In one of those autumns which the Duchess of Kent and her daughter spent at Ramsgate--not so rural as it had been a dozen years before, but still a quiet enough retreat--they received a visit from the King and Queen of the Belgians. Prince Leopold was securely established on the throne which he filled so well and so long, keeping it when many other European sovereigns were unseated. He was accompanied by his second wife, Princess Louise of France, daughter of Louis Philippe. She was a good woman, like all the daughters of Queen Amelie, while Princess Marie, in addition to goodness, had the perilous gift of genius. The following is Baron Stockmar's opinion of the Queen of the Belgians. "From the moment that the (Queen Louise) entered that circle in which I for so many years have had a place, I have revered her as a pattern of her sex. We say and believe that men can be noble and good; of her we know with certainty that she was so. We saw in her daily a truthfulness, a faithful fulfilment of duty, which makes us believe in the possible though but seldom evident nobleness of the human heart. In characters such as the Queen's, I see a guarantee of the perfection of the Being who has created human nature." We ought to add that Stockmar had not only the highest opinion of the character of Queen Louise, but also of her insight and judgment, and he often expressed his opinion that if anything were to happen to King Leopold the Regency might be entrusted to the Queen with perfect confidence. How much the Queen valued Queen Louise, how she became Queen Victoria's dearest friend, is fully shown at a later date by the extracts from the Queen's journal, and letters in the "Life of the Prince Consort" About this time the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria paid a visit to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle--the old tower with fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves breaking twenty feet high on the Goodwin Sands. "The cut-throat town of Deal" which poor Lucy Hutchinson so abhorred, pranked its quaint red houses for so illustrious and dainty a visitor. The Duke had stood by her font, and if he had "no small talk," he was a courteous gentleman and gentle warrior when he fought his battles over again for the benefit of the young Princess. A winter was spent by the Duchess and the Princess at St. Leonard's, not far from Battle Abbey, where the last Saxon king of England bit the dust, and William of Normandy fought and won the great battle which rendered his invasion a conquest.