This week has been the perfection of weather. I worked hard all the morning in writing letters which was the more necessary from the omission to write last week. A minister’s duties are by no means trifling in this mission, and yet I have fewer subjects of difference to manage than common between the countries. It was five o’ clock before I was done. I had less than an hour for exercise. Mr Washburne dined with me. Like all his brothers, he is very stiff in his antislavery politics. But he confirms my impression of the President’s incompetency. Mrs Carden de Sandrands and her daughter, lately from America spent an hour or two in the evening. They were driven from Virginia on account of this war.