KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 
thus passing rapidly over the ground, with 
the aid of our alpenstoks, we reached the 
Grand Mulets, and, finally, the valley below. 
The bells rung a merry peal—we were Nos. 
33 and 34 of those who had ascended Mont 
Blanc—then the cannon boomed, and the 
damsels of Chamounix presented bouquets. 
Seldom had there been so propitious an 
ascent; and, with Mr. Albert Smith as 
chairman, the whole party sat down next day 
to an excellent dinner in the open air, and 
with all the travellers then in Chamounix as 
admiring spectators of the very characteristic 
scene. The bridge was illuminated, the 
guns were fired at intervals, the Englishmen 
_ made speeches, and the guides sang lugubrious 
songs. ‘The moon looked on, too, brightly, 
but with a calm radiance; and an immense 
soup-tureen full of capital punch was distri- 
buted among the guests with an enlivening 
effect. 
Thus ended the last ascent of the highest 
mountain in Europe; and I cannot conclude 
this account of the proceeding without the 
observation, that a repetition of the enjoy- 
ment is within the reach of every one who 
has good weather, good guides, a good head, 
and sufficient energy for a. walk of 24 hours 
chiefly over deep snow, and without sleep. 
Your’s faithfully, 
JOHN MACGREGOR. 
Chamounix, September 24. 

COMPULSORY GOODNESS. 
A LETTER has been addressed to the public 
papers, by an individual signing himself 
“S$. G. O.”’ It has reference to the state of 
the present times; and, amidst much that is 
misty and obscure, there is some good sense 
locked up init. We extract, for our purposes, 
the following :-~ 
‘The Cholera is among us, has affrighted us; 
and we are, with our usual national courage 
and perseverance, calling to our aid every 
help of science, every result of experience, 
to disarm it of its power. 
death to destroy it, as we have pursued dis- 
tance, with steam to almost annihilate it—as 
we “ profess’ to pursue religion to disarm 
death of its worst sting. We find that cholera, 
as such, is our master. When once adult, it 
there is vice—depravity has its premonitory 
symptoms. So we find with cholera—it has its 
premonitory state ; there we can contend with 
it and conquer it. We do so, and Heaven 
blesses us in using the means to which the 
reason Heaven has given us has led us. 
_ “ Look at the scenes house-to-house visita- 
tion is opening out to us,—scenes long known 




to some of us. The nation which, by common 
consent, has stamped its people as “im- 
mortal,” has been content to leave a very 
large proportion of them to live in a state 
of brutality, lower than that of the brutes 
which die and perish! Portions of our large 
towns have, by tacit consent, been allowed 
to exist as the natural refuge of human living 
refuse ! 
‘« We have bred human beings, as maggots 
are bred; in atmosphere contaminated by 
the unopposed accumulation of all possible 
moral and physical filth, Knowing what 
vice is, what it costs us here—the vicious in 
common hereafter—we have had but little 
regard to its premonitory stages. We have 
kept by us vast stores of matter directly 
provocative of vice. We have accumulated 
a population, existing in and about these 
stores, who must thus be reared in the deepest 
moral degradation. We have had police to 
be at war with them; gaols and hangmen to 
scare them from trespassing beyond their own 
squalid vicious misery, to maraud on our 
better territory. We are now cleansiog their 
drains, whitewashing their houses, inJing 
them medicines, coffins, ‘‘ tracts,” and tents. 
Did we ever yet try seriously to combine a 
cleansing of the creature with a cleansing of 
the scene of its existence ? 
“Tt is one thing to brew gallons of cinnamon 
water with chalk mixture and opium, and to 
implore all premonished of the poison of 
cholera to come and drink gratis. It is 
another, to tell them there is a mental poison; 
for which God has given to man (free of cost) 
that which can arrest the premonitory evi- 
dence of an approaching life and death in 
vice. 
* * % 
‘‘ At‘our very wits’ end to know what to do 
with the convicted criminal, we are yet con- 
tent, except when cholera comes, to leave the 
foul nurseries of crime unexplored. Man’s 
moral death we are prepared to meet with 
such weapons as the Leicester prison cranks, 
or the Birmingham gaol garotte. But we 
'seem to care little about attacking the pre- 
We are pursuing | 
monitory symptoms which warn us, where a 
population is exposed to more than ordinary 
| temptation. 
‘“‘ How many there are who, hearing of the 
‘large sums raised for home and foreign 
| missions, knowing the impulse given to the 
defies us; but we find we can strangle it in 
its birth. There is vicious inclination before | 
lodging-house question, hearing of the zeal 
in the cause of “the ragged,” so honorably 
at last shown,—go to bed each night thankful 
that they live in such a land! It may be, 
and is, better than other lands ; but, when com- 
pared with its professions, WHO among us 
does not blush at our shortcomings?” 
We are not going to ground “a Sermon ” 
on the above opportune remarks,—but, we 
most earnestly commend them to universal 



