of dead, flat plain. It may well be, indeed, as some have
suggested, that the character of architecture is unconsciously
determined by the type of surrounding scenery; that men do not build
spires in the midst of mountains to compete with natural sublimity that
they cannot hope to emulate, but are emboldened to express in stone and
mortar their own heavenward aspirations in countries where Nature seems
to express herself in less spiritual, or at any rate in less ambitious,
mood.

As we cross the level prairie between these two little towns of West
Flanders (we hope to visit them presently), a group of lofty roofs and
towers is seen grandly towards the west, dominating the fenland with
hardly less insistency than Boston "Stump," in Lincolnshire, as seen
across Wash and fen. This is the little town of Furnes, than which one
can hardly imagine a quainter place in Belgium, or one more entirely
fitted as a doorway by which to enter a new land. Coming straight from
England by way of Calais and Dunkirk, the first sight of this ancient
Flemish market-place, with its unbroken lines of old white-brick
houses, many of which have crow-stepped gables; with the two great
churches of St. Nicholas, with its huge square tower, and of St.
Walburge, with its long ridge of lofty roof; and with its Hotel de
Ville and Palais de Justice of about the dawn of the seventeenth
century, is a revelation, in its atmosphere of sleepy evening quiet, to
those who rub their eyes with wonder, and find it hard to credit that
London, "with its unutterable, external hideousness," was actually left
behind them only that very morning, and is actually at present not two
hundred miles distant. Furnes, in short, is an epitome, and I think a
very charming one, of all that is most characteristic in Flanders; and
not the less charming because here the strong currents of modern life
that throb through Ghent and Antwerp extend only to its threshold in
the faintest of dying ripples, and because you do not need to be told
that in its town hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish
leather, and that the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the
ante-chamber of the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to
throw yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness
from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which
Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed.

Furnes--in Flemish Veurne--is an excellent centre from which to explore