The works of Leopold Courouble are greatly enjoyed. He represents the humour of Brabançon fiction. As the old painters of Flanders gave expression to Flemish gaiety in their immortal canvases, so has Courouble concentrated in "Les Fiançailles de Joseph Kaekebroeck" the whole spirit of a race. Le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is noted as a critic and essayist, and has had five of his works crowned by the French Academy. Henri Pirenne, author of "Histoire de la Belgique," is at the head of the list of Belgian historians today. (There have been a number of patriotic books written foreshadowing this war. Balzac wrote "France et Belgique," and it has been said that Balzac was the inspiration of the modern writers of Belgium.) Grégoire le Roi, Maeterlinck's friend, is described by Bithell as "the poet of retrospection"--"the hermit bowed down by silver hair, bending at eventide over the embers of the past, visited by weird guests draped with legend." It is said "the weft of his verse is torn by translation, it cannot be grasped, it is wafted through shadows." Charles van Lerberghe wrote his play of the new school, "Les Flaireurs," in 1889, before Maeterlinck had published anything, but his work resembles the latter's somewhat in style. He was born in 1862, of a Flemish father and a Walloon mother, which resulted in a sort of dual personality. Van Lerberghe was "a man for whom modern life had no more existence than for a mediæval recluse," and he passed his happiest years in an old-world village in the Ardennes. He died in 1907, having published besides the play already mentioned, only three little books of poetry, "Entrevisions," "La Chanson d'Eve," and "Pan"--small but classic. Maeterlinck speaks of his verse as having a sort of "lyric silence, a quality of sound such as we have not heard in our French poetry." The early poems of Rossetti are suggested by his work. "If poetry is music van Lerberghe is a poet. The charm of his verses is unique," writes Bithell. Are not these stanzas on "Rain" exquisite? "The rain, my sister dear, The summer rain, warm and clear, Gently flees, gently flies, Through the moist atmosphere. "Her collar of white pearls Has come undone in the skies. Blackbirds, sing with all your might, Dance, magpies! Among the branches downward pressed, Dance, flowers, dance, every nest, All that comes from the skies is blest." "Fernand Severin, who was lecturer in French literature at the University of Ghent, is a poet of great charm. His diction is apparently that of Racine, but in substance he is essentially modern." The following lines, from the translation by Bithell, will give an idea of the grace and beauty of his style: