ble showed by their cleanlines and comfortable
surroundings that enjoyment of life was restricted to no one class.

This matter of religious faith, however, was bound to come up again
and bring, as it proved, ruin upon the city. A body of people who
thought it wrong to have pictures and statues of saints, and of Mary
and her Son, gathered together and for four days went from one Flemish
town to another and destroyed everything of the sort to be found in
the churches. Four hundred places of worship were desecrated, many of
them within the city of Antwerp. Because of their zeal against the use
of so-called _images_ they were called _Iconoclasts_.

If formerly they had been punished for _thinking_ things against the
established religion of the State, what now could be expected when
they had _done_ such sacrilegious things?

"Again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat."

[Illustration: RUBENS AND HIS FIRST WIFE _Rubens_]

Our imagination cannot picture things so terrible as were perpetrated
upon the inhabitants of Antwerp for their part in the destruction of
the "images." This terrible event is known in history as _The
Spanish Fury_. Thousands of her people were killed, most of her
palaces were burned, and the treasure of her wealthy citizens was
stolen. Property was confiscated to the Spanish Government. Death and
terror, theft and rapine reigned in the beautiful city of the Scheldt.
When the dead were buried, the charred ruins of buildings removed, and
the Spanish soldiery withdrawn, the mist-beclouded Netherland sun
shone out on a dead city which even to-day bears marks of the
Spaniard's fury. Grass grew in what had been its busiest streets,
trade almost ceased, and thousands of weavers and other artisans went
to England where they could pursue their vocations unmolested.

Philip was apparently satisfied with the chastisement he had
inflicted. He began to restore the confiscated property to its
rightful owners, and to encourage the industry he had so cruelly
destroyed. He even made Flanders an independent province under the
Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella. Although peace had returned
and a degree of prosperity again prevailed, yet many other things were
irretrievably gone, and the people lived every day in the sight of
painful reminders of their former greatness.

In art, too, these low country provinces had made m