Leopold I of Belgium

Jean-Pierre Clusinart was tasked with designing and revigorating a poor part of Brussels by creating a space that had weddings and shops and for somewhere to stroll and be seen.

Construction began in 1846 and the Galleries Royale Saint-Pubert were inaugurated by the King, King Leopold I, on 21st to it here for June 1847.

The galleries comprise of three shopping arcades, the Queen's Gallery, the King's Gallery and the Princess Gallery.

Sadly, no Princess Gallery, but anyway.

It is one of Europe's earliest glazed shopping passages and predates Milan's Galleria del Toro Emanuele II in 1887 and St. Petersburg Passage in Moscow by 30 years.

She was rewarded as poorly in credit as in cash, though the Prince Regent became an enthusiastic admirer of her books and kept a set of them in each of his residences.

It was the Prince Regent's librarian, the Reverend J. S. Clark, who, on becoming chaplain to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, made the suggestion to her that an historical romance illustrated of the history of the August House of Coburg would just now be very interesting.

Mr. Collins, had he been able to wean himself from Fordyce's sermons so far as to allow himself to take an interest in fiction, could hardly have made a proposal more exquisitely grotesque.

One is glad the proposal was made, however, not only for its own sake, but because it drew an admirable reply from Miss Austen on the nature of her genius.