Yesterday I happened to be calling at the Embassy, when a young English gentleman made his appearance, and quietly asked whether he could take any letters to England. He is to start to-day in a balloon, and has paid 5,000f. for his place. I gave him a letter, and a copy of one which I had confided on Wednesday to an Irishman who is trying to get through the lines. I hear that to-morrow the Columbian Minister is going to the Prussian Headquarters, and a friend of mine assures me that he thinks if I give him a letter by one o'clock to-day this diplomatist will take it. The Corps Diplomatique are excessively indignant with the reply they have received from Count Bismarck, declining to allow any but open despatches through the Prussian lines. They have held an indignation meeting. M. Kern, the Swiss Minister, has drawn up a protest, which has been signed by himself and all his colleagues. The Columbian Minister is to be the bearer of it. It bombards Bismarck with copious extracts from Puffendorf and Grotius, and cites a case in point from the siege of Vienna in the 15th century. It will be remembered that Messenger Johnson, at the risk of his life and at a very great expense to the country, brought despatches to the Parisian Embassy on the second day of the siege. I recommend Mr. Rylands, or some other M.P. of independent character, to insist upon Parliament being informed what these important despatches were. The revelation will be a curious one. Yesterday afternoon I made an excursion into the Bois de Boulogne under the convoy of a friend in power. We went out by the Porte de Neuilly. Anything like the scene of artificial desolation and ruin outside this gate it is impossible to imagine. The houses are blown up--in some places the bare walls are still standing, in others even these have been thrown down. The Bois itself, from being the most beautiful park in the world, has become a jungle of underwood. In the roads there are large barricades formed of the trees which used to line them, which have been cut down. Between the ramparts and the lake the wood is swept clean away, and the stumps of the trees have been sharpened to a point. About 8,000 soldiers are encamped in the open air on the race-course and in the Bois. Near Suresnes there is a redoubt which throws shell and shot into St. Cloud. We are under the impression that the firing from this redoubt, from Valerien, Issy, and the gunboat Farcy, which took place on Thursday morning, between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m., has destroyed the batteries and earthworks which the Prussians were erecting on the heights of St. Cloud and Meudon-Clamart. You, however, are better informed respecting the damage which was done than we are. When I was in the Bois the redoubt was not firing, and the sailors who man it were lounging about, exactly as though they had been on board ship. Occasionally Mont-Valerien fired a shot, but it was only a sort of visiting card to