Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/51

Rh draperies on the relief are in a bold fine style. One of the earliest has a bishop, where all his robes are carved out, with almost the threads of his vest. Others, however, are for general effect. We mounted 450 steps to the top of the steeple; whence we saw a complete horizon of plain, canals, intersecting trees, and houses and steeples thrown here and there, with Gand below at our feet. The sea at a distance, bound by the hands of man, which pointed "So far shall ye go and no farther." Bruges held in the horizon its steeples to our view, and many hamlets raised from out their surrounding wood their single spires to sight.

Treading again the iron-plated 450 stairs, we came into the street; and, mounting into a fiacre, we went to the Ecole de Dessin, where we found a well-provided gallery of paintings, with two students, unmoved by the visitors around, painting with the patience if not the genius of Dutch masters. They were rather a nuisance on the present occasion, as one covered with his machine a chef d'œuvre of Rubens, the St. Roch amongst the Sick of the Plague. There were two more by the same, of St. Roch and his Dog, etc. They were in a different style of colouring—sombre and grey; none of his gay draperies that I, no connoisseur, thought were constituents of Rubens. I saw—I do not remember whose, but—a picture that struck me much,