PALACE OF SCHONENBERG, NEAR BRUSSELS. (With an Engraving.)

BRUSSELS is the capital of the modern Belgium. Its Monarch is the Prince who, some thirty years ago, possessed such pleasing celebrity as the chosen consort of the very popular heiress of the British crown. How brief was the union of the Princess Charlotte with Prince Leopold, of Saxe Cobourg, and under what melancholy circumstances it was terminated, our readers well know. We have often reflected very seriously on the mournful event; and while not wishing to judge respecting the mysterious plans of Divine Providence, yet we could not help thinking that deeply important lessons were suggested. By the old constitution of England, as definitely fixed in 1688, the crown was declared to be unchangeably Protestant, so that marriage with a Romanist incurred the high penalty of total and immediate forfeiture of the royal style, dignity, and power. Among those wanderings of the heir-apparent to the British crown which occasioned so much grief to his royal parent, as well as to the nation at large, and which were too notorious to be concealed, however charity might wish to veil them, one was VOL. X. Second Series.

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the religious celebration of marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a lady who was a member of the Roman Church. Of course, by the provisions of what is called the "Royal Marriage Act,” declaring the marriage of any of the royal family without the royal consent to be, from the beginning, null and void, this marriage, though religiously celebrated, went, in the eye of the law, for nothing, and therefore involved no legal consequences. Still, marriage is an ordinance of God, and is not one of those matters with which man, whether his rank be high or low, may trifle with impunity. Nor was the constitutional limitation of the succession to the crown, a merely municipal arrangement, designed to answer a temporary purpose, but a solemn act of national submission to God, acknowledging the supreme importance of his truth, and subordinating the national administration to the grand administration of Providence. Both marriage and the law were deeply affected by the conduct in question; and though it could not be amenable to civil justice, yet the conduct of Providence can never be overlooked by any who study history in the light of divinely recorded truth.

And into what line was the actual succession directed by these mysterious events? A member of the royal family, chiefly known by his strict austerity in public life, and by his affectionate devotion as husband and parent in domestic life, had the high honour of furnishing the nation with the Monarch who now fills the throne,—and of whom we employ the customary form of precation with the utmost sincerity, feeling assured that all our readers will add their cordial and spontaneous Amen,—“ Whom God long preserve !"

Nor is this the whole truth presented by this eventful chapter of national and religious history. Three centuries ago, the Saxon Prince who ruled over the only not nominally regal dominions of Saxony, because of his uncompromising attachment to Protestantism, was, by the treachery of a subordinate member of his family, and the power of the Emperor Charles V., whom it just then suited to be the tool of Papacy, despoiled of the large possessions of his house, which were given to his betrayer, while himself took the place of the younger branch in the petty Dukedom of

Cobourg and Gotha. Some years after, by the pusillanimity and besotted ambition of our James I., his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, the Palatine Elector and King of Bohemia, were driven from their dominions, and Austrian bigotry was enabled, in pursuance of the advice of the Jesuits, to rivet the fetters of civil and religious despotism on a portion of Europe heretofore free. From that persecuted Prince of Saxony is Prince Albert descended; from that persecuted Bohemian Prince, and his English consort, is Queen Victoria descended : the Prince of Wales, the youthful heir-apparent to the British throne, is thus the descendant of Protestant sufferers and confessors. When, after many years, he comes in the order of nature to sway the royal sceptre, may he be the ruler of a Protestant empire, on Protestant principles,-the patron of truth and order, the supporter of civil and religious freedom, beloved of men, and blessed by God.

Belgium, of which Schonenberg is one of the royal palaces, and over which Prince Leopold-now King Leopold I., married to the daughter of the King of the French-now reigns, was united to Holland at the peace which followed the downfal of Napoleon, and placed by the Congress of Vienna, under the rule of the reigning Prince of Holland, who thus became the reigning Sovereign of this new kingdom. Unhappily, Holland was a Protestant country, and William of Nassau a Protestant King, while Belgium was Catholic. Among the Roman Ecclesiastics, dissatisfaction existed from the beginning, and discontent with the administration of the Monarch rapidly spread in this portion of the kingdom. Into political matters we enter not; but it is an historical fact, that among the grievances publicly alleged by the Romanist Bishops of Belgium, the existence of toleration in matters of religion was one. According to their doctrine, Protestant toleration deserved dethronement. After the Parisian revolution, which sent the unhappy bigots of the Bourbon house again into exile, and seated Louis Philippe on the throne,-where God has so often wonderfully, and in mercy to himself and family, to France and Europe, preserved him from the attempt of ferocious assassins,- -a revolution broke out in Brussels, which issued in the separation of the ill