From, Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium, Including many which have been destroyed during the war. Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome from rare old Prints and Drawings, by and after Prout, Boys, Coney, W. Callow, David Roberts, C. Wild and others, with descriptive notes, by C. Harrison Townsend, F.R.I.B.A.; New York: The Hubbell Publishing Co., 1916; pp. 132-135.
MALINES : KRAENSTRATE
(S. Prout)
ALINES — a prosperous and well-to-do town, but one the inhabitants of which have enjoyed, since the Middle Ages, the reputation of not being overwise or enterprising (gaudet Mechlinia stultis, says the old monkish distich) — is a place of broad streets and handsome squares. Besides these, however, outside the main thoroughfares and current of its life, the artist and lover of the picturesque can find many narrow and winding lands bordered by old houses.
One of these is recorded for us in Prout’s sketch, a fine and characteristic example of 134 that artist’s power in selecting and skill in dealing sympathetically with those subjects he loved to find in the —
Quaint old towns of toil and traffic, quaint old
towns of art and song,
Where memories haunt the pointed gables.
Copyright © 2007 by Elfinspell