Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/621

Bk. III. Ch. I. enabled her to develop. While the rest of Europe was engaged in feudal wars and profitless crusades, the peaceful burghers of the Belgian cities were quietly amassing that wealth which gave them individually such importance as free citizens of independent communities, and raised their towns, and eventually their country, to the state of prosperity it maintained till the destruction of their liberties by the Spaniards in the 16th century.

These historical circumstances go far to explain the peculiar character observable in the architectural remains of this country, in which we find no trace of any combined national effort. Even the epoch of Charlemagne passed over this province without leaving any impress on the face of the country, nor are there any buildings that can be said to have been called into existence by his influence and power. The great churches of Belgium seem, on the contrary, to have been raised by the individual exertions of the separate cities in which they are found, on a scale commensurate with their several requirements. The same spontaneous impulse gave rise to the town-halls and domestic edifices, which present so peculiar and fascinating an aspect of picturesque irregularity.

Even the devastation by the Normans in the 9th and 10th centuries seems to have passed more lightly over this country than any other in the north of Europe. They burned and destroyed, indeed, many of the more flourishing cities, but they did not occupy them, and when they were gone the inhabitants returned, rebuilt their habitations, and resumed their habits of patient self-supporting labor ; and when these inroads ceased there was nothing to stop the onward career of the most industrious and commercial community then established in Europe.

In a historical point of view, the series of buildings is in some respects even more complete than the wonderful group) we have just passed in review in France. In size the cathedrals of Belgium are at least equal to those that have just been described. In general interest, no cathedral of France exceeds that of Tournay, none in gorgeousness that of Antwerp; and few surpass even those of Louvain, Mechlin, Mons, Bruges and Ghent. Notwithstanding their magnificence, however, it must be confessed that the Belgian cathedrals fail in all the higher requisites of architectural design when compared with those on their southern border. This was owing partly to the art never having been in the hands of a thoroughly organized and educated body of clergy like that of France, but more to the ethnographic difference of race, which in the first place prevented centralization, and also rendered them less keen in their appreciation of art, and less influenced by its merits. From these and other causes, their ecclesiastical buildings do not display that elegance of proportion, and that beauty of well-considered and appropriate detail, which