HUY is beautifully situated at the angle, where a mountain torrent pours past it to the Meuse. Its fortress stands on a bold detached rock, of great height and breadth, around the base of which the town is built almost upon the sands of the river; and beneath its shelter are collected the churches, monasteries, and houses of the ancient city. The fortifications are now in excellent repair, having been restored after the war by English engineers under the direction of Colonel Blanshard, at the expense of the King of Holland; but the town itself is fast hurrying to decay. Its vicinity to Seraing, the seat of the once powerful Prince Bishops of Liege, rendered Huy a place of evident interest as an ecclesiastical frontier as well as a military one; and the church militant below, emulous of the strongholds of earthly power above, had within the small circuit of its wall no less than a cathedral, fourteen churches, and a still greater number of monasteries, abbeys, and convents, all of which, with the exception of the cathedral and a richly carved gateway that conducts to it, are now in ruins. Here, for the first time in Belgium, we saw vineyards and their “purple store;” but the wine is execrable, and used only for the most inferior purposes. The position of Huy on the river, and its admirable facilities for traffic, made it a flourishing entrepôt for grain and agricultural produce, in which it carries on a bustling traffic on the river; as well as in the produce of its numerous quarries. A short distance from Huy commence the coal fields, which extend to the district surrounding Liege, the working of which was attempted so far back as the 12th century. In coals, Belgium is, perhaps, the richest country of the west of Europe, with the single exception of Great Britain; the districts in which it abounds being, in England, in the proportion of one-twentieth of her entire surface; in Belgium, a thirtieth; and in France only a two hundredth part. But her success in raising them is not in the same proportion, England having produced, in 1838, _twenty-three millions_ of tons; France, _two millions and a half_; and Belgium only _four_.