a passage in one of Mr. Lecky's books--I cannot put
my finger on the exact reference--in which he pronounces that the sins
of France, which are many, are forgiven her, because, like the woman in
the Gospels, she has loved much. It is not our business now, if indeed
at any time, to appraise the sins of Belgium; but surely her love, in
anguish, is manifest and supreme. When we contemplate these firstfruits
of German "kultur"--this deluge of innocent blood, and this wreckage of
ancient monuments--who can hesitate for a moment to belaud this little
people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the spirit of purest
sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and frightful
Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent creed, exemplified
perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of Persian
Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that it is
only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves on
triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, in truth, through the blood
of a bruised and prostrate Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a
rescued European civilization will spring presently from the soaked and
untilled soil?

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 rebu