with produce for Namur--it was precisely the scene and the season described in Wordsworth’s sonnet: The morn that now along the silver Meuse, Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains To tend their silent boats and ringing wains, Or strip the bough, whose mellow fruit bestrews The ripening corn beneath. But the beauty of the Meuse is its least recommendation to the affection of the Belgians; and, like the vale of Avoca, and the banks of some other equally exquisite streams, which are “_sacred_ only in song,” its picturesque attractions, are, at every spot, most rudely torn away by the very matter-of-fact speculators of the neighbourhood, in the search of the mineral treasures which they conceal. Rocks of black marble are rolled down to the edge of the road, and left ready for transport to the river; limestone is tumbled from the cliffs, and numerous manufactories of alum are constructed between Namur and Schlayen. These and the other riches of the Meuse, its floors of coal and beds of iron render this rugged defile the most important and valuable possession of the crown. At Andennes we passed the first of those vast manufactories, the establishment of which has made the name of one Englishman more renowned in Belgium than those of all its native speculators combined--Mr. William Cockerill. Every district of the kingdom exhibits some memorial of his enterprise, and there is scarcely a branch of the national industry which, if it does not owe its introduction to his suggestion, is not indebted to his genius for its improvement. He came to Verviers in 1798, an humble mechanic, in search of employment, returning with a numerous family from Stockholm, where he had been to erect some apparatus for spinning wool. He obtained an engagement with a house there to construct for them machinery for the same purpose, similar to that in use in England, and by dint of singular talents, unwearied industry, and energies almost unparalleled, he speedily elevated himself to wealth and importance; mines were sounded at his suggestion, iron-works constructed, cotton-mills built, woollen-machinery erected, in short, every department of Belgian art received a new impulse under his all-grasping and comprehensive superintendence, aided by the munificence of Napoleon, and, subsequently, by the equally ardent co-operation of King William of Holland, who seemed to place the national funds for the promotion of industry, almost at his disposal. Under the powerful influence of France, and even afterwards with access to the extensive markets and colonies of Holland, the vastness of his speculations were not disproportionate to the wants and commercial connexions of the kingdom. But the simile of a tub for a whale is no actual exaggeration to represent the incompatibility of his Leviathan establishments, to the puny resources of the new and independent kingdom, within which they were suddenly walled up by the revolution of 1830. The gross of