Friday, September 29th 1854 ~ Ghent, Belgium

"St John the Evangelist at Patmos" (1479, H. Memling).

Late last evening, we visited the Biguinage, a very large nunnery where we saw service performed in a dimly lighted room, in presence of six hundred nuns clothed in white and black; black dresses with white capes and a white piece of linen folded over making the scene very solemn and impressive. The lodging houses of these nuns are small and surround the central point, the building for worship. The people of Belgium are celebrated, and long have been, for their religious devotion or perhaps superstition, whichever you choose to call it. They are said to be controlled more by their priests than any other nation in Europe. This morning early, we left Ghent in the cars for Bruges (about 18 miles distant) and we hardly know whether to be dissatisfied with our days employment or not. Bruges is a smaller city than Ghent, but has two very fine cathedrals and many very curious paintings, products of the early German schools. It also boasts a chime of bells said to be the finest in Europe, which Longfellow has much admired and immortalized. They are played by machinery every quarter hour and are very musical, but did not strike us as of great power, or as being very much superior to all the other chimes of Europe!! They should be heard on Sunday when they are played by a musician. We sat on a bench in the great square to listen to them. Previously we had visited with a guide the Hospitial of “St. Sean” where there are several fine pictures – a Van Dyke the “Virgin and Child.” The Child is sleeping on its mother’s breast, St. Joseph enters in the background and the mother’s face expresses fear least he should awaken the infant. The most beautiful specimen of the Flemish schools we have yet seen are here. The Decolation of John the Babtist and the inspiration of John at Patmos. In the last mentioned St. John is sitting in a rapt attitude and sees in the air above God the Father in encircled by a rainbow of glory and by his side is a white Lamb standing on a throne and around them are the four and twenty elders and in the distance the seven plagues represented by strange looking monsters. The colors of this painting are extremely briht and hard. It is said to be a fine type of the style and strange conceptions of this school in the middle ages. In the cathedral of Notre Dame we were shown a Michael Angelo (the Supper at Emmaus) a beautiful painting, but I should think of doubtful genuineness. Also the tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter wife of Maximilian, on these tombs were their figures in time worn gilt bronze. In passing, our guide pointed out to us a house in which Charles 2nd of England lived while in exile here. It is in the square before the cathedral and is a large house, but not remarkable in appearance. Everything in this section of country recalls the middle ages. The ordinary buildings here seem to have been preserved an immense time. Among the relics at the Hospital is an area of St. Ursula preserved in a case of wood, on the sides of which are sketches of her life in several parts, representing her voyage to Rome with the eleven thousand virgins, their return with the Pontiff and subsequent massacre by the Huns at Cologne. These virgins were English and went up the Rhine crossed Switzerland and returned in the same way. This was in the third century. We took the cars at two o’clock back to Ghent having gone through a dinner of half a dozen courses of fish at Bruges (a place celebrated for its Friday fish dinners) but not appreciated by us. At six we took the cars from Ghent for Brussels. The conductor uses a large brass horn slung around his neck to direct the movements of the train. He as well as all the other officials are in a sort of uniform. In England a whistle was used for the same purpose. The lower classes here speak Flemish but nearly every one we meet speaks French. The money is francs and centimes.