"The cholera is raging here, and I can compare the state of mind in each man of us only to that of soldiers in the heat of battle; all the usual securities of life seem to be gone. Apprehension and anxiety make the stoutest hearts quail. Any one feels, when he lays himself down at night, that he will in all probability be attacked before daybreak; for the disease is a pestilence that walketh in darkness, and seizes the greatest number of its victims at the most helpless hour of the night. Fifteen hundred were seized in a day, and fifteen thousand at least have already perished, although the official accounts will not give so many. "_May 14._ My picture makes progress and I am sanguine of success if nothing interferes to prevent its completion. I shall take no more commissions here and shall only complete my large picture and a few unfinished works. "General Lafayette told me a few weeks ago, when I was returning with him in his carriage, that the financial condition of the United States was a subject of great importance, and he wished that I would write you and others, who were known as statistical men, and get your views on the subject. There never was a better time for demonstrating the principles of our free institutions by showing a result favorable to our country." Among the men of note whom Morse met while he was in Paris was Baron Alexander von Humboldt, the famous traveller and naturalist, who was much attracted towards the artist, and often went to the Louvre to watch him while he was at work, or to wander through the galleries with him, deep in conversation. He was afterwards one of the first to congratulate Morse on the successful exhibition of his telegraph before the French Academy of Science. As we have already seen, Morse was intensely patriotic. He followed with keen interest the developments in our national progress as they unrolled themselves before his eyes, and when the occasion offered he took active part in furthering what he considered the right and in vigorously denouncing the wrong. He was never blind to our national or party failings, but held the mirror up before his countrymen's eyes with steady hand, and yet he was prouder of being an American than of anything else, and, as I have had occasion to remark before, his ruling passion was an intense desire to accomplish some great good for his beloved country, to raise her in the estimation of the rest of the world. On the 4th of July, 1832, he was called on to preside at the banquet given by the Americans resident in Paris, with Mr. Cooper as vice-president. General Lafayette was the guest of honor, and the American Minister Hon. William C. Rives, G.W. Haven, and many others were present. Morse, in proposing the toast to General Lafayette, spoke as follows:--