as in London.  Their habit and taste have accustomed the citizens to accept this music for ever floating in the upper air as part of the city’s life—­the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it.  Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London.  The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben—­that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church discipline could be more ferocious.  Bell noise and bell music are two different things.’  This fanciful tower had its four corner towerlets, suggesting the old burly Scotch pattern, which indeed came from France; while the vane on the top still characteristically flourishes the national Flemish lion.

Most bizarre, not to say extravagant, was the great cathedral, which was laid out on strange ‘lines,’ having a huge circular chapel or pavilion of immense height in front, whose round roof was capped by a vast bulbous spire, in shape something after the pattern of a gigantic mangel-wurzel!  This astonishing decoration had a quaint and extraordinary effect, seen, as it was, from any part of the city.  Next came the nave, whilst the transepts straggled about wildly, and a gigantic fortress-like tower reared itself from the middle.  Correct judges will tell us that all this is debased work, and ’corrupt style;’ but, nevertheless, I confess to being both astonished and pleased.

This was the great festival of the Corpus Domini, and, indeed, already all available bells in the place had been jangling noisily.  It was now barely seven o’clock, yet on entering the vast nave I found that the ‘Grand Mass’ had begun, and the whole was full to the door, while in the great choir were ranged about a hundred young girls waiting to make their first Communion.  A vast number of gala carriages were waiting at the doors to take the candidates home, and for the rest of the day they would promenade the city in their veils and flowers, receiving congratulations.  There was a pleasant provincial simplicity in all this and in all that followed, which brought back certain old Sundays of a childhood spent on a hill overlooking Havre.  I liked to see the stout red-cheeked choristers perspiring with their work, and singing with a rough stentoriousness, just as I had seen them in the village church of Sanvic.  And there was the organist playing away at his raised seat in the body of the church, as if in a pew, visible to the naked eye of all; while two cantors in copes clapped pieces of wood together as a signal for the congregation to kneel or rise.  Most quaint of all were the surpliced instrumentalists with their braying bassoon and ophicleide:  not to forget the double-bass player who ‘sawed’ away for the bare life of him.  The ever visible organist voluntarized ravishingly and in really fine style.  I should like to have heard him at his own proper instrument, aloft, in the gallery yonder, quite an enormous structure of florid pipes in stories and groups, with angels blowing trumpets and flying saints.  It seemed like the stern of one of the Armada vessels.  How he would have made the pillars quiver! how the ripe old notes would have twanged and brayed into the darkest recesses!