uvain, is smothered
under half an inch of plaster; but where this has been removed in
tentative patches, revealing the dark blue "drums" of the single,
circular columns of the arcades, the general effect is immensely
improved. One would also like to send to the scrap-heap the enormous
seventeenth-century figures of the Apostles on their consoles on the
piers, which form so bad a disfigurement in the nave. The treasure of
the church is the great "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, which is hung in the
south transept, but generally kept covered. To see other stately
pictures you must go to the church of St. Jean, where is a splendid
altar triptych by Rubens, the centre panel of which is the "Adoration
of the Magi"; or to the fifteenth-century structure of Notre Dame au
dela de la Dyle (the clumsy title is used, I suppose, for the sake of
distinction from the classical Notre Dame d'Hanswyck), where Rubens'
"Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is sometimes considered the painter's
masterpiece. It is not yet clear whether this noble picture has been
destroyed in the recent bombardment. Even to those who care little for
art, a stroll to these two old churches through the sleepy back-streets
of Malines, with their white and sunny houses, can hardly fail to
gratify.

If Malines is a backwater of the Middle Time, as somnolent or as dull
(so some, I suppose, would call it) as the strange dead towns of the
Zuyder Zee, or as Coggeshall or Thaxted in our own green Essex,
Antwerp, at any rate, which lies only some fifteen miles or so to the
north of it, is very much awake, and of aspect mostly modern, though
not without some very curious and charming relics of antiquity embedded
in the heart of much recent stone and mortar. Perhaps it will be well
to visit one of these at once, taking the tram direct from the
magnificent Gare de l'Est (no lesser epithet is just) to the Place
Verte, which may be considered the real centre of the city; and making
our way thence by a network of quieter back-streets to the Musee
Plantin-Moretus, which is the goal of our immediate ambition. I bring
you here at once, not merely because the place itself is quite unique
and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes precisely
that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern din and bustle of
Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we listen needfully. Happy,
indeed, was the inspiration that moved the city to buy this house from
its last private possessor