in the face of battle; but I suspect they were glad enough to pitch them into the James River and come home in mufti.  Ah, mes amis!  A chacun son schakot!  I was looking at a bishop the other day, and thinking, “My right reverend lord, that broad-brim and rosette must bind your great broad forehead very tightly, and give you many a headache.  A good easy wideawake were better for you, and I would like to see that honest face with a cutty-pipe in the middle of it.”  There is my Lord Mayor.  My once dear lord, my kind friend, when your two years’ reign was over, did not you jump for joy and fling your chapeau-bras out of window:  and hasn’t that hat cost you a pretty bit of money?  There, in a splendid travelling chariot, in the sweetest bonnet, all trimmed with orange-blossoms and Chantilly lace, sits my Lady Rosa, with old Lord Snowden by her side.  Ah, Rosa! what a price have you paid for that hat which you wear; and is your ladyship’s coronet not purchased too dear!  Enough of hats.  Sir, or Madam, I take off mine, and salute you with profound respect.

     * Two cadets of the House of Orleans who served as Volunteers under
     General M’Clellan in his campaign against Richmond.

ON ALEXANDRINES.*

A letter to some country cousins.

     * This paper, it is almost needless to say, was written just
     after the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in
     March, 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.