The Spell of Flanders

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THE SPELL OF FLANDERS

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THE SPELL SERIES

Each volume with one or more colored plates and many illustrations from original drawings or special photographs. Octavo, with decorative cover, gilt top, boxed.

Per volume $2.50 net, carriage paid $2.70

THE SPELL OF ITALY

By Caroline Atwater Mason

THE SPELL OF FRANCE

By Caroline Atwater Mason

THE SPELL OF SOUTHERN SHORES

By Caroline Atwater Mason

THE SPELL OF ENGLAND

By Julia de W. Addison

THE SPELL OF HOLLAND

By Burton E. Stevenson

THE SPELL OF SWITZERLAND

By Nathan Haskell Dole

THE SPELL OF THE ITALIAN LAKES

By William D. McCrackan

THE SPELL OF TYROL

By William D. McCrackan

THE SPELL OF JAPAN

By Isabel Anderson

THE SPELL OF SPAIN

By Keith Clark

THE SPELL OF FLANDERS

By Edward Neville Vose

THE SPELL OF THE HOLY LAND

By Archie Bell

THE PAGE COMPANY

53 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

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[Illustration: Cathedral of St. Sauveur, Bruges

(See page 47)]

THE SPELL OF FLANDERS

An Outline of the History, Legends and Art of Belgium's Famous Northern Provinces

Being the story of a Twentieth Century Pilgrimage in a Sixteenth Century Land just before the Outbreak of the Great War

by

EDWARD NEVILLE VOSE

Illustrated

Boston The Page Company MDCCCCXV

Copyright, 1915, by the Page Company

All rights reserved

First Impression, April, 1915

The Colonial Press

C. H. Simonds Company, Boston, U. S. A.

To

ALBERT I.,

King of the Belgians, the guiding star of a brave nation and the hero of the Battle of Flanders in the Great War, this book is dedicated

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Lord Beaconsfield once said: "Flanders has been trodden by the feet and watered by the blood of countless generations of British soldiers." This famous passage--which has received a new confirmation to-day--is typical of many references among English writers and statesmen to Flanders as a general term covering all of what is now known as Belgium. Among the citizens of that brave little Kingdom, however, and among most Continental writers, Flanders is recognised as being the name of only the northern part of Belgium. Small as that country is, it has for centuries been bi-lingual, the northern portion speaking Flemish, the southern French; and for centuries the history of the Flemish provinces was as distinct from that of the Walloon province to the southward as the early history of California or Texas was from that of New England.

Although eventually united under one Government with the Walloons and with what is now Holland, it was during the long period of their semi-independence that the Flemings achieved many of the artistic and architectural monuments that have made Flanders for all time one of the most interesting regions in the world.

While this book, therefore, does not attempt to describe the whole of Belgium, it does present a pen picture of the northern part of the country as it existed almost at the moment when the devastating scourge of the Great War swept across it.

FOREWORD

This book is the record of a vacation tour in the beautiful old Flemish towns of Northern Belgium beginning in May and ending in July of the Summer of 1914. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo took place while our little party was viewing the mediæval houses and churches of Ghent and Audenaerde, but in the many discussions of that event to which we listened there was no whisper of the awful fate which the march of events was so soon to bring upon one of the most charming, peaceful and happy countries in the world.