stay even the heavy arm of justice, and the still heavier arm of lawless cruelty. When St. Eloi built his church on the Dunes, he raised a sanctuary, round which his new converts gladly gathered; he taught them, moreover, to make the best of this world, and instructed them in many useful things, the art of cutting precious stones, and of working in gold and silver. He had agricultural theories, and some practical knowledge as a corrective; hence it can be proved that there were substantial reasons for the love and reverence which made the good St. Eloi the titular saint of Dunkerque, e'

Let us turn to history, and see h

how the place and people fared during the twelve centuries of his guardianship. to appr Hardly were the people settled in their new faith, when the Normans came down upon the coast, pillaging the bourgs and desolating the country, The Liturgy of the day included this prayer, "From the fury of the Normans, deliver us, good Lord."

In the tenth century the churches were destroyed and the monasteries reduced to ashes, but the recollection of St. Eloi's teachings kept the faithful together; they made chapels underground, and worshipped there to avoid the Northern pagans. At length the Marquis of Flanders built a wall round the church and the town which had grown up near it. And from this time the history of the place became identified with the church; all the notable events, civil, religious, or military, were in one way or another associated with the shrine of St. Eloi The flags for twenty-seven ships destined for the Crusades were blessed at this altar, and their crews made up of the sturdy fishermen of the port..

It would have been well for Christendom if there had always been a common enemy, but national antipathies began to arise.. According to Froissart, Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, conducted an attack upon Dunkerque in the time of Richard the Third. He is reported to have said "that there could not be better pleasure and profit than taking the rich town of Dunkerque." But the Flemish hated the French worse than the English, for an old proverb says, “If all the Flemish were dead, their bones would gather together against the French." The Church, associated itself with every popular movement, and whether it was St. Bernard preaching the Crusade, or whether it was a gathering of townsfolk against some neighbouring bourg, the consecrated banner was lifted on high, and crowds rushed together singing the "Kyrie eleison," which even now forms the refrain of every Flemish song. line is :

The

Christ ons gemade-Kyrie eleison.

(Christ have pity on us.)

At Dunkerque and the neighbourhood it is still the custom at the funeral of a young girl place, singing the following words, partly in to accompany her remains to their last restingFlemish, partly in Latin and Hebrew:

Thus

Allelulia.

for

singing, her young companions walk with measured steps through the streets, holding the blue and white pall emblematic of the Virgin. For a brief space the whirl of busy traffic is stopped, and with uncovered heads the passers-by listen to the ringing strain, which has all that wild sad charm of mediæval music, , the mingling of bitterness with triumph, the wail of sorrow lost in infinite sweetness, that something vague, nameless and penetrating, which once heard comes back to us again and again, as the echo from another world than ours. In 1440 the Dunkerquois built St. Eloi a new church. Since the time when the good saint was with them in the flesh, the fishermen had agreed to keep a net which should be called the holy

was always devote the produce of this

"

to repairing the church; hence it came about, that notwithstanding the devastations of those terrible English, and the rapine and wrong of nearer neighbours, the shrine of St. Eloi always maintained its material importance.

In the time of the Austrian possession, Philip le beau came to Dunkerque to receive the ambassadors of Henry the Seventh of Eugland; and later, the church doors open to welcome the gorgeous pageant which attends Charles the Fifth ; the streets are planted with trees, under whose shadow pass the vast assemblage of German and Flemish lords, of public functionaries, cannoneers, archers, crossbowmen, priests, monks, and nuns, bearing the relics of each convent.

But evil days followed. In 1558 Count Egmont comes to the rescue of the Dunkerquois, who had fallen into the hands of the

French soldiery, "who," says the chronicler, "regarded neither the prayers of the people nor the sanctity of the holy placés." Even St. Eloi's shrine was pillaged, the church furniture destroyed, and the bells carried off. However, peace was restored to Dunkerque by the issue of the battle of Gravelines. In 1588 the imposing ceremony of blessing the flags for a portion of the "Invincible Armada" took place at St. Eloi's shrine; for the faithful it was a grand spectacle, but this time the saint's blessing availed but little. Some material help was given by Dunkerque in the shape of two pilots, who conducted the shattered remnants of the Armada back to Spain.

The fleeting years pass on, and none but St. Eloi and the dear God who loveth's I H

1

1

All things, both great and smaller hath taken note of the tears that have been shed and the vows that were breathed day by day before that altar; like the leaves of the forest are the generations of men! Only when some misfortune befalls a people does the great scene painter History give us a picture, and here is one. Early in the seventeenth century the church doors are flung wide open to admit a penitential procession; this is no gay pageant, no welcome to king or kaiser; they come wailing and weeping, in sad and solemn guise invoking St. Eloi to stay that terrible scourge, the pest, which is desolating their town. But time passes, the children who followed on the skirts of this wailing crowd are grown old and feeble, and are hurrying to the church tower; they look down to see how fares it with th their sons, who are fighting the Battle of the Dunes. Marshal Turenne, reinforced by Cromwell's men under Lockhart, was opposed to 25,000 Spaniards. A looker-on exclaims, "the French fight like angels, the English like demons." The result of the battle is told in the following characteristic note which Turenne writes to his wife on the evening of that memorable day

The enemy came to us. We have beaten them.

God be praised. Rather tired-Good night. I'm off

to bed.

Our Cromwell, too, had a terse style of writing, not unworthy of imitation in these days. When it that the

keep Due for the rench wanted to

he informed the French ambassador that if the town was not given up an hour after it was taken, they should see Lockhart himself, with an English army, at the gates of Paris. The Grand the old soubo wa wers pud prvo tap the tower Monarque bowed with infinite grace, quite in Dunkerque is a solitary instance of a place belonging to three different powers in one day

Spanish in the morning, French at noon, and English at night.

It does not appear that Cromwell and St. Eloi ever hit it off well together, though there was much civil talking between their followers of liberty of conscience. A group of surly Puritans stood by the altar while the representative Dunkerquois swore to be faithful to his Serene Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of the Republic of England, and his successors, etc, We shall see further on that the Dunkerquois had great powers of swearing and praising God for new masters. The restoration of the Stuarts was duly celebrated by a "Te Deum at Dunkerque, and still greater rejoicings took place two years later, when Charles the Second basely sold the place for French gold.

"

ར

"

These were palmy days for saintship and township. Louis the Fourteenth completed the fortifications, and thrice within a few years he, knelt in great state before St. Eloi's altar, Jean Bart, sometime captain of this, nest of pirates, but now Admiral of the Fleet, is by his side a Viking of the old stamp was this said Jean Bart, a picture of whose statue I only wish I could transfer into these pages. He and James the Second reviewed together, on Dunkerque quay the fleet, which was intended to reconquer the exile's throne. "But," says the historian, the tempests always seem at the command of the English." A worthier member of kingcraft is the next of the notables seen at Dunkerque, Peter, the Great goes to hear mass at the church, but he gets this matter quickly over, for his thoughts are far away with the ships and the fortifications.

1.

1

During the next fifty years or so, the royal marriages and christenings of the House of Bourbon were duly celebrated. There were special rejoicings at the birth of the Dauphin, son of Louis the Sixteenth, but the shouts of Vive le Roi" had hardly died away whe other, sounds arose, and the walls of the church were placarded with complaints against the public functionaries, violent invectives about the

66.

state of the national finances, and much general discontent not understood at the time, but now known as the, precursor of an earthquake.

The air becomes more and more dense, and what is it now we see? A.vast crowd congregated before the altar, the national guard, the municipality, the clergy, the sans-culottes, together taking an oath by " Dieu, Patrie, Fraternité," to do something the world has never done before. There is much excitement; De it is the 29th of September, 1791, a "Te Deum" is being sung in honour of the constitution authorised by Louis the Sixteenth. Mark well this "Te Deum," listen to the

poseful, as the case might be. I glanced over these portraits of the sons of the desert, I confess, with a careless indifference, perceiving them with the physical, but, so to speak, perceiving them not with the mental, eye.

Gradually, however, I became sensible that I was attracted to one especial photograph, a small one of the carte-de-visite size, and that my imagination was busied in speculation regarding it. This photograph represented a sculptured bust, the countenance bearing the unmistakable Moorish type. Even through the somewhat imperfect medium which I held in my hand, I could recognise that the modelling of the bust was remarkably delicate, that every minute curve and line, the very texture of the hair and skin, were rendered with preRaphaelite truthfulness of delineation, whilst the breadth of outline irresistibly reminded me of the masterpieces of antique sculpture. Who was the sculptor who had wrought this

work? And who had been the Moor whom the great skill of this sculptor had embodied before me? The longer I gazed upon the photograph, the deeper did my interest become. "Who was this man?" I continued mentally to ask. What did he achieve or suffer, so to distinguish himself above his fellow Moors as to have caused a great sculptor to seek to immortalise his features? It was evident that through the attraction of no special physical beauty had the artist's eye sought him out, and the artist's hand delineated his features. It must therefore have been through the sculptor's recognition of some great beauty of mind or soul possessed by this man that he had chosen him as his model; and in very truth it seemed to me, that the spirit of some such interior beauty impressed by the artist upon his work now spoke audibly, strangely touching my imagination. I continued my contemplation of the photograph

and my mental questioning. How plaintive was the expression in the falling lines of the firmly-set, full Moorish lips, in those raised eyes, yet with closed lids! Had he been blind? I seemed to read a searching look beneath those closed eyelids. How was it? Did I perhaps behold the countenance of some Moorish Homer, of some Arab Milton? Was it the unalterable yearng, yet resignation, of some mighty geni imprisoned in its blind tabernacle of clay nat lent such deep pathos to the work of art before me, illumining the strange, physically, almost uncouth countenance before me with a dignity awe-inspiring?

Upon the bust's square pedestal I perceived delineated in relief the representation of a Moorish Fort, beneath which stood the dates, 1569-1853.

"What is the history of this singular work of art?" asked I abruptly of Madame

B. "There is a strange pathos in its expression, a something which troubles my imagination. To what blind Arab hero or poet did these features belong? And who was the sculptor?"

"And you fancy that you see something remarkable in that photograph?" observed my friend with a smile. "Most people wonder why I possess such a thing, and call it hideous, frightful, and so on. But you recognise an indescribable pathos in those features; think that they have been wrought by the hand of some great sculptor? have indeed seen truly, and thought truly. That face was the face of a Christian martyr, and the hand that sculptured it was the hand of the great sculptor, Nature-nay, if you can accept it, the hand of the Special Providence of God."

You

"You are laughing at my fancies," said I, looking up, surprised by my friend's words;