To those who enjoy rambling through the byways of history there is no town richer in associations, yet less spoiled by the visits of the all but ubiquitous tourist, than Dixmude. At present this little city is situated fifteen miles from the sea, yet all the ancient chroniclers aver that prior to the thirteenth century it was a seaport with a commerce overseas and a not inconsiderable fishing fleet. As one looks across the miles and miles of pleasant fields, interspersed with waving windmills and tiny villages, this part of the ancient city's history seems utterly incredible, but it is too well authenticated to be disputed. Ten times, so the histories tell us, Dixmude was besieged and bravely defended by its citizens. More than once it was destroyed by fire and rebuilt, but at last the blight that destroyed the prosperity of its larger and more powerful neighbours, Ypres, Bruges and Ghent, struck at the heart of its industries as well and it sank by imperceptible degrees into its long sleep. Like the abode of the Sleeping Princess, of whom Tennyson wrote, one might almost fancy that all life had stopped centuries ago at the wave of some magic wand. The summer's sun and winter's rain and snow of half a thousand years have left but the faintest traces on its old houses and its great parish church of St. Nicholas. The pride and joy of this church is its altar screen, or _jubé_, said to have been designed by Urban Taillebert, the architect of the Church of St. Martin at Ypres and many other celebrated works of around the year 1600. There is also an "Adoration of the Magi" by Jordaens, and the usual collection of minor works of art. To us, however, this old church was far more interesting externally than within, its huge clock tower resembling nothing else that we had seen in Flanders or elsewhere. The Grande Place, from which one can obtain a fine view of the old church with a row of Lilliputian houses nestling below it, is big enough to accommodate all the present inhabitants of the town in one corner. In its prime Dixmude is said to have had thirty thousand inhabitants, and all the room on the Place was, no doubt, needed on market days, but it does not have a fifteenth of that number now, and the wide, grass-grown expanse of cobble-stones is entirely deserted.