statesman Cecil and his weighty nod, had been the scene of such a romance
as might well have captivated the imagination of a young princess, though
its heroine was but a village maiden--she who married the
landscape-painter, and was brought by him to Burghley, bidden look around
at its splendour, and told

"All of this is thine and mine."

Tennyson has sung it--how she grew a noble lady, and yet died of the honour
to which she was not born, and how the Lord of Burghley, deeply mourning,
bid her attendants

"Bring the dress and put it on her
Which she wore when we were wed."

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