How much of this generous earnestness towards the cause exists in society--how much desire to grasp any reasonable opportunity of good has lately happened to fall under my notice. Last winter, when the signs of the times were making us fear that Cholera would presently again be epidemic in London, it was remembered that, in the greater part of the metropolis, nothing whatever had been done since the last invasion to give immunity against the returning disease. It was remembered--too late, how indescribably dreadful a thing is the epidemic prevalence of sudden death. And the poor were thought of--in their unprotectedness, their filth, their ignorance. Among the persons thus aroused, was a gentleman whom I reluctantly leave unnamed; saying of him only, that, from a distinguished position in official life, he had retired to literary enjoyments, amid which he bears the imputation of many unacknowledged writings which charm and instruct the public. When the rumours of the pestilence began, he too heard and read and became aghast. The notion that ‘in a skilful, helpful, Christian country nothing should be done’ against these impending dangers--that the poor should be left ‘defenceless, huddled together in some dismal district, not more helpful than women’--was felt by him, he wrote, ‘deeply as a disgrace;’ and he pleaded that, ‘on a great and pressing occasion, it remains for the thoughtful, the rich, and the benevolent, to try and do these needful things for the people.’[11] Let us, he urged, endeavour to meet this shameful reproach; let us combine voluntary charitable assistance for extemporaneous sanitary measures, rapid, though partial; let us get a hundred thousand pounds and do what we can in aid of local authorities in the poorest districts--in Bethnal Green, in Shoreditch. Eventually this plan was abandoned, at least for the time. There was argued against it, that prompt legislation might do more good, with less exoneration of local responsibility. Whether rightly or wrongly, the latter view was acted on; and in accordance with it, the gentleman first adverted to (waving his own hopes and wishes in the matter) took active part in framing suggestions,[12] which Lord Palmerston had expressed himself willing to accept, for modifying the laws of Nuisance and Disease-Prevention to a form more suitable for the apprehended emergency. But, in the meantime, what had happened? The author of the plan, as it were at a moment’s notice, had seemed to draw round himself half the intellectual and moral strength of the metropolis. Himself setting aside the literary ambition of his life, he found others ready to meet him with their several self-sacrifices. Over-worked men of science and of business, who afford no time to relaxation; favourites of society, who might have been suspected of mere shuddering at distasteful subjects; men of high laborious rank in Church and State; poets; heads of professions; minds that guide the tastes and morals of the country,