long accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and
painting--if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to-
morrow be reckoned with Dinant and Louvain--yet it would still be
worth while to set before a few more people this record of
vanished splendour, that they may better appreciate what the world
has lost through lust of brutal ambition, and better be on guard
in the future to protect what wreckage is left. All these
treasures were bequeathed to us--not to Belgium alone, but to the
whole world--by the diligence and zeal of antiquity; and we have
seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment into dust beneath the
heel of an insolent and degraded militancy. Belgium, in very
truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of other
nations, has lavishly wrecked her own. "They made me keeper of the
vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept."

Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the "work of
waste and ruin" is wholly irreparable. One sees in the illustrated
English papers pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches
at Dixmude, Dinant, and Louvain, made evidently from photographs,
that suggest at least that it is not impossible still to rebuild
the walls of Jerusalem. Dixmude, indeed--I judge from an interior
view--is possibly shattered past hope; but Dinant and St. Pierre,
at Louvain, so far at least as their fabrics are concerned, seem
to lack little but the woodwork of their roofs. It is only a few
years ago since the writer stood in the burnt-out shell of Selby
Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though some ancient fittings
of inestimable value have irreparably perished, is in some ways
not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, than its
imperfect predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the thought of
York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single madman