"Well, ma'am, from London we went across by Ostend to Bruges, where
I studied the Memlings, and made a few little copies from them,"
Melissa answered, with her sunny smile. "It's such a quaint old
place--Bruges; life seems to flow as stagnant as its own canals.
Have you ever been there?"
"Oh, charming!" Lucy answered; "most delightful and quiet.
But--er--who are the Memlings? I don't quite recollect them."
Melissa gazed at her open-eyed. "The Memlings?" she said, slowly;
"why, you've just missed the best thing at Bruges if you haven't
seen them. They've such a naive charm of their own, so innocent
and sympathetic. They're in the Hopital de St. Jean, you know, where
Memling put them. And it's so delightful to see great pictures
like those (though they're tiny little things to look at) in their
native surroundings, exactly as they were first painted--the 'Chasse
de Ste. Ursule,' and all those other lovely things, so infantile
in their simplicity, and yet so exquisitely graceful and pure and
beautiful. I don't know as I saw anything in Europe to equal them
for pathos in their own way --except, of course, the Fra Angelicos
at San Marco in Florence.
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