It consists of three stories, the two lower of which are square and flanked by balconies with turrets; the windows below are of the simple early Gothic style, but show a later type of architecture in the octagon.  The niche in the center contains the Virgin and Child, a group restored after being destroyed by the French revolutionists.  Below it on either side are smaller figures holding escutcheons.  From the balcony between these last, the laws and the rescripts of the counts were read aloud to the people assembled in the square.

The Belfry can be ascended by steps.  Owing to the force of the wind, it leans slightly to the southeast.  The view from the top is very extensive and striking.  It embraces the greater part of the Plain of Flanders, with its towns and villages.  The country, tho quite flat, looks beautiful when thus seen.  In early times, however, the look-out from the summit was of practical use for purposes of observation, military or maritime.  It commanded the river, the Zwin, and the sea approach by Sluys and Damme; the course of the various canals; and the roads to Ghent, Antwerp, Tournai, and Courtrai.  The Belfry contains a famous set of chimes, the mechanism of which may be inspected by the visitor.  He will have frequent opportunities of hearing the beautiful and mellow carillon, perhaps to excess.  The existing bells date only from 1680:  the mechanism from 1784.

A PEN PICTURE OF BRUGES[A]

[Footnote A:  From “The Paris Sketch Book.”]

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

It is the quaintest and prettiest of all the quaint and pretty towns I have seen.  A painter might spend months here, and wander from church to church, and admire old towers and pinnacles, tall gables, bright canals, and pretty little patches of green garden and moss-grown wall, that reflect in the clear quiet water.  Before the inn-window is a garden, from which in the early morning issues a most wonderful odor of stocks and wallflowers; next comes a road with trees of admirable green; numbers of little children are playing in this road (the place is so clean that they may roll on it all day without soiling their pinafores), and on the other side of the trees are little old-fashioned, dumpy, whitewashed, red-tiled houses.

A poorer landscape to draw never was known, nor a pleasanter to see—­the children especially, who are inordinately fat and rosy.  Let it be remembered, too, that here we are out of the country of ugly women; the expression of the face is almost uniformly gentle and pleasing, and the figures of the women, wrapt in long black monk-like cloaks and hoods, very picturesque.  No wonder there are so many children:  the “Guide-book” (omniscient Mr. Murray!) says there are fifteen thousand paupers in the town, and we know how such multiply.