arch, 1863.

DEAR COUSINS,--Be pleased to receive herewith a packet of Mayall's
photographs and copies of Illustrated News, Illustrated Times, London
Review, Queen, and Observer, each containing an account of the notable
festivities of the past week. If, besides these remembrances of home,
you have a mind to read a letter from an old friend, behold here it is.
When I was at school, having left my parents in India, a good-natured
captain or colonel would come sometimes and see us Indian boys, and talk
to us about papa and mamma, and give us coins of the realm, and write
to our parents, and say, "I drove over yesterday and saw Tommy at Dr.
Birch's. I took him to the 'George,' and gave him a dinner. His appetite
is fine. He states that he is reading 'Cornelius Nepos,' with which he
is much interested. His masters report," &c. And though Dr. Birch wrote
by the same mail a longer, fuller, and official statement, I have
no doubt the distant parents preferred the friend's letter, with its
artless, possibly ungrammatical, account of their little darling.

I have seen the young heir of Britain. These eyes have beheld him and
his bride, on Saturday in Pall Mall, and on Tuesday in the nave of St.
George's Chapel at Windsor, when the young Princess Alexandra of Denmark
passed by with her blooming procession of bridesmaids; and half an
hour later, when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her
husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous Order which
his forefather established here five hundred years ago. We were to see
her yet once again, when her open carriage passed out of the Castle
gate to the station of the near railway which was to convey her to
Southampton.

Since womankind existed, has any woman ever had such a greeting? At ten
hours' distance, there is a city far more magnificent than ours. With
every respect for Kensington turnpike, I own that the Arc de l'Etoile
at Paris is a much finer entrance to an imperial capital. In our black,
orderless, zigzag streets, we can show nothing to compare with the
magnificent array of the Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone
stretching for five miles and presenting arms before the Tuileries.
Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, and of the Place
de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone! "The finest site in Europe," as
Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate British optimist,
is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and s