point, as
always, is that infinitely superior good taste which presents us,
in the midst of coal-mines and desolation, not with our own
unspeakably squalid Sheffields or Rotherhams, but with a queenly
city, with broad and handsome streets, with a wealth of public
gardens, and with many stately remnants of the Renaissance and
Middle Time.
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