Liege is certainly the least interesting of all the great towns of the Netherlands, not that the events of its ancient times are less stirring, but the character of their prominent actions is less engaging and their quarrels less chivalrous; in its modern state, it possesses scarcely a single attractive remnant of antiquity--no paintings, no statues, no architectural beauties or remains. Its streets are narrow, irregular and dirty, and the houses devoid of any thing venerable or characteristic. Still the old chronicles of Monstrelet and Philip de Comines, and the quaint tradition of the “wild boar of Ardennes” and the feuds of the Dukes of Brabant and Burgundy, with the insolent burghers, and the alternate ascendancies and indignities of the Prince Bishops, and the rude and savage deeds of the inhuman Louis XI, are all full of historic interest, though of a repulsive and painful kind. Liege had been the See of a Bishop for fourteen hundred years, when the annexation of Belgium to France put a close to the dynasty of its sovereign prelates. Its rank was such amongst ecclesiastical cities, that it was visited by the Popes and the Emperors; and its citizens intoxicated, at once, with affluence and arrogance became the most turbulent and insubordinate faction that ever “strangled the prosperity” of a community. M. Ferrier in an historical résumé, prefixed to his “Description de Liège,” thus sums up the condition of the burghers in the 12th century. “The morals and manners of the citizens became corrupted, at once, by the acquisition of extraordinary wealth, and the extortion of inordinate privileges from the Prince Bishops who were their ecclesiastical sovereigns. The artisans accustomed to extravagant gains, gave but a portion of their time to industry, and devoted the rest to the discussion of affairs of state, in the places of public resort. The Prelate Albert de Cuyck, unable to subdue their murmuring and disquieted spirit, retreated behind concession after concession, till in 1198, he confirmed to them a Charter, which invested the men of Liege with privileges such as were unheard of in the age in which they lived. But these concessions so far from tranquillizing, seemed but to excite them to fresh demands--the more ample the favours yielded, the more exorbitant became their further requirements--till in the end, their restless ambition embroiled the city in contests of blood such as have tinged the page of their history from century to century. The clergy, at first, made common cause with the people against the power of the _haute noblesse_, who enjoyed at once all military and magisterial authority in the state; till the multitude disturbed from the pursuits of peaceful industry, became, at length, the sport of ungovernable impulses, sometimes generous in their origin, but which were too often degraded into brutalized ferocity for the mere gratification of revenge. The nobles were the first sacrifice to the popular demands, and the clergy