_May 1st._--Such a May-day as our poets sang of ere there was a change of style, and of climate too! A local paper remarks that "the remarkable facility with which an Englishman takes to water under certain conditions was exhibited by the word 'bath' appended on the register of the hotel to the name of every gentleman of the party;" but it was not quite so easy to obtain the thing as to write the word. However, everything comes to him who knows how to wait, and we were all provided at last. By some mischance it was ordered that we should have a private room (No. 32), instead of breakfasting in the common room, which was large and airy, and our "aristocratic exclusiveness," which was quite involuntary, was punished by immurement in an _inferno_ which daylight could not reach, and which was perforce illuminated by gas. It was "_ad suffocandum_," as Dr. Syntax would say, hot and stuffy. There was a great clangour of church bells after breakfast. The air was resonant with invitations, and we had choice of many places and forms of worship. The Church of the Epiphany in our street was near at hand, and those who attended there found a large congregation, an excellent preacher, and a well-ordered service. Mr. Victor Drummond gave the Duke and myself lunch at his lodgings, where we met Lord G. Montagu and Mr. De Bunsen, of the Legation, and as we walked to the house I had ample opportunities, though I still know the names of my friends, of lamenting the effects of the "_longa oblivio_" of which Juvenal writes, for the changes which have been made in the city have obliterated most of the landmarks, and time has done the rest. I could not identify "Jost's," where I lived for so many weeks between the rout of Bull Run and the winter of McClellan's preparations in 1861, nor quite satisfy myself as to the precise house "in Seventeenth Street, at the corner of I," where so many anxious days and nights were passed during "the Mason and Slidell" _pourparlers_, and where "the Bold Buccaneers" were wont to meet. There were new squares and streets in the way, and, moreover, there were statues to heroes whose lights were then hidden under a bushel. In addition to the colossal statue of Washington, by Clark Mills, at the crossing of the Pennsylvania and New Hampshire Avenues, there are the equestrian statue (heroic) of General Scott, by H. Brown, at the crossing of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Avenues; Balls' enormous and "characteristic" statue of Lincoln (paid for by negro subscription) in Lincoln Park; an equestrian statue of Nathaniel Greene, the revolutionary general; one of General Rawlins (to me an unknown quantity--ignoramus that I am!). To these (most of them "_buccæ bene notæ oppido_") must be added a statue of Admiral Farragut, very like, but complicated by a ridiculous telescope; a fine statue on horseback of General Thomas, one of the best of the Federal generals (_pace_ General Grant and General Badeau); another of General