late in the evening, to listen to the chimes from the
belfry. The tower is less than four hundred feet
high, and not so high by some seventy feet as the
one on Notre Dame near by; but it is very picturesque,
in spite of the fact that it springs out of a rummagy-looking
edifice, one half of which is devoted to soldiers’
barracks, and the other to markets. The chimes
are called the finest in Europe. It is well to
hear the finest at once, and so have done with the
tedious things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes
as the Dutch are of stagnant water. We heard
them everywhere in Belgium; and in some towns they
are incessant, jangling every seven and a half minutes.
The chimes at Bruges ring every quarter hour for a
minute, and at the full hour attempt a tune.
The revolving machinery grinds out the tune, which
is changed at least once a year; and on Sundays a
musician, chosen by the town, plays the chimes.
In so many bells (there are forty-eight), the least
of which weighs twelve pounds, and the largest over
eleven thousand, there must be soft notes and sonorous
tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered down:
but we liked better than the confused chiming the
solemn notes of the great bell striking the hour.
There is something very poetical about this chime
of bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum
and traffic of the city its oft-repeated benediction
of peace; but anybody but a Lowlander would get very
weary of it. These chimes, to be sure, are better
than those in London, which became a nuisance; but
there is in all of them a tinkling attempt at a tune,
which always fails, that is very annoying.
Bruges has altogether an odd flavor. Piles of
wooden sabots are for sale in front of the shops;
and this ugly shoe, which is mysteriously kept on
the foot, is worn by all the common sort. We see
long, slender carts in the street, with one horse
hitched far ahead with rope traces, and no thills
or pole.
The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks
of black cloth with a silk hood thrown back.
Bruges is famous of old for its beautiful women, who
are enticingly described as always walking the streets
with covered faces, and peeping out from their mantles.
They are not so handsome now they show their faces,
I can testify. Indeed, if there is in Bruges
another besides the beautiful girl who showed us the
old council-chamber in the Palace of justice, she must
have had her hood pulled over her face.
Next morning was market-day. The square was lively
with carts, donkeys, and country people, and that
and all the streets leading to it were filled with
the women in black cloaks, who flitted about as numerous
as the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, moving
in a winged way, their cloaks outspread as they walked,
and distended with the market-basket underneath.
Though the streets were full, the town did not seem
any less deserted; and the early marketers had only
come to life for a day, revisiting the places that