its hoofs in the court-yard; the wall of St. Jacques, eaten away by the years, faced us.  The sun, somewhere, was trying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour of omelet was in the air, and all was well.  This is the home-like side of its life.  It may still harbour artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but we met none of them.  Poetic images are aroused at dusk along the banks of canals, bathed in spectral light.  Here Georges Rodenbach, that poet of delicate images, placed his hero, a man who had lost a beloved wife.  He saw her wraith-like form in the mist and at the end went mad.

The Memlings hang in a chamber at the Hospital St. Jean; the Chasse of St. Ursula is a reliquary, Gothic in design.  They consist of a dozen tiny panels painted in exquisite fashion, with all the bright clarity and precision of a miniaturist, coupled with a solidity of form and lyric elegance of expression.  They represent the side of Memling’s art which might be compared to the illuminators of manuscripts or to the artificers in gold and precious stones.  There is a jewelled quality in this illustration of the pious life and martyrdom of St. Ursula at Cologne.  But it is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking.  A portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the donator of the diptych, La Vierge aux Pommes, is as superb a Memling as one could wish for.  The little hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush.  It is the modelling, the rich manipulation of tones (yes, values were known in those barbarous times), the graceful fall of the hair treated quite as much en masse as with microscopic finish; the almost miraculous painting of the folded hands, and the general expression of pious reverie, that count most.  The ductile, glowing colours make this a portrait to be compared to any of the master’s we have studied at London, Berlin, Dresden, Luebeck, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels.  But Bruges is the natural frame for his exalted genius.

If the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-colour—­a fable, it is said—­Memling, who followed them, taught many great Italian painters the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint.  There is the portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the serious girl with the lace veil.  Did any of the later Dutch conjurers in paint attain such transparency?  The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych with its wings representing the beheading of St. John the Baptist—­the Salome is quite melancholy—­and St. John at Patmos, is one of the world pictures.  The Adoration of the Magi, with its wings, The Nativity, and Presentation in the Temple, is equally touching.  For me Memling’s Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than Rubens—­which is operatic in comparison.  The Virgin type of Van Eyck is less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in the conception of Botticelli.  Faith blazed more fiercely in the breasts of these Primitive artists.  They felt Christ’s Passion and the sorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians