wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by
being thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482. These two
tombs are of capital interest to those who are students of Belgian
history, for Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of
Burgundy, and it was by the marriage of his daughter that the
Netherlands passed to the House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately
fell under the flail of religious persecution during the rule of
her grandson, Spanish Philip. Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St.
Catherine, is the famous old Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick
walls of which rise sleepily from the dull waters of the canal,
just as Queens' College, or St. John's, at Cambridge, rise from
the sluggish Cam. Here is preserved the rich shrine, or chasse,
"resembling a large Noah's ark," of St. Ursula, the sides of which
are painted with scenes from the virgin's life by Hans Memling,
who, though born in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and thus really
by birth a German, lived for nearly a quarter of a century or more
of his life in Bruges, and is emphatically connected, like his
master Roger van der Weyden and the brothers Van Eyck, with the
charming early Flemish school. There is a story that he was
wounded under Charles le Temeraire on the stricken field of Nancy,
and painted these gemlike pictures in return for the care and
nursing that he received in the Hospital of St. Jean, but "this
story," says Professor Anton Springer, "may be placed in the same
category as those of Durer's malevolent spouse, and of the
licentiousness of the later Dutch painters." These scenes from the
life of St. Ursula are hardly less delightfully quaint than the
somewhat similar series that was painted by Carpaccio for the
scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now preserved in the
Accademia. Early Flemish painting, in fact, in addition to its own
peculiar charm of microscopic delicacy of finish, is hardly