I was requested to go away from England for a time, so here I am, about to join my mother in Brussels--or in a little country place near Brussels." _Hawk_: "Well, I've been Secretary of Legation there.

I'm just going back to--to--well I'm just going back." At Bruges they were told that the train would not leave for Ghent and Brussels for another two hours--some mobilization delay; so Hawk proposed they should go and see the Memlings and then have some dinner.
"Don't you think they're perfectly wonderful ?"--_apropos_ of the pictures in the Hospital of St.Jean.
_Vivie_: "It depends on what you mean by 'wonderful.' If you admire the fidelity of the reproduction in colour and texture of the Flemish costumes of the fifteenth century, I agree with you.

It is also interesting to see the revelations of their domestic architecture and furniture of that time, and the types of domestic dog, cow and horse.

But if you admire them as being true pictures of life in Palestine in the time of Christ, or in the Rhineland of the fifth century, then I think they--like most Old Masters--are perfectly rotten.

And have you ever remarked another thing about all paintings prior to the seventeenth century: how _plain_, how _ugly_ all the people are?
You never see a single good-looking man or woman.