and for the elaborate, pendent cusping of the soffits of its
arches--features that lend it an almost barbaric magnificence that
reminds one of Rosslyn Chapel. Liege, built as it is exactly on
the edge of the Ardennes, is far the most finely situated of any
great city in Belgium. To appreciate this properly you should not
fail to climb the long flight of steps--in effect they seem
interminable, but they are really about six hundred--that mounts
endlessly from near the Cellular Prison to a point by the side of
the Citadelle Pierreuse. Looking down hence on the city,
especially under certain atmospheric conditions--I am thinking of
a showery day at Easter--one is reminded of the lines by poor John
Davidson:

"The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm;
Clouds scattered largesses of rain;
The sounding cities, rich and warm,
Smouldered and glittered in the plain."

It is not often that one is privileged to look down so directly,
and from so commanding a natural height, on to so vast and busy a
city--those who like this kind of comparison have styled it the
Belgian Birmingham--lying unrolled so immediately, like a map,
beneath our feet.

From Liege, if you like, you may penetrate the Ardennes--I do not
know whether Shakespeare was thinking in "As You Like It" of this
woodland or of his own Warwickshire forest of Arden; perhaps he
thought of both--immediately by way of Spa and the valley of the
Vesdre, or by the valleys of the Ourthe and of its tributary the
Ambleve; or you may still cling for a little while to the fringe