mediaevalism. Of the short strip of Flemish coast, from near
Knocke, past the fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst,
Blankenberghe, and Ostende, to a point beyond La Panne--from
border to border it measures roughly only some forty miles, and is
almost absolutely straight--I willingly say little, for it seems
to me but a little thing when compared with this glorious inland
wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it has developed in
every direction, and is now almost continuously a thin,
brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and lodging-
houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, where
only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of rolling
sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only
with rushes and coarse grass. About tastes there is no disputing;
and there are people, no doubt, who, for some odd reason, find
this kind of aggressive modernity in some way more attractive in
Belgium than in Kent. For myself, I confess, it hardly seems worth
while to incur the penalty of sea-sickness merely to play golf on
the ruined shore of Flanders.





III.


Of Brussels I do not propose to say very much, because Brussels,
although the brightest and gayest town in Belgium, and although
retaining in its Grande Place, and in the buildings that
immediately surround this last, as well as in its great church of