ight line, while
Liege, Namur, Ghent and Bruges are each the point of junction of two or
more completed roads. Brussels has slept while this network has been
woven over the country, and will awake to discover herself shorn of her
trade and sinking into insignificance if she does not immediately bestir
herself. Her location is a fine one, on a ground which rises very
gradually from the great plain to a modest hill southward, and she is
among the best built of modern cities. But already she is off the direct
line from either London or Paris to Germany; I would have saved many
miles by avoiding her and taking the road due west from Liege to Namur,
Charleroi and Mons, where it intersects the Brussels line; and soon the
great bulk of the travel will do so if it does not already. Railroads
are reckless Radicals and are destined by turns to make and to mar the
fortunes of many great emporiums.

NORTH-EASTERN FRANCE.

Tournay in the coal region, fifty miles from Brussels, is the last town
of Belgium; eight miles further is Valenciennes, one of the strong
frontier fortresses of France, with over 20,000 inhabitants, an active
trade and the worth of a dukedom wasted on its fortifications. Here our
baggage underwent a new custom-house scrutiny, which was expeditiously
and rationally made, and I kept on twenty-three miles farther to Douai,
where our Railroad falls into one from Calais, which had already
absorbed those from Dunkirk and Ghent, and where, it being after 10
o'clock, I halted for the night, so as to take a Calais morning train at
4 1/2 and see by fair daylight the country thence to Paris, which I had
already traversed in the dark.

This country presents no novel features. It is not quite so level nor so
perfectly cultivated as central Belgium, but is generally fertile and
promises fairly. The Rye harvest is in progress through all this
country, and is very good, but the breadth of Wheat is much greater, and
it also promises well, though not yet ripened. Westward from Brussels
in Belgium is an extensive Grazing region, bountifully irrigated, and
covered with large herds of fine cattle. Something of this is seen after
crossing into France, but Wheat regains its predominance, while large
tracts are devoted to the Beet, probably for the manufacture of Sugar.
There are few American gardens that can show the Beet in greater
perfection than it exhibits here, in areas of twenty to forty acres.
Wood also becomes far more abu