As for the material employed by the ancient architects of Bruges, it was chiefly brick, not the smooth, fine grained, sharp edged kiln brick beloved of the modern English builder, but beautiful, rough surfaced, clamp brick, for the most part small in dimensions, in hue sometimes red, sometimes what is technically called white, more often parti-coloured, always fair to look on, exceedingly durable, and in some cases carved like stone. No less pleasing were the tiles and slates with which they roofed their buildings, the former flat, oblong, ruddy, of slender dimensions, the latter of similar shape but not quite so small, and their colour! grey, purple, green, and, when the sun shines on them, silver shot with gold. Go up into the Belfry on some glad summer's morning, look down on the ancient roofs of Bruges, and thou shalt not regret it. CHAPTER XXIV _The Painters and the Pictures of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century_ From time immemorial the culture of the arts, and notably of the art of painting, has largely entered into the lives alike of the people of Flanders and of the kindred folk of the neighbouring provinces. Thanks to the influence and the fostering care of the great monastic houses, which were everywhere scattered about these lands, the races which inhabited them had at a very early period attained no little proficiency, not only in the science of construction, but in the art of adorning their buildings with sculpture and pictorial representations, and it may be justly said that the monks of Flanders--her first artists and her first artisans--made possible that glorious page in the history of Flemish painting which begins with the divine harmonies of Hubert van Eyck and ends with the colossal splendour of Rubens. The chronicles which these cloistered toilers compiled, the books which they made beautiful with gold and colour and fantastic devices, the frescoes which of late years have been brought to light in all parts of the country, these things bear witness to it. Adelard II., Abbot of St. Trond, who died in 1082, was renowned in his day as a painter. At Liège there were frescoes in the Church of St. Martin dating from the close of the nine hundreds, the Cathedral of St. Lambert in the same city was similarly adorned years before the fire which destroyed it at the end of the twelfth century, and at this epoch the artist-monks of the Abbeys of Lobbes and of Stavelot were famous throughout Europe.