But the principal exhibition of the old masters of Bruges, is in the parlour of the chapel at the ancient _Hospital of Saint John_. Here the pride of the custodian are the chef-d’œuvres of Hans Memling. Hemling was a soldier and a roué, a prodigal and a genius utterly unconscious of his power. He ended a career of excesses by enlisting in one of the military companies of Bruges, his native city, and from the battle of Nancy, whither he had followed Charles the Rash, in 1477, he was carried, wounded and dying, to the Hospital of St. John. The skill of the leeches triumphed, however, and Hans was restored to strength and vigour, when, for want, perhaps, of some other asylum, he spent ten years of his subsequent life amongst his friends in the hospital, and enriched its halls with the choicest specimens of his art. These pictures are of marvellous brilliancy, although it is said, that Hemling rejected the use of oil, which had been introduced by his contemporary and rival, Van Eyck, and adhered to the old plan of tempering his colours with size and albumen. The artist, too, has introduced into them portraits of the nuns and sisters of charity, who were the attendants of the sick in the hospital--a delicate and yet lasting memorial of his gratitude for their kindnesses towards himself. Amongst a number of portraits and scriptural subjects, the gem of the collection is a little, old-fashioned _cabinet_, probably intended for the reception of relics, some three feet long and broad in proportion, covered with a conical lid, and the whole divided into pannels, each containing a scene from the legend of St. Ursula, and the massacre of herself and her eleven thousand virgins, by the Goths, at Cologne. This curious little antique is so highly prized, that it is shown under a glass cover, and the directors of the hospital refused to exchange it for a coffer of the same dimensions in solid silver. The execution of the paintings has all the characteristic faults and beauties of its author, only the former are less glaring from the small dimensions of the figures. The faces of the ladies exhibit a good perception of female beauty, and St. Ursula herself has her hair plaited into braids and drawn behind her ear, much in the fashion of the present time in England. The majority of the other pictures have the folding doors which were peculiar to all the painters of the Low Countries, till Rubens latterly dispensed with the use, though they are to be seen on his matchless “Descent from the Cross,” and some others of his pictures in the cathedral at Antwerp. They served to close up the main composition when folded across it; and as they are, themselves, painted on both sides, so as to exhibit a picture whether closed or open, they had the effect of producing five compartments all referring to the same subject, but of which the four outward ones are, of course, subsidiary to the grand design within.