The lion of Flanders. Vol. I

very good reason: Had he written in Dutch, he would simply have become a Dutch author, without the least influence over the corrupted dialect he wished to raise to a place of honor. Therefore he wrote in Flemish, but with the awakening touch of a true genius. The language grew under his master pen ; he drew from it humor and pathos, descriptive range and flight of eloquence, yet he never forced it to service beyond its power. Instead, he discovered, by patient search and study, the needed word, the desired turn of phrase, the happy idiom, long forgotten, or long condemned to the most menial of prosaic uses. His style is clear and flexible, intimate without being familiar, and of an admirable simplicity. His search for the buried treasures of word and phrase in the archives of old Flanders served a second purpose: it yielded him the material for his historical novels. It is beyond doubt that in this field Conscience took his cue from Scott, like the rest of the romancers of that day. It was a period of which historical fiction was one of the logical products. The downfall of Napoleon had been followed by a revival of patriotism, still more by a desire to forget recent national humiliations in the glory ot earlier national triumphs. Conscience drew with that gifted pen of his the glories of medieval Belgium; so that, while his Flemings were reveling in their ancestors' noble deeds as told by him, they discovered at the same time with wondering delight the dignity of their olden speech and its resources.

But in his efforts to foster a language and the feeling of nationality it gives, Conscience had still another string to his bow, in his charming tales of contemporary Flemish life. They are worthy of a seventeenth century Dutch painter, these homely pieces, so full of tenderness and understanding, so near to the heart and the daily existence of his own people. Conscience was a modem realist long before the days when modern realism began to be preached as a literary tenet He was a tenderhearted artist, who saw and loved what is beautiful and ennobling in simple lives, as well as the sorrow and the sin. To one who knows Flanders and its people, their language, customs, and habits of thought, these stories have a charm more potent and enduring than even that of the historical tales. But the world at large, not possessing the key of personal knowledge to their value as pictures of men, women, children, homes, and fields, while recognizing their workmanship, will probably pronounce hereafter, as in the past, for the romances, with their brave pageantry and deeds of derring-do. Among these "The Lion of Flanders" undoubtedly stands first.

Difficult as was his undertaking. Conscience's battle for the Flemish tongue and a Flemish literature was won within a decade after the publication of his greatest novel. His French father had turned him out for daring to write a Flemish book—for debasing himself and throwing doubt upon the social status of his family by betraying his thorough knowledge of this peasants' lingo. His seventieth birthday was made a national holiday by Walloons as well as Flemings, for nothing but this very wickedness!

Conscience was not the only founder of the Flemish movement, but he was undoubtedly the most influential of them all. He saw the importance of going to the people and working upward with them and through them, instead of beginning the propaganda at the top, among the literati, and graciously bending down toward the masses. Him even the simplest Fleming could understand ; in him even the lowliest recognized a brother. He did not write their songs, but he wrote their tales, which they took into their homes, and with them his national spirit that thenceforth they made their own. After Conscience's death the Flemish movement expanded its scope. Success in the field of literature naturally resulted in a determination to secure official recognition for the language. It took years of agitation to force this recognition of Flemish upon the Belgian Government, to force the passage of laws prescribing its use side by side with French in the law courts and in official documents. Today Flemish is the only language used at the University of Ghent; King Leopold, whose father was one of Conscience's earliest friends, and his patron through life, has made public addresses in the once despised tongue. There Is a national Flemish theatre now in Belgium; to crown it all, a Royal Flemish Academy has existed these many years.

Coming now to the consideration of Dutch literature, it may be stated, first of all. that Dutch itself has several dialects. Of the two dialects of the tongue beyond the boundaries of Holland, Flemish, as we have seen, has been reclaimed and has made common cause with literary Dutch; the other dialect, the "Taal" of the Boers, is hopelessly corrupt and crippled, having lost most of its grammatical forms and all its flexibility in the course of its long silence on the lonely Veldt, and through disuse of any but the most elementary terms during two centuries of constant struggle for bare life and mere existence. Here, too,, a return to the language of Holland in print and writing, if not in speech, was in progress when the recent South African War broke out. The movement will undoubtedly be resumed with great application when the Boer finally recovers from the ravages of the three years' struggle.

Dutch, one of the dialects of the Teutonic littoral, did not begin to differentiate itself from German until the beginning of the twelfth century. There is ample documentary evidence of this, whereas philologists are much hampered in their researches into the origins of Flemish by the total lack of manuscripts in the dialect older than the middle of the same century. It is not likely, however, that its origins differed greatly from those of Dutch, beyond the more than probable