and this mode of speech more exactly expresses all the things that
constitute the magic of the place: a great city, a great personal
destiny, a famous school, and ultra-celebrated pictures. All this is
imposing, and our imagination becomes excited rather more than usual
when, in the centre of the _Place Vert_, we see the statue of Rubens
and, farther on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs
which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it.

The statue is not a masterpiece; but it is he, in his own home. Under
the form of a man, who was nothing but a painter, with the sole
attributes of a painter, in perfect truth it personifies the sole
Flemish sovereignty which has neither been contested nor menaced, and
which certainly never will be.

[Illustration: THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS.
_Rubens._]

At the end of the square is seen Notre Dame; it presents itself in
profile, being outlined by one of its lateral faces, the darkest one, on
account of the rains beating on that side. It is made to look blacker
and bigger by being surrounded with light and low buildings. With its
carved stonework, its rusty tone, its blue and lustrous roof, its
colossal tower where the golden disk and the golden needles of its
dial glitter in the stone discoloured by the vapours from the Scheldt
and by the winters, it assumes monstrous proportions. When the sky is
troubled, as it is to-day, it adds all its own strange caprices to the
grandeur of the lines. Imagine then the invention of a Gothic Piranesi,
exaggerated by the fancy of the North, wildly illuminated by a stormy
day, and standing out in irregular blotches against the scenic
background of a sky entirely black or entirely white, and full of