Yet even if German “kultur” in the end sweep wholly into ruin the long accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and painting—­if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to-morrow be reckoned with Dinant and Louvain—­yet it would still be worth while to set before a few more people this record of vanished splendour, that they may better appreciate what the world has lost through lust of brutal ambition, and better be on guard in the future to protect what wreckage is left.  All these treasures were bequeathed to us—­not to Belgium alone, but to the whole world—­by the diligence and zeal of antiquity; and we have seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment into dust beneath the heel of an insolent and degraded militancy.  Belgium, in very truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of other nations, has lavishly wrecked her own.  “They made me keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept.”

Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the “work of waste and ruin” is wholly irreparable.  One sees in the illustrated English papers pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches at Dixmude, Dinant, and Louvain, made evidently from photographs, that suggest at least that it is not impossible still to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  Dixmude, indeed—­I judge from an interior view—­is possibly shattered past hope; but Dinant and St. Pierre, at Louvain, so far at least as their fabrics are concerned, seem to lack little but the woodwork of their roofs.  It is only a few years ago since the writer stood in the burnt-out shell of Selby Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though some ancient fittings of inestimable value have irreparably perished, is in some ways not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, than its imperfect predecessor.  One takes comfort, again, in the thought of York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single madman Martin in 1829, and of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in nave and chancel, whilst the great gallery of painted glass, by some odd miracle, escaped.  Is it too much to hope that this devil’s work of a million madmen at Dixmude or Nieuport may prove equally incomplete?

In the imperfect sketch that follows I write of the aspect of Belgium—­of its cities, that were formerly the most picturesque in Europe; of its landscapes, that range from the level fens of Flanders to the wooded limestone wolds of the Ardennes—­as I knew these, and loved them, in former years, before hell was let loose in Europe.  And perhaps, the picture here presented will in time be not altogether misrepresentative of the regenerated Belgium that will certainly some day arise.

II.