The early history of Furnes is obscure, though it is generally supposed to have grown up round a fortress erected by Baldwin Bras-de-Fer to check the inroads of the Normans. It suffered much, like its neighbours, from wars and revolutions,[*] and is now one of the quietest of the Flemish towns. The market-place is a small square, quaintly picturesque, surrounded by clusters of little brick houses with red and blue tiled roofs, low-stepped gables, and deep mouldings round the windows. Behind these dwelling-places the bold flying buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose relics were brought to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, and the tower of St. Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and east; and close together in a corner to the west are the dark gray Hotel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges of the Inquisition used to sit. [Footnote *: 'Furnes etait devenue un _oppidium_, aux termes d'une charte de 1183, qui avait a se defendre a la fois contre les incursions des etrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle," comme l'appelle l'Abbe de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours dechiree par les factions et toujours prete a la revolte.'--GILLIODTS VAN SEVEREN: _Recueil des Anciennes Coutumes de la Belgique; Quartier de Furnes_, vol. i., p. 28.] [Illustration: FURNES. Grand Place and Belfry.] Though some features are common to nearly all the Flemish towns--the market-place, the belfry, the Hotel de Ville, the old gateways, and the churches, with their cherished paintings--yet each of them has generally some association of its own. In Bruges we think of how the merchants bought and sold, how the gorgeous city rose, clothed itself in all the colours of the rainbow, glittered for a time, and sank in darkness. In the crowded streets of modern Ghent, the busy capital of East Flanders, we seem to catch a glimpse of bold Jacques van Artevelde shouldering his way up to the Friday Market, or of turbulent burghers gathering there to set Pope, or Count of Flanders, or King of Spain at defiance. Ypres and its flat meadows suggest one of the innumerable paintings of the Flemish wars, the 'battle-pieces' in which the Court artists took such pride: the town walls with ditch and glacis before them, and within them the narrow-fronted houses, and the flag flying from steeple or belfry; the clumsy cannon puffing out clouds of smoke; the King of France capering on a fat horse and holding up his baton in an attitude of command in the foreground; and in the distance the tents of the camp, where the travelling theatre was set up, and the musicians fiddled, and an army of serving-men waited on the rouged and powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders. [Illustration: FURNES. Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice.]