King Leopold of Belgium has been travelling, with his intelli-
gent and spirited heir, to Berlin, and thence to Yienna,—to coun- teract French influence, says one rumour ; to negotiate commercial alliances, says another. But it is a noticeable fact, that the royal personages, from the Belgian to the Greek, from the Russian to the Neapolitan, have been in a state of incessant commotion for the last five years ; some of them in situ, and only stirred morally, giving themselves forth in despatches and notes ; others in transitu, travelling from North to South, from East to West, and attending conferences at many a point of junction. Emperors, kings, prin- cesses, and diplomatists, have moved about since 1848 like pith- balls on an electric machine,—signs of the state of Europe, on which they keep rubbing with a "state of siege" enough to evoke any series of electric shocks. Commercial treaties, like the Belgian coal-treaties with France, may be but the pretext for po- litical aggressions : hence public belief inclines to the conclusion that these royal aberrations are political rather than commercial.
Previous page
