in the animal or vegetable branch of natural history there is a great deficiency, and altogether the Museum is not worthy of a country which seems destined by nature to be the great emporium of all natural science.
Of course, we have revisited old Chapultepec, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, with her Legend and Holy Well. In the morning we have rode to Tacubaya and the environs, and the weather at that early hour has the most indescribable freshness, caused by the evening rains. Everything looks bright and sparkling. The Peruvian trees, with their bending green branches and bunches of scarlet berries, glitter with the heavy rain-drops, and even the hoary cypresses of Chapultepec sparkle with water in all their gigantic branches. Little pools have become ponds, and ditches rivulets, and frequently it is rather wading than riding, which is not so pleasant.
24th.—Last evening we had a very pretty ball in the house of the French Minister, where all the Paris furniture was very effective. There were as usual plenty of diamonds, and some handsome dresses—mine white satin, with flowers.
25th.—The whole world is talking of a pamphlet written by Señor Gutierrez Estrada, which has just appeared, and seems likely to cause a greater sensation in Mexico than the discovery of the gunpowder plot in England. Its sum and substance is the proposal of a constitutional monarchy in Mexico, with a foreign prince (not named) at its head, as the only remedy for the evils by which it is afflicted. The pamphlet is written merely in a speculative form, in-
