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
of the Ardennes, which is also the fringe of the industrial
country, and explore the valley of the Meuse westward, past Huy
and Namur, to Dinant. Huy has a noble collegiate church of Notre
Dame, the chancel towers of which (found again as far away as
Como) are suggestive of Rhenish influence, but strikes one as
rather dusty and untidy in itself. Namur, on the contrary, we have
already noted with praise, though it has nothing of real
antiquity.
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