Approaching Ghent, indeed, by railway
from Bruges, and with our heads full of old-world romance of Philip van
Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers (for whom Ghent was
rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse without peer," "brought
good news from Ghent," one is rather shocked at first, as we circle
round the suburbs, at the rows of aggressive new houses, and rather
tempted to conclude that the struggle has now ended, and that
modernity, as at Brussels, has won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt
is dissipated as we quit the splendid Sud station--and Belgium, one may
add in parenthesis, has some of the most palatial railway-stations in
the world--and find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of
ancient thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet,
and in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at
every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six great
things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon (and in the
cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the Lamb," by Hubert
and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel, with a "Crucifixion" by
Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful old houses on the Quai des
Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry; and possibly the Grande
Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town. The cathedral has the usual
solitary west tower, as at Ely, that we have now come to associate--at
Ypres and Bruges--with typical Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is
hung in a chapel on the south of the choir, and the services of the
verger must be sought for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters
are merely copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture
Gallery in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a
fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany owes
to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work of the
early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been begun by
Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre-piece is in
illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12): "Worthy is the Lamb
that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
and honour, and glory, and blessing." One may question, indeed, if
figurative language of the kind in question can ever be successfully
transferred to canvas; whether this literal lamb, on its red-damasked
table, in the midst of these carefully marshalled squadrons of
Apostl