Well, I've got off the scenery so far, and there's the weather to come yet, lots of it too. We've been having no end of weather lately. Sunday was cold and dull, nearly freezing the whole day. Monday ditto, with the addition of a breeze. Tuesday, no breeze, and as warm as toast, simply a beautiful summer's day. Wednesday just as hot, but blowing hard, and to-day. Thursday, cold as ever, and still blowing. I suppose at this time of year it's bound to change any five minutes. _Friday._--I must mail this in about an hour, but half that time would suffice to run me dry. By-the-bye, I may as well tell you that my watch goes beautifully. It needed a good deal of regulating, and that took a long time, but at length I have got it quite near enough to perfection for all practical purposes. It gains steadily now at the rate of about a minute and a half a week. I have timed it by a gun that is fired every day at noon from the grounds of the Houses of Parliament. It goes off by electricity, I believe, or the time is given by electricity from Montreal. Doesn't it sound rather funny, to hear of the _grounds_ of the Houses of Parliament? It would to a Londoner, I know, but such is the case. There is such heaps of room everywhere in this great draughty country, that they may just as well take twenty acres for their buildings as two, that's just about it, I should think; it must be quite twenty, and not a single flower or, even as far as I know, a flowering shrub in the place; nothing but level lawns and walks or roads, beautifully kept, I admit. Anyone of the lawns would make half-a-dozen first-rate tennis courts, but the whole affair, seen from a little distance, looks like a painted scene. It's just a mass of even green relieved or embarrassed, as the case may be, by the straight up and down yellow houses, which houses also, in my opinion, have precious little architectural beauty to boast of, bar the centre one, perhaps, which is the house of Parl., par excellence, the others being only departmental ones. There is a very jolly walk, though round at the back of them, where I went last Sunday, you see the houses with their grounds occupy a sort of promontory, which juts out into the river, or rather into a little lake formed by it at its bend. The lawns must be from eighty to one hundred feet above the level of the water, and it is about half way down the banks, which are more than steep, that the walk in question runs. Fifty years ago this must have been one of the prettiest spots in Canada, and now anyone standing there has only the great wooden-looking houses at his back, and a colony of saw mills in front. The saw mills are out-and-out the most interesting of the two. The amount of wood cut up there every day is enormous. I believe Ottawa is the lumbering centre of Canada; any way, there are acres and acres of wood all cut up into planks or battens, and stacked thirty feet high and as close as possible, yet it all looks new, which shows that it must be