On Sunday morning by ten o'clock the Bois de Boulogne is filled with pedestrians, who take their breakfast on the grass to while away the time of waiting. The restaurants Madrid and the Cascade, where the tables are spread amidst flowers and shaded by trees--a feature that is duly remembered in the bills, like an _hors d'oeuvre_--are turning visitors away. Toward half-past two the enclosure of the paddock is absolutely full: not a vacant chair is to be found, and a fearful consumption of iced champagne begins at the buffet. For, strange to say, the weather is always fine on this day, and the Encouragement Society is as notorious for its good-luck in this respect as the Skating Club and the Steeple-chase Society are for quite the opposite. By degrees--and perhaps helped by the champagne--the vast throng will be observed, as the supreme moment approaches, to depart from its habitually staid and calm demeanor, and finally to show some signs of enthusiasm, though without growing in the least noisy and turbulent, like that at Epsom on the Derby Day. Once in a year, however, I as the French say, doesn't make a custom, and the Parisian crowd, to quote its own expression, "croit que c'est arrive." The applause, in case the winner is a French horse, comes from patriotic motives: if he happens to be English it is given from a feeling of courtesy; and the crowd having done its duty in either case, the famous "return," that has often furnished a subject for the painter, begins. And a wondrous sight it is. Up to six o'clock the innumerable carriages continue to defile upon the several routes that lead to the city, forming a procession of which the head touches the Place de la Concorde, whilst the extremity still reaches to the tribunes of Longchamps. And when evening comes on, and bets are settled, and heated brains seek to prolong the day's excitement far into the night, such haunts as the Mabille grow so noisy that the police is generally obliged to interfere. There was a time when, on these occasions, that jolly nobleman, the duke of Hamilton, then a prominent figure on the French turf, did not disdain to lead his followers to the battle in person, and to practise the noble art of boxing upon all comers, whether policemen or bookmakers. But these deeds of former days are now but traditions: His Grace has married, which is said to have taught him wisdom, and the bookmakers have grown into millionaires, with a sense of the gravity becoming their position.--L. LEJEUNE. MRS. PINCKNEY'S GOVERNESS