The telegraph brought us today the news of the Surrender of Port Hudson and of a variety of other successes which had again reduced the price of gold. The only offset to this favorable news is to be found in the details of a fearful not in the city, of New York stimulated by Fernando Wood, and the associate of the Slaveholding part, who have taken the opportunity of the conscription to attempt a division in their favor. I trust that we have made sufficient progress to render this attempt futile. The western country and New England will render abortive all the false hearted intrigues of the middle States. There is a singular parallel in this record with that of the revolutionary history on this point. I went to the city to church, making my way so far as to St Dunstan’s in the East. I had not taken my seat before I discovered that the interior showed no signs of the hand of Sir Christopher Wren. It is a new erection in the simplest quasi Gothic, with large painted glass windows over the altar and clerestory windows that gives light but no great ornament. It is a neat interior but has no architectural beauty. What Sir Christopher Wren did build is the tower and spine which is curious and striking. It looks slight from the slender supports in which the latter appears to rest, but the effect is elegance. It is singular that in this case the relative share of the architect is directly the reverse of that in St Michaels where I went last Sunday. Here it is the tower only, there only the body of the edifice. The services as usual. The Clergyman preached a discourse in a very liberal spirit apropos to an earnest appeal for assistance to an Episcopal church & school in land 420 Canada. It was rather curious to observe the different tones which a Churchman who has been long upholding his sect against a Catholic community, and that which the same person assumes at home. On the whole the sect has become far less bigoted than formerly, but there is even now much room for improvement. As the day was fine I walked with Mary to the zoological gardens which I have not visited for some time. I found that in the interval the Lion’s whelp and the great Boa Constrictor had died. The mortality among the creatures must be considerable as I constantly observe cages vacated. The large animals however seem to survive in good condition. We had some visits from Americans—and a quiet evening. I read a good deal of Mrs Kemble’s book. It gives a shocking picture of slaveholding on an absentee’s plantation in Georgia. That the people who have carried this dreadful system on in the face of the world, defying all remonstrance and glorying in their shame have now a terrible retribution hanging over them is clear. I trust that they may yet be wise in time to break at least a share of its severity.