Vanished towers and chimes of FlandersEdwards, George Wharton
Religion
Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders
Edwards, George Wharton
Change ringing; Chimes; Church buildings -- Flanders; Flanders -- Description and travel
Delightful bits of the more intimate side of the people's life revealed
themselves to us on these unusual trips. We passed a fine looking old
peasant woman in a beautiful lace cap, rowing a boat with short powerful
strokes in company with a young girl, both keeping perfect time. The
boat was laden with green topped vegetables and brightly burnished brass
milk cans, forming a picture that was most quaint to look upon. And
later we passed a large Rhine barge, from the cabin of which came the
most appetizing odor of broiled bacon. Our whistle brought out the whole
family, and likewise a little nervous black and white dog who went
nearly mad with the excitement attendant upon driving us away from the
property he had to protect.
Night was falling when we reached the quay side in Antwerp, and we
disembarked to the tinkling melody of the wondrous chimes from the tower
of the great Cathedral.
Louvain
Louvain
It was in the great Gothic Church of St. Peter that Mathias Van den
Gheyn delighted to execute those wonderful "_morceaux fugues_" now at
once the delight and the despair of the musical world, upon the fine
chime of bells in the tower. This venerable tower was entirely destroyed
in the terrible bombardment of the town in 1914. It is probable that no
town in Belgium was more frequented by learned men of all professions,
since its university enjoyed such a high reputation the world over, and
certainly its library, likewise entirely destroyed, with its precious
tomes and manuscripts, was considered second to none.
The old Church of St. Peter, opposite the matchless Hotel de Ville, was
a cruciform structure of noble proportions and flanked with remarkable
chapels; it was begun, according to the archives in Brussels, in 1423,
to replace an earlier building of the tenth century, and was "finished"
in the sixteenth century. There was, it seems, originally a wooden spire
on the west side of the structure but "it was blown down in a storm in
1606."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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