Some allusion to the baneful career of the cholera, fortunately more rare in its visits than the old plague, will not be out of place in a volume, the basis of which is the mortality of the people. Although from 1832, when it made its second appearance in England[25], various rumours had been spread of its approach, it was not until 1849 that it came again to this country in all its terrible reality. The appalling disease of that year will not be readily forgotten; for it spared neither the rich in his mansion, nor the poor in his hovel. It smote the physician who attempted its cure, and it struck down the priest who supplicated its departure. It was not, however, indiscriminate in its attacks; for wherever a squalid population hedged in the lofty terrace or the aristocratic square, it spread from the meagre workman to his healthy fellow-citizen. The business of most life-assurance offices increased with rapidity. Some of them were besieged with applicants. Men saw their neighbours’ houses closed, and feared that a similar symbol might soon mark their own. They ran, therefore, while there was yet time, to do that which they should have done before; and so great was the influx, that it is doubtful had this new form of plague lasted in all its intensity, whether some of the companies would not have shared the panic and shut their doors. It was scarcely possible to see house after house bearing the signs of mourning, without an indefinite future pressing its claims; and when it was found that, in several cases, insurance was followed by rapid death, they who knew little or nothing of the doctrine of chances, suggested that for a period the offices should be closed; and as life after life was insured and fell, and as day by day the gloom of the City increased, it was even agitated by those who should have been better informed. But the companies maintained their calling; though then, if ever, they should have mooted, whether those who insured their lives, and went to reside among ill-constructed sewers, foul gully holes, and teeming cesspools, should not have paid a higher premium than those who went to ventilated houses, breezy suburbs, and well built districts. This point seems completely lost sight of. Every inquiry is made concerning gout, asthma, and consumption; but no question is put concerning the health of a locality. A man determined to commit suicide, and not void his policy, may as surely effect his purpose as if he visibly destroyed himself; for wherever scarlet or typhus fever rages, there may he reside without question. “Whoever has insured his life,” remarks Mr. Dickens, “may live over a cesspool. He who has taken out a policy, is not called to give notice of his intention, though he may purpose removing to some quarter of the town, in which his house may be ill-ventilated, his neighbourhood confined, his drainage in a state of horrible neglect. There was a case in point, that attracted public notice some little time ago.