I wish I could speak hopefully upon more serious things than the _chasse au renard_; but in more than one direction things seem to me to be drifting, or going back, under the Republic. E.g. a friend of mine, who prefers smoking the cigars he is used to, ordered a box from his tobacconist in Manchester, who entrusted them to the Continental Parcels Delivery Company on 15th June. Next day, though notice had been given of payment of all charges on delivery, they were stopped at the Gare du Nord, at Paris, where the station-master refused to forward them until he got an undertaking in writing from my friend to pay all charges. This was sent at once, but produced no effect for three days, when another letter arrived--not now from the station-master, but from a person signing himself “Contributions Agent”--saying that undertaking No. 1 was not in proper form. Thereupon, undertaking No. 2 is sent; but still nothing happens, and my friend had almost given up hope of getting his cigars when he bethought him of advising with a deputy, who was luckily staying here in the same hotel. That gentleman seemed not at all surprised, but offered to write to his secretary in Paris to go to the Gare du Nord and look after the box. The offer was, of course, thankfully accepted, with the result that the cigars were sent on at once, with the following bill: “Droit d’entrée, 38 fr. 77 c.; timbre d’acquit à caution, 7 c.; toile d’emballage--consignation, 40 fr. 27 c.: total, 79 fr. 11 c.”--which about doubled the original cost. This instance of the slovenliness (if not worse) of a railway company and the Customs has been quite eclipsed, however, by the Post Office. Another friend posted a letter here to his sister in England, but unluckily in the forenoon, when the next departure was for Bordeaux. To that town, accordingly, his letter went, and thence to America, whence in due course--i.e. at the end of three weeks--it reached its destination in England. Again, a lady here received several dividends more than a week ago, which she forwarded to her husband in England in a registered letter. This has never reached him; and the Post-Office officials here are making inquiries (very leisurely ones) as to what has become of it. Then the clergyman of the church here, having a payment to make in his parish in England, sent the money, and got the official receipt several posts before he received a reminder from the same official (dated a week earlier than the receipt) that the payment was due; and lastly, _pour comble_, as they say here, a county J.P. has never received at all the formal summons from his High Sheriff, sent some weeks since, to serve on the grand jury at the coming Assizes! Whatever the consequences may be of utterly ignoring such summons, he has thus incurred them, which, for all I know, may be equal to the penalties of præmunire. But seriously, I fear the incubus of the Republican superstition, as you have defined