snows for months together, and express great desire for a store of winter’s reading. They met with a gentleman who had lately visited Felix Neff’s parishes of the Hautes Alpes. They asked if his work stood; he assured them it did, and said that Neff’s people showed the effect of his labours by the morality of their conduct, and especially by their kindness towards each other, and freedom from petty quarrels, and disputes about their strips of fertile land, which, from the general barrenness of the soil, form a frequent source of litigation amongst little proprietors in such situations. They are however, excessively poor; the best Sunday dinner they had to offer our friend was soup made with suet, like tallow, and dried beans, with black bread two years old chopped with a hatchet; the fare which killed poor Neff: he much wished that a supply of bibles could be sent them, for they greatly needed them. They had kept up the schools established by Neff, and in the long winter’s evenings used to meet in the cow-houses (for warmth) to read by lamp light, but they were very destitute of books of all kinds. In no way, perhaps, could a grant of bibles be better bestowed, than amongst these well-disposed mountaineers, who may be in danger of losing the christian standing they have acquired under the influence of a most devoted minister, if they are not assisted to keep up their knowledge of the word of God which he so successfully laboured to infuse. We cannot omit to notice, that our association had pleasure in taking its little share in the grant issued by the Parent Society, in thankful commemoration of the event of the first of August, 1834, the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. Some of our subscribers especially, took this occasion of proving that a liberal spirit is not to be circumscribed by restricted means. The behaviour of the negroes on the day of their first emancipation, and on that of its completion by the termination of the apprenticeship, Aug. 1st, 1838, has been such as to afford an assurance that they could appreciate the gift. A private letter from Trinidad says, that the first of August last, “was spent in praise, reading the scripture and prayer; all was order and peace. Not a drum or dance was heard, and the best of feeling pervaded every heart;” and another from Jamaica, that “the day was there held as a sabbath.”