The little town itself is tranquil, dreamy, clean. In its narrow, winding streets there are some curious old houses with high-pitched roofs and crow-stepped gables, and here and there are some curious old buildings with mullioned windows and Gothic doorways, which one is quite sure, if they are not now the homes of nuns, were at one time, and of course there is a sprinkling of those clean, comfortable-looking, substantial dwellings which are always to be met with in quiet nooks and corners in the country towns of Belgium. Sometimes they have courtyards in front, separated from the street by cunningly wrought iron railings and paved with cobble-stones, on which stand palms in tubs, or bay trees fashioned like umbrellas. Sometimes stretching out behind there is a trimly-kept walled garden of which the passer-by occasionally obtains a refreshing glimpse through some half-open door. They were built for the most part about a hundred and fifty years ago, and are the homes of local professional men or the winter abodes of the neighbouring country gentry, who, reckoning their incomes by hundreds, rather than thousands, are rich enough not only to vegetate comfortably and in a manner befitting their station, but to give alms with no stinted hand, and withal and always to keep very respectable balances at their bankers. The most interesting feature of the town of Nivelles is, of course, the old Minster, with the exception, perhaps, of Tournai Cathedral, the finest Romanesque church in Belgium. It is a noble pile three hundred and twenty feet long, with three towers at the west end, single nave-aisles, strongly-marked transepts, and an unusually long rectangular choir built over a crypt. Within, however, it is disappointing, for the interior was so completely transformed in the course of the seventeen hundreds that no vestige of the original work was left visible. Efforts are now being made to repair the mischief. The beautiful crypt, which had been completely filled up with earth and rubble, has been excavated and restored, the walls of the choir and transepts have been stripped of the bastard Renaissance ornament with which they were disfigured, the bays which had been bricked up have been opened, a timber roof has been substituted for the plaster ceiling, and it is proposed, as soon as funds are forthcoming, to completely restore the whole church. The restoration, it is pleasing to note, is being carefully and conscientiously carried out, but though every available fragment is being utilised, so much of the old work has disappeared that, alas, there is no hope of adequately repairing the havoc wrought by the ill-judged generosity of the canons of Nivelles in 1754.