The new Regent made it more magnificent than ever; it was a time when five centuries of mediæval culture were blooming in beauty and great learning, and the beneficent qualities of the early, or Christian Renaissance, were uniting with all that had come from an epoch whose term had already arrived. In Italy the Renaissance had rotted into a poison, but the virus had penetrated only a little way into the veins of Europe. The Papacy was rotten to the core, the Medici were cloaking their pestilential tyranny and their glorification of material gain in the fine vesture of learning and æsthetics. Machiavelli was dethroning Christian ethics and substituting efficiency in its place, but the Christian Renaissance was still fighting its losing battle through Cardinal Cusa, Sir Thomas More, and Erasmus. Dürer, Holbein, Hans Sachs were giving a new glory to at least two of the arts in Germany, and as yet Luther was no more than a threat, Wolsey a rising star whose balefulness was not apparent, Calvin unheard of, Henry VIII a splendid prince shortly to be proclaimed “Defender of the Faith” he was so soon to cast down into the mire. In the domains of Margaret of Malines the afterglow of Catholic culture was still golden and gracious, and while she defended the interests and the welfare of the principality she held in trust with a vigour and a persistency that threw into the shade the lesser abilities of her male predecessors, she made of her city a new centre of learning and righteousness. Here came Louis Vives and Adrian, Archbishop of Utrecht, later the Pope of a year who, had he lived, might have reformed the Church and made the Protestant Reformation innocuous; Erasmus of Rotterdam, that engaging character who could have matched and worsted Luther, and done his work better than he, had he possessed the sincerity and the consecration of a martyr; “Cornelius Agrippa,” Massé, Everard, Molinet, Renacle de Florienne, and other lesser lights. Mabuse, Van Orley, Coxcie came as painters to produce the altar-pieces and portraits desired by the Regent and her court; composers and musicians sought her patronage, for she had a passionate love for music of all sorts and wrote many poems and songs which they set after the fashion of the time. Her interest in architecture was intense, and she made Rombaut Keldermans her court architect, charging him amongst other things with the completion of the vast tower of the church of his name-saint, begun by his direct ancestor Jan in 1452. This was a famous family of master masons, Jan, with his brother André, Mathieu, Antoine, and later Antoine II, Rombaut, and Laurent. The designs for the completion of St. Rombaut’s tower and also for a great Hôtel de Ville are still preserved, and in vision one can see them carried out by and by in a new and regenerated Malines under a new and regenerated civilisation. As a matter of fact, the stone for St. Rombaut’s spire was already cut and on