The view, on looking back at this hardy old town, is remarkably striking--its citadel almost by nature a fortress, independently of engineering; and, at its foot, the antique cathedral, founded by Peter the Hermit. The banks of the Meuse, and the Vesdre, have been prolific in great names; Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade, was born at Poisy, on the borders of Namur; Tilly, one of the great military adventurers of the Thirty Years, came from a village still nearer the Meuse; Hersthal, the birth-place of Pepin, “the Mayor of the Palace,” and the founder of the kings of the second race in France, lies a mile below Liege; and at Herve, between it and Verviers, Lebrun, the minister of France, who died on the scaffold, in 1794, was employed as the editor of a provincial newspaper. The scenery, on either side of the river, improves in richness, but loses in grandeur, as we approach Liege. The ravine through which it rolls, between Huy and Namur, widens out into a fertile valley towards Seraing, still enclosed, however, by precipitous cliffs, on which castles, châteaux, and monasteries are perched, in positions that seem, from below, at least, to be all but inaccessible. Two, in particular, are most strikingly picturesque--the châteaux of Aigremont, between Flaune and Engis, and another above the village of Chokier, at present occupied by a Russian nobleman, whose visitors would certainly require a balloon and a parachute “to drop in upon him.” On driving round a projecting angle of the cliff, at a turn in the course of the river, we came in view of the vast buildings and innumerable chimneys of the great iron works at Seraing. These enormous works are certainly one of the wonders of Belgium; and Europe, in point of extent, possesses nothing to compare with them. Nor can one regard this vast temple to the genius of Fulton and Watt, without emotions of amazement, at the lightning speed with which their discoveries have revolutionized the whole aspect of European industry, and created wants and expedients which, half a century ago, were unfelt and unknown; but the pressure of which, at the present day, has forced into existence such a gigantic establishment as Seraing. Compared with the largest manufactories in England, Seraing is as a mammoth to an ant-hill. The quantity of actual creative power which it engenders and pours forth, year by year, is, perhaps, equal to that of a whole generation of artizans, in the best days of Flemish prosperity; and a river, of ordinary current, flowing through a country of manufactures scarcely communicates a greater impetus to the production of the necessaries, or the comforts of life, than the steam engines which Seraing is capable of sending forth in the compass of a single year.