for the accommodation of an audience, and for six hundred years the choir stood alone as a challenge to future generations to complete what had been so gloriously begun.  Only seven years ago the transept was added, and to the credit of its builders it is worthy to stand beside the choir.  One wonders how many hundred years may have passed before the vision of the first great architect is complete.  It is built for the most part of red brick, the rich red brick of Belgium, which grows only more mellow with age.  Inside, the tall pillars of a dark grey stone support at a great height a finely groined roof of the same red brick, lit by a clerestory so open that one wonders how it can carry the weight of the roof above.  The tall windows of the transept, reaching almost from the floor to the roof, with their delicate tracery, carry on the same effect of airiness, while their light is softened by the really beautiful stained glass which they frame.  The richly carved choir-stalls of dark mahogany and the fine organ furnish an interior of which any town in England might well be proud.  And all this magnificence is in a little Flemish town of some six thousand inhabitants.

One is brought suddenly face to face with the tremendous difference which exists between the Protestant and the Catholic conception of what a church is and what it is for.  To the one it is a place where men meet for mutual support and instruction, for united worship; to the other it is a place where men meet God.  To the one some organized service is necessary; the other only requires the stones on which to kneel.  The one will only go to church—­in fact, he will only find his church open at certain appointed times; for the other it is only closed with darkness.  Of course, I am using the words Protestant and Catholic to indicate broad conceptions of religion, and not as defining definite bodies of men; but even of those who call themselves by these names what I have said is largely true.  And this difference in conception is reflected in the churches which they build.  For the one a simple building will suffice which will seat in comfort those who may come; the other, though he alone should ever enter it, will raise to heaven the mightiest temple which mortal hands can frame.

Fumes still carries on a tradition of medieval times—­the strange procession which passes through its streets and across the great square on the last Sunday in July.  Its origin, in the twelfth century, is unknown, though many legends are woven around it.  It is a long procession, in which are represented many of the episodes in the story of the Christ, some in sculptured groups of figures, some by living actors.  Before each group walks a penitent, barefoot and heavily veiled in black gown and hood, carrying an inscription to explain the group which follows.  Abraham appears with Isaac, Moses with the serpent, Joseph and Mary, the Magi, and the flight into Egypt.  Then come incidents from the life of Jesus, and the great tragedy