skeleton clock-face, the proportions of which are reproduced on
the pavement of the market-place below. The carillons in this
tower are an extravagant example of the Belgian passion for
chiming bells. Once safely inside the church, and the monster
tower forgotten, and we are able to admire its delicate internal
proportions, and the remarkable ornament of the spandrels in the
great main arcades of the choir. Unfortunately, much of this
interior, like that of St. Pierre at Louvain, 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