‘DEAREST WIFEY,[5]--You wished for a letter from France, so here is one; but if you expect a description of what I have seen, I really cannot undertake to give you even a _précis_. Paris surpasses my expectations. All in its gala dress as it is now, swarming with people, crowded with soldiers, gay with fluttering flags and triumphal arches,--it is really a sight in itself. The grand Exposition of pictures is splendid; it is only too large. I was amused at it by a lady coming up to me, and politely requesting me to inform her who Ophelia was. An old French lady, looking at a picture of the burial of Harold, and, I suppose, feeling that the subject might be painful to me as a Saxon, politely assured me of her regret at that monarch’s death! “Let bygones be bygones,” say I.