NEWS OF THE WEEK.
QUEEN VicTosta staid but a few days in her own country before she again set out on a more extensive journey than that from which she had so recently returned. Though Belgium is more dis- tant than France, however, the visit is not so great a departure from the ordinary course of things ; since, in place of rivalry be- tween the two monarchies, the King her host has been in some sort the protege of this country ; and he is her own uncle, in the habit of paying frequent visits to England. This excursion does not ap- pear to have such great historical associations as the former. It is an evidence of Queen VICTORIA'S love of sea-voyaging, and of her .desire to see the world; and there are not many more interesting sites than the old towns of the Netherlands. Some allusion has been made to Waterloo; a theme proper enough when the object is to honour a WELLINGTON, but the less said about that just now, as a subject of merely boastful exultation, the better. Other more instructive spectacles seem to await the young Queen. At Eu, she saw one of the most powerful monarchs of the earth—perhaps possessing in his own person, except the King of Prussia, the most of real power, for much of the Russian Em- perces parade of autocracy is delusive—and she taw too the monarch of that people who are most of all addicted to display ; yet she found amid all the magnificence, an ease, a freedom, a laying-by of state constraint, at once healthful for the mind and helping to make the monarchic institution popular. From the accounts of the Belgian King, it appears probable that a still closer approach be- tween the sovereign and the subject will be found in his dominions. LEOPOLD and his wife, a daughter of Lotus PHILIPPE; walk about among their subjects with as little either of reserve or ostentation as private folks of condition. Do ill consequences appear ? Quite The reverse. We do not learn that the people are prone to convert 'their Sovereign into a target for pistol-shooting ; or that they hustle one another in a vulgar crowding to stare at him, like children run- ning after mountebanks in the streets. There is an interchange of looks, too friendly perhaps for the etiquette of our repulsive pa- geantry; but the people make way courteously, with all needful respect for the Sovereign's high office, and with a marked defer- ence for the meritorious individual who fills it. It will be re- membered that King LEOPOLD received his political education amid the stiff haughtiness of the British court ; that he is ap- pointed bl favour of a revolution ; and that his tact and discretion through hfe have been unimpeached. And such is the demeanour which he judges to be most expedient and safe for the kingly state in the middle of the nineteenth century. Alt restraints of her high station and its habits may prevent QR.* VICTORIA from seeing much of Belgium as it really is, and so for 'her travels will be nugatory ; but one pleasant and instructive characteristic of its sovereignty she can hardly fail to observe.
