One thing, in Belgium, I cannot but allude to as characteristic--the unrestrained freedom with which every individual discusses politics, and the unreserved candour and frankness with which each details his views and strictures. This is the more remarkable, because the universal tenor of opinion is, if not directly to complain, at least, to admit the existence of much cause for complaint. I never met with less _bigotted_ politicians, and I have not seen a single individual, whom I would designate _a party-man_, in the English acceptation of the term, that is one who finds all right, or all wrong, precisely as the party with whom he sympathises be censured or lauded by the inference. But the fact is, there are no “optimists” in Belgium as yet, and there is so much that is unsatisfactory in every department, that the consciousness of it forces itself upon the conviction, if not the admission of every individual. The press, too, is equally unreserved, and in the shops of the booksellers, we found numbers of publications devoted to the exposure of the present condition of the country. Still no creature, not even the most violent partisan of the House of Nassau whom I have met with, includes King Leopold in the scope of his censures. The revolution itself, its immediate agents and its consequences are the objects of their condemnation; but no one of the results from which they suffer, is ascribed to the influence or interference of the King. Those who regret the expulsion of the King of Holland, look upon King Leopold merely as his involuntary successor, and whilst they condemn the incapacity of his ministers, and the violence of the party in the house and in the country by whom they are controlled--all seemed to regard the King as only borne upon a tide of circumstances, which he is equally unable with them to resist or direct. His fondness for locomotion, his frequent visits to England and journeys to Paris, were the subject of good humoured badinage, and have procured him the titles of “_le roi voyageur_,” and “_l’estafette nomade_.” “Il s’amuse,” said an intelligent Belgian, when I asked him what share the King took in politics, “he goes out of the way to Wiesbaden, and leaves things very much to themselves, or, what is nearly the same thing _to his ministers_.”