at least, can have been little more than keeping his forges employed out of his own capital. Still whoever may have been the individual sufferer, Seraing is a stupendous example of enterprize and skill, and if placed upon a suitable financial basis, with its singular facilities of fuel and iron, cannot fail, under almost any circumstances, to be a vigorous concern. The quality of its iron is excellent: this ore yields from twenty-five to seventy-five, and some veins so much as eighty-five per cent.; though that of Belgium in general does not exceed thirty per cent.; and except for some very fine purposes. Seraing is perfectly independent of any importation beyond its own walls. For copper and brass it is, however, dependent upon England and Sweden, none whatever being produced in Belgium, so far as I could learn. One invaluable benefit it has already rendered to Belgium, it has served as a vast college for the education of mechanics; and in the course of twenty years, it has produced thousands of artizans who have branched off into the other provinces, and formed the rival establishments of Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Namur and Tournai. “The Belgians,” says M. Briavionne, “have a natural taste for mechanics, and combine the two essentials to success--perseverance and enterprize. But these qualities would never have been called into action, nor their own resources developed had England, from the first, permitted the free export of her machinery, or Belgium imposed any restrictions upon its import.”[14] The importations of machinery from England, notwithstanding native enterprize have been very considerable more especially of those half-animated engines know by the inappropriate, and ill-understood term of “tools,” which seem to be the very life and sustenance of the rival manufacture of Belgium. In 1830, the Belgian official returns exhibit an import to the value of only 46,372fr., in 1835 it had risen to 464,377fr., in 1836 to 3,291,275fr., in 1837 it was 2,851,451fr., and in 1838, 4,708,237fr. From Seraing to Liege, a distance of three or four miles, the drive is exceedingly beautiful, the valley of the Meuse here expands into broad and luxuriant meadows, and the steep cliffs which accompanied us from Namur, lean back into rich and verdant hills whose summits are covered with timber, and their base studded with white and cheerful villas. In the midst of this picturesque scenery, the old town of Liege bursts upon us at a sudden turn of the road, built at the foot of the steep hill of St. Walberg which is covered with its churches and palaces, and spreading down to the Meuse which sweeps round its base to meet the waters of the Ourthe and the Vesdre which unite within it.