To the west of the Grande Place, and scarcely a stone's throw from Baldwin's Tower, rises the vast grey mass of Ste. Walburge, with ten or twelve tiny fifteenth or sixteenth century houses nestling snugly up against it. This splendid church dates from the very foundation of the city, an early chapel erected on this site having been sacked and burned by the Norsemen in 880. Twice after this the church was destroyed in the wars between Flanders and France, but in 1150 was begun an edifice of which some portions still remain. When John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, chose Audenaerde as his Flemish place of residence the burghers determined to enlarge and beautify their church and erected the semi-circular portion of the choir in 1406 to 1408. Soon afterwards the great nave was begun, but was not completed for fully a century, in 1515. The tower, one of the finest in the world, advanced still more slowly and was not entirely finished until 1624. Its original height was three hundred and seventy-three feet, but in 1804 the wooden spire was struck by lightning and burned. It has never been rebuilt, and the present height of the tower is two hundred and ninety-five feet. As it is, it dominates the little city and commands a wide view across the broad valley of the Scheldt in every direction. It was a stiff climb, up a perpetually winding stone stairway, to the top, but the view well repaid us for the exertion. The interior of the edifice suggests a great metropolitan cathedral rather than the chief church of a small provincial town. The choir, which suffered severely from the ravages of the iconoclasts, has recently been restored with great skill, and is now one of the most beautiful in Europe. This church contains several paintings by Simon de Pape, a native of Audenaerde, whose father was the architect of the spire burned in 1804, also an "Assumption of the Virgin Mary" by Gaspard de Crayer, a follower of Rubens, who painted more than two hundred religious pictures. This, like all the others, is of mediocre merit. To the student of history and of ancient art one of the most interesting treasures of the church is its collection of tapestries of Audenaerde. Three of the more important ones represent landscapes--in fact the majority of Audenaerde tapestries that I have seen may be thus described--with castles, churches, and farmhouses in the centre and roses, tulips and other flowers in the foreground. Like most Audenaerde tapestries also they are crowded with winged creatures--birds flying or singing in the trees and hens, turkeys and pheasants strolling in the grass. A tapestry of a different genre is one belonging to the Confrerie de la Ste. Croix, which shows an Oriental landscape with Jerusalem in the distance, and at the four corners the figures of Herod, Pilate, Anna and Caiphas.