l race, part German, part Flemish, part French, which it now
possesses--a population which, when it has consumed its five or six
heavy meals, smoked a dozen or two pipes, and slept its long sleep of
repletion, considers it has done its duty to God and man, and troubles
itself little with such intangible matters as poetical reveries or
mental cultivation.

But we are running away from our subject, and losing sight of the
intention we had in commencing this paper, which was, to hook ourselves
on to the dexter arm of that indefatigable rambler, M. Alexander Dumas,
and accompany him in an excursion up the Rhine. He thinks proper to
proceed thither by way of Belgium, and we must conform to his
arrangements. In due time we shall return to our Rhenish friends.

M. Dumas's earliest care, on arriving at Brussels, was to deliver to
King Leopold a letter of recommendation with which he had provided
himself for that monarch; and he hastened to the palace, where he
obtained admission, he tells us, more easily than he could have done at
Paris at the house of a second-rate banker. We were not aware that the
French _bureaucratie_ of the day were of such difficult access, and
would strongly advise them, since it is so, to take pattern by his
Belgian majesty; who in this instance, however, was not at Brussels at
all, but at his country palace of Lacken, whither M. Dumas proceeds.
Here he is immediately ushered into the king's presence.

"After a quarter of an hour's conversation," says our traveller, "which
his Majesty was pleased to put at once upon a footing of familiar chat,
I became convinced that I was speaking with the most philosophical king
who had ever existed, not excepting Frederick the Great."

We congratulate M. Dumas sincerely upon the exquisite keenness of
perception which enabled him to make this discovery, and from so decided
an opinion in the course of a quarter of an hour's familiar chat. At the
same time we cannot repress a fear, that he is apt to be a little
dazzled by the sparkling halo that surrounds a diadem. This we do not
say so much with reference to the King of the Belgians, who may be a
very philosophical, as he has proved himself to be a very judicious
sovereign; but it has struck us more than once, during the perusal of M.
Dumas's wanderings in various lands, that he exhibits a slight, an
inconceivably small, tendency to tuft-hunting, hardly consistent with
his ultra-liberal principles, and difficult to