It is a pathetic and even an awesome thing to have to say of any place—even of a tiny village—“it was, and is no longer.” That, unhappily, is what we now have to say of the venerable and beautiful town of Louvain—the Oxford of Belgium. Spared by innumerable armies, by the fighting men of a thousand years, it fell victim to one stupid barbarian, who, I suppose, still imagines himself to be an officer and a gentleman. His name is given as Manteuffel, and it is a curious irony of fate that the destroyer of one of the oldest homes of learning in Europe should bear a name honoured by all classical scholars. This German commander, angered by a report, which seems to have been quite false, that some of the inhabitants of the town had fired when they saw their dread enemy approaching, ordered his soldiers to set fire, deliberately and systematically, to the houses and public buildings of a town which, to all lovers of the beautiful and to every scholar in the old and the new world, had become a shrine, a place of joyful pilgrimage. Till this summer there actually remained at Louvain a fragment of what had once been Cæsar’s Castle, and this survival of Roman days was of special interest to English people, for Edward III and his queen lived in the Castle for a winter. That great Emperor, Charles V, and his sister also, were scholars at Louvain, their teacher there being a priest who afterwards became Pope Adrian VI. Heroic deeds were performed by some of the citizens of Louvain. Take the case of Dr. Noyons, who happened at the time to be Principal of the Medical Faculty of the University. On the very day the German Army approached the town, he suddenly learned that a hundred wounded were to be brought in. Beds were hurriedly got ready, and Dr. Noyons and his wife, as well as a large staff, were in attendance. This was at mid-day, and the wounded kept arriving all the afternoon. At seven o’clock the firing of the town began! By eight o’clock the famous library was in flames! Dr. Noyons’ own house, though it contained a number of wounded and had the Red Cross flag on the door, was now set on fire. But all night long the professor and his wife went on attending on the wounded, and when, the next morning, they were informed they must leave the town, in order that it might be razed to the ground by big guns, this noble-hearted couple at once decided to remain with those of the wounded (many of them Germans) who were too much injured to be moved. Helped by a few trusted assistants, they carried their unhappy patients into the cellars of the hospital, and then they remained waiting for two days for a bombardment which fortunately never came. At the end of that time, this brave steadfast pair—a hero and heroine of a rare and splendid type—brought the wounded up again to the wards, and calmly continued to look after them.