THE GLORY OF BELGIliM.* Tnu title of this book, The
Glory of Belgium, refers chiefly to the splendid monuments of mediaeval architecture. But to this title must now be added " Ichabod I "—at least in a great many cases—and every day there is present the anxiety of wondering what glorious monument of human genius in the past has been destroyed by the nation which has probably written more scientific treatises on works of art than any other. What is more, practically every destruction of a great building in Belgium and France has been an act of deliberate wickedness unnecessary from a military point of view. In an introductory chapter Mr. Ingpen gives a sketch of Belgian history, which shows how hard the lot of a small State has been in the past and also how this country has been the prey of executioner tyrants from Alva to Wilhelm. The marvel is the tenacity of the race and the splendour of its achievement in the arts. Flemish Gothic is a thing of its own, especially in the region of municipal building, where it is not only original but unrivalled—or rather was, for its greatest example, the Cloth Hall at Ypres, is now no more than a ruin. Strange is the irony that buildings which remained intact throughout the so-called barbarous ages fell before the advance of scientific warfare. Mr. Bruckman has recorded for us in a. very artistic way many of the great buildings of Belgium. His method for the most part is to concentrate our attention by means of light and firm drawing where he wishes us to look, and leave the unimportant spaces not worked out. If the side of a street has to be included for the sake of coherence, though it is at the moment artistically undesirable, a flat tone and a few outlines present it unobtrusively. Mr. Bruckman wisely avoids filling up the whole of his drawings with fully realized things, no matter whether they add to his general effect or not. His compromise shows to great advan- tage in such illustrations as the street in Malines, where the sky, the old building against it, and the modern whitewash all blond together in harmony. The tower of Courtrai and the two drawings of Louvain are also excellent. Mr. Bruckman is best at architecture, but the road at Oudenarde has also inspired him. The chapter dealing with Ypres and the places near, now familiar in every English village, is sad reading. What remains of the fine Town Hall of Dixmude or of the old shops in Ypres itself, so charmingly drawn by Mr. Bruckman
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