Although for many, perhaps most, of my readers, Belgian literature is summed up in the one word, Maeterlinck, it is nevertheless true that the writers of this little country have been no unworthy spokesmen for so sturdy and independent a race. Even when the nation lay stupefied in the relentless grasp of Spain, among the exiles who sought refuge in Holland was at least one poet, Vondel, who is remembered with pride today. From the earliest days of Belgian fable the name of the chronicler, Lucius de Tongres, has come down to us. Like many another monk, he wrote in his humble cell the annals of the warring tribes. We think of the Nibelungen Lied as the especial property of Germany, but "The epic of the Franks belongs to our provinces," says the Belgian writer, Potvin, "and the Siegfried of the Nibelungen is called the _hero of the Low Countries_." Later, when troubadour and trouvère sang of love and war from Provence to Normandy, there were minstrels also in the castles of Flanders and Brabant. Jean Bodel of Arras, in his "Chansons des Saxons," sang of resistance to the power of Charlemagne, and it was the trouvères of the Walloon country who first borrowed from the Britons the cycle of the _Table Ronde_. The greatest poet of the reign of Philip of Alsace, at the end of the twelfth century, was Chrestien de Troyes, a native of Brabant, whose writings were imitated in England and Germany. The "Chambers of Rhetoric," formed in the sixteenth century to provide entertainment for the people, exerted so great an influence in promoting a taste for art and literature among Belgians in general that our own Motley could find nothing with which to compare it except the power of the press in the nineteenth century. These chambers were really theatrical guilds, composed almost entirely of artisans, and they not only produced plays and recited original poetry but also arranged pageants and musical festivals. In 1456, the Adoration of the Lamb was reproduced as a tableau vivant by the chamber of rhetoric at Ghent. The "Seven Joys of Mary" was given at Brussels for seven years, beginning in 1444, and was the best acted mystery of that time. Jean Ruysbroeck was called the "Father of Flemish Prose," while Jean le Bel (a Walloon) started a school of writers which rivaled that of France. The treatment these rhetoricians received from the Spanish sovereigns is sufficient proof that they were the mouthpiece of the people and voiced their aspirations for freedom in both church and state--Charles V was their persecutor, Philip II their executioner.