I cannot tell you one-half of all there is to see in Brussels—the beautiful churches, the picture-galleries and museums, the splendid old library, and the gardens. The largest building is a modern one, the Palais de Justice, where the law courts sit. It cost nearly £2,000,000 to build, and is much bigger than anything in London. It stands on an eminence overlooking the lower part of the town, and is so huge that it may almost be said to make the capital of this tiny kingdom look top-heavy.
There are many other towns in Belgium besides those we have been looking at: Louvain, with its ancient University; Liége and Charleroi, with their steel and iron works; Courtrai, celebrated for the manufacture of linen; Tournai, where carpets are made; Mons, with its coal-mines; and more besides, which all lie within the narrow limits of this small country. Most of them have played a great part in history. Belgium is, above all things, a country of famous towns.
When you wander about among the towns of Flanders and Brabant you might think that the whole of Belgium was one level plain. But if you leave Brussels and journey to the south, the aspect of the country changes. Beyond the Forest of Soignies the tame, flat fields, the formal rows of trees, and the long, straight roads begin to disappear, the landscape becomes more picturesque, and soon you reach a river called the Meuse, which flows along through a romantic valley, full of quiet villages, gardens, woods, and hayfields, and enclosed by steep slopes clothed with trees and thickets, and broken here and there by dells, ravines, and bold, outstanding pinnacles of rock, beyond which, for mile after mile, an undulating tableland is covered by thick forests, where deer, wild boars, and other game abound. This district is called the Ardennes.
In the Valley of the Meuse there are three old and famous towns—Liége, Namur, and Dinant—each nestling at the side of the river, at the foot of a hill with a castle perched upon it.
Other rivers flow into the Meuse. There is the Sambre, which runs from the west, and joins the Meuse at Namur; the Lesse, which rushes in from the south through a narrow gorge; and the Semois, a stream the sides of which are so steep that there is not even a pathway along them in some places, and travellers must pass from side to side in boats when following its course.
This is the prettiest part of Belgium, and in summer many people, who do not care for going to the seaside, spend the holidays at the towns and villages which are dotted about in the valleys and among the hills and woods.