counter, and makes you pay her compound interest, while many articles of
value are lost for ever, because memory cannot produce the duplicate.

And then I compared it to almost every thing, but none of my comparisons
would hold good. After all, thought I, I have been only playing at
"What are my thoughts like?" which is a childish game; and how can I
possibly find out what my brain is like, when my brain don't choose to
tell? So I rose, and opening the window, lighted my cigar, and smoked
myself into a reverie, as I watched the smoke ascending from the
chimneys of the good town of Liege.

And this is the city which travellers pass through, describing it as a
mere manufacturing town, thought I. A city which has, in its time,
produced a greater moral influence upon society than any other in
existence--a city that has led the van in the cause of religion and
liberty. Liege presents a curious anomaly among the states of Europe.
It is the only town and province, with the exception of Rome, which has
been, for centuries, ruled by the clerical power. But be it
recollected, that at the very period that Christianity was offering up
her martyrs at the blood-stained arena of the Coliseum, it was from
Liege (or rather Tongres, for Liege was not then built) that she was
spreading wide her tenets, unpersecuted and unrestrained, for she was
too far removed from idolatry and imposture to be regarded. The
province of Liege was the cradle of the Christian faith. From the
earliest records there were bishops at Tongres; and it was about five
hundred years after Christ, that Saint Monulphe, the reigning bishop,
founded the city of Liege. From that time until the French Revolution,
this town and these fertile provinces had always remained under clerical
authority.

Although these prince-bishops proved that, upon necessity, they could
change the crosier for the coat of mail, still, as by endowments and
benefactions they increased their revenues, so did they, by the mildness
of their sway, induce thousands to settle in their territory; and to
increase their population (which was to increase their wealth), they
first granted to their citizens those privileges and liberties, which
have, upon their precedent, been obtained by force or prayers by others.
The very boast of the English of the present day, that _every man_'s
_house is his castle_, was the sacred grant of one of the bishops to the
citizens at Liege, long before the feudal s