The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but of Venice there is naught, except the scum on the canal waters.  The secular odour of Bruges was not unpleasant in October; in August it may have been.  We know that the glory of the city hath departed, but there remain the Memlings, the Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to mention several magnificent old churches.

Let us stroll to the Beguinage.  Reproductions of Memling and Van Eyck are in almost every window.  The cafes on the square, where stands the Belfry of Longfellow’s poem, are overflowing with people at table.  It is Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or a procession thrown in.  You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (Sint Salvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations date back to the seventh.  The narrow lane-like street winds around the rear of the church.  Presently another church is discerned with a tower that must be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some time between the tenth and fourteenth centuries.  Notre Dame contains the tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, a lovely white marble statue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to Michael Angelo, and a fine bow-window.  We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turn up an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see the canal that passes the houses of the Beguinage.  The view is of exceeding charm.  The spire of Notre Dame and the apsis may be seen up (or is it down?) stream.  A bridge cuts the river precisely where it should; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to the ensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which seems to have entered the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance for his composition.  Nature and the handicraft of man paint pictures all over Bruges.

We enter the enclosure with the little houses of the beguines, or lay sisterhood.  There is nothing particular to see, except a man under a tree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog sleeps.  The sense of peace is profound.  Even Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday compared with the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels is as noisy as a boiler shop.  The Minnewater (Lac d’Amour) is another pretty stretch, and so we spent the entire day through shy alleys, down crooked streets, twisting every few feet and forming deceptive vistas innumerable, leading tired legs into churches, out of museums, up tower steps.

That first hard stroll told us how little we could know of Bruges in a day, a week or a month.  Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels and wished that the clock and the calendar could be set back several centuries.  At twilight the unusual happened:  the Sandman appeared with his hour-glass and beckoned to bed.  There is no night in Bruges for the visitor within the gates; there is only slumber.  Perhaps that is why the cockneys call it Bruges the Dead.  The old horse that drags the hotel bus was stamping