laquais, populace and all, ran to greet us, and people were hurrying to the spot in every direction.  There was nothing to be done but to wait the result patiently, and I soon saw by the cold looks of the servants, and the shrug of Francois, who had jumped down to order rooms, that there was mutual disappointment.  Everybody turned their backs upon us, and there we sat in the shadow of neglect, after having momentarily shone in the sunshine of universal observation.  It had been merely ascertained that we were not the King of the Belgians and his brother the Grand Duke of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha.  The Soleil d’Or, which like other suns, is most apt to shine on the great, veiled its face from us, and we were compelled to quit the great square, and to seek more humble lodgings.  These were soon obtained at the Black Eagle, a clean and good house.

I went to the police immediately with my passport, and found that one of our five days of quarantine had been comfortably gotten rid of at Thirlemont.

These quarantines are foolish things, and quite easily evaded.  You have been told the manner in which, last year, instead of spending five times twenty-four hours in a hut, shut up with a Russian Princess, I drove into the court of our own hotel in Paris on the evening of the fifth day, and M——­, you will remember, merely turned the flanks of a sentinel or two, by walking a mile in the fields.  We were advised, on this occasion, to have our passport vised at Brussels, the moment we arrived, and the intermediate time would have counted on the frontier, but being in no haste, we preferred proceeding regularly.

The next day the town filled rapidly, and about noon the cannon announced the entrance of the King.  A worse salute was never fired; but his Majesty is greeted with smiling faces, which is, probably more to his liking.  He is certainly a prudent and respectable man, if not a great one; and just now very popular.  I met him and his brother in the streets, the day after their arrival:  they were in an open carriage and pair, with two boys, the sons of the Duke, on the front seat.  Leopold has a grave and thoughtful face, and is far from being as well-looking as his brother, who is a large comely man; not unlike the Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, so well known in America.  All the princes of the Saxon duchies that I have seen, are large, well-formed men, while those of Saxe Royal, as the kingdom is called, are the reverse.  A diplomatic man, here, once remarked to me, that this rule held good as to most of the protestant and catholic princes, throughout Europe, the close intermarriages of the latter in his opinion, affecting the stock.  The imagination has had something to do with this notion, for there are certainly many exceptions on both sides, if, indeed, it be a rule at all.  I think, there is little doubt that the habits of the mind, mode of living, and climate, contribute essentially to vary the physiognomy; but I cannot subscribe fully to the influence of these