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 reconcile with the cynical tone that he habitually adopts in speaking of most existing governments and institutions. To say the truth, we have conceived a great affection for our friend Alexander, and feel every disposition to glide lightly over his faults and exalt his virtues; to treat him tenderly, in short, even as one we love. We do not expect perfection from him, although we are anxious to believe that he approaches as near to that angelic state as it is given to a child of clay to do. We would pardon his recording in some detail the gracious words spoken to him by the King of this, and the Prince of that--showing how he was treated on a footing of perfect equality and familiarity by the mighty ones of the earth--how they caressed and complimented him, and wore out the boots of their aides-de-camp and chamberlains by sending after him--and how they