Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/214

230 none—nothing of that which is so well expressed by the untranslatable German word “gemüthlichkeit,” and which may be found even in the poorest cottage. In order to live happily in such rooms as these, one must have some great soul-vitalizing object out of them. But this exists not in the Bèguignage. Every one who enters them may, indeed, renounce all personal luxury, and all outward worldliness, but yet may, at the same time, live merely for themselves, or for their friends.

Many of the individuals now there worked together in warm rooms. Most of those with whom I conversed appeared to have no cause of complaint. But sunshine was wanting as much within as without the house.

It cannot be denied that a well-ordered, large establishment, in which people can live comfortably, although frugally, at a reasonable cost, and have retirement and intercourse, just as they like, supplies a want in social life for many lonely individuals. But, I could never become enthusiastic about this; and if ever I were tempted to enter into a Catholic society, it would not be the Bèguiguage.

From Ghent we went to Bruges. Bruges stands like a falling monument of ancient greatness. The city,—the population of which amounted, in the time of Louis XI., to four hundred thousand persons, does not now exceed forty thousand; of which, one half are said to require support. There are handsome streets and palaces, but they are empty and desolate. Bruges, they say, is sick, Bruges is dying, because Bruges has no longer any staple branch of industry which can sustain her life. Its small lace-making trade scarcely pays its own labor. The Abbé