from the Earl the privilege of living peaceably at home. The various towns had a common interest, and therefore they were leagued together for self-defense against marauders. By degrees they became more and more capable of taking care of themselves; they found that they could shoot the bow as well under their own leaders as if they were led by a baron. They became, too, more engrossed in making money, and grew richer and richer. The Earls of Flanders wanted money, for warmaking was expensive, and they were engaged in crusading, which took a deal of money that never came back. So they went to the rich burghers, as the citizens of the towns were called, for money, and in exchange were ready to give them certain privileges, which before were supposed to belong to lords only, as, for instance, the right to elect their own magistrates, and to manage their own local affairs. More and more these great towns came to be self-dependent. They acknowledged the supremacy of the earls, but in reality they ruled themselves. They fortified their cities, and built these belfries for watch-towers; they nung a bell in them to call the citizens to gether in case of danger, and by various sig nals to give warning or to tell news.

"And hear ye not the bells? they're ringing backward," eries the Earl of Flanders, in Henry Taylor's Philip Van Artevelde.”

66

""Tis an alarm!"

answers the Lord of Occo.

They built also halls, Hotels de Ville they are called, in which the citizens met; and to have a bell and public hall were among the first privileges which a town demanded in any bargain with its lord. Thus it was that the belfry was at once a servant of the town, and a constant reminder of the power which they were holding. A citizen might well feel proud as he passed by the belfry, for it told him that he was not altogether the property of some haughty lord, but that he could with his fellows treat with that lord almost as an equal. As the towns grew stronger, they grew more self-reliant, and more proud, too, of the comInonwealths which they had built up. A fire, perhaps, destroyed their watch-tower, or they tore it down, and then in place they built brick ones, adding another stage as they grew richer and freer; they were fighting now for their rights as well as paying for them, and their towns became strongly fortified cities. Their halls where they met could not be too magnificent for their wealth, nor too grand to show

their pride

they were the palaces of the people, for the people were now beginning to feel that they were the rulers. When Philip the Fair, King of France, visited Bruges in 1302, his wife, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, cried with vexation, when she saw the ladies of Bruges,"I thought I was the only queen here, and yet here are more than five hundred queens;" so splendidly did they carry themselves with their wealth and their pride.

These gigantic towers were the brawny arms which Flanders held up, as if saying, "See how mighty we are, and what our own hands have wrought!" The bell was the voice of the tower, and it spoke in all kinds of tones. In the charter of an ancient town we read: "If an outsider has a complaint against a burgher, the Schepens and Schout (i. e. the aldermen and mayor) must arrange it. If either party refuses submission to them, they must ring the town-bell and summon an assembly of all the burghers to compel him. Any one ringing the town-bell, except by general consent, and any one not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine." So we see that the bell was a very important personage in the town. Swinging up there in the tower, it kept a sort of watch over the liberties of the town

and the rights of each citizen and outsider also. At certain hours, too, it rang out to tell workmen when to begin and when to stop work. For centuries, every morning, noon, and evening, it rang for this; and such was the rush of workmen at those hours over the bridges that cross the canals, that the laws forbade the draws to be raised then to let boats through.

But it must not be supposed that all things went on smoothly, the towns becoming richer and freer constantly. There was jealousy between them, fierce rivalry of trade and blood, each town seeking to ruin its neighbor while it enriched itself. Bruges and Ghent, especially, were rivals and at last broke out into war, as we shall see. And more than this, not only were the towns incorporated, that is, possessing privileges of self-government, but, from a very early period, the various trades and arts were banded together into what were called guilds, which were formed, as the towns were, for mutual protection. To have any part in the government, one must be a member of a guild; and these societies naturally became jealous of each other's influence and power. The Earl of Flanders shrewdly took advantage of all this weakness. It was his aim to keep

control over these rich towns, but he knew that if they were of one mind in the towns, and the towns were banded together against him, he would stand a poor chance of getting his money. So it was his policy to set one town against another, and one guild in the same town against another in the same town. He made friends of different parties, and hence in war he was sure of some support. The history of these towns is an interesting one, but it grows sad as we see how they lost their liberty by quarreling among themselves. It would be sadder, if we did not believe, as we do, that the towns, like those of Lombardy and Venice, were getting gains for liberty all over the world, and when they were crushed, liberty did not go down, but showed itself stronger in Holland, then broadened in England, and, passing to America, established itself so firmly that every shock felt here makes sorrowful the friends of liberty in Europe.

We have stood so long looking out of the Belfry window that there is not time to show what we have seen, but at other times we may hear what the Belfry of Bruges witnessed in those early days. It was something to have seen the men of Bruges returning from the