Very Belgian, Too, In Character Is The Rood-Beam, With Its Three Figures Of Our Lord In Crucifixion, Of The Virgin, And Of St. John; And The Striking Renaissance Rood-Screen In Black And White Marble, Though Not As Fine As Some That Are Found In Other Churches.

Rood-screens of this exact sort are almost limited to Belgium, though there is one, now misplaced in the

West end of the nave, and serving as an organ-loft, in the church of St. Gery at Cambrai - another curious link between French and Belgian Flanders. Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuide), nine and a half miles south from Nieuport, is an altogether bigger and more important place, with a larger and more important church, of St. Nicholas, to match. My recollection of this last, on a Saturday afternoon of heavy showers towards the close of March, is one of a vast interior thronged with men and women in the usual dismal, black Flemish cloaks, kneeling in confession, or waiting patiently for their turn to confess, in preparation for the Easter Mass. Here the best feature, till lately, was the glorious Flamboyant rood-screen, recalling those at Albi and the church of Brou, in France; and remarkable in Belgium as one of the very few examples of its sort (there is, or was, another in St. Pierre, at Louvain) of so early a period, in a land where rood-screens, as a body, are generally much later in date.

It is difficult, in dealing with Flanders, to avoid a certain amount of architectural description, for architecture, after all, is the chief attraction of the country, save perhaps in Ghent and Bruges, where we have also noble pictures.

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