I’d almost forgotten to say that the King of the Dutch has been on a visit to us--and, as I’ve heard, a very decent sort of king he is. Of course he played while here at a little bit of soldiering; guards and grenadiers were turned out in Hyde Park, that he might review their helmets and bearskin caps. Isn’t it odd, grandmother, that the first show kings and princes, when they come to us, want to stare at is a show of soldiers? just to see how nicely men are armed and mounted to kill men! They don’t mean any harm by it, of course; but still--I can’t help thinking it--it does appear to me, if Beelzebub was to go into a strange country--if, indeed, there is any country he’s not yet visited--the sight he’d first like to see would be the sight of men taught the best way of cutting men’s throats. And then (if he came here to London) he’d go down to Woolwich Marshes, to see what they call rocket-practice, and wouldn’t he rub his hands, and switch about his tail, to see how rockets and shells split, break, tear away everything before ’em, showing what pretty work they’d make of a solid square of living flesh, standing for so many pence a day to be made a target of? You’d think it would be some wicked spirit that would enjoy this fun; but no, grandmother, it isn’t so; quite the contrary; it’s kings and princes. And yet I should like to have some king come over here who wouldn’t care to go a-soldiering in Hyde Park; who wouldn’t think of rocket-practice; but who, on the contrary, would go about to our schools and our hospitals, and our asylums, and all places where man does what he can to help man; to assist and comfort him like a fellow-creature, and not to tear him limb from limb like a devil. Our Queen has gone to Germany to see where Prince Albert was born. Well, there’s something pretty and wife-like in the thought of this, and I like this. There was a dreadful fear among some of the nobs in Parliament, that while the Queen was away the kingdom would drop to pieces. But it isn’t so: the tax-gatherer calls just the same as ever. The Queen took ship, and landed at Antwerp--at the Quai Vandyke; now, Vandyke, you must know, was a famous painter; and abroad, they’ve a fashion of naming streets and places after folks that’s called geniuses. We haven’t come to that yet. Only think of our having a Hogarth Square, or a Shakspere instead of a Waterloo Bridge! And then for statues in the streets, we don’t give them to authors and painters, but only to kings and dukes that don’t pay their debts.