"MY DEAR SIR,--Your most welcome letter reached me after I had made a tour in the Highlands, and just as the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science commenced. "I naturally communicated your despatch to the Geographical section of that body, and the reading of it called forth an unanimous expression of admiration of your labors and researches. "In truth, you will long ago, I trust, have received the cordial thanks of all British geographers for your unparalleled exertions, and your successful accomplishment of the greatest triumph in geographical research which has been effected in our times. "I rejoice that I was the individual in the Council of the British Geographical Society who proposed that you should receive our first gold medal of the past session, and I need not say that the award was made by an unanimous and cordial vote. "Permit me to thank you sincerely for having selected me as your correspondent in the absence of Colonel Steele, and to assure you that I shall consider myself as much honored, as I shall certainly be gratified, by every fresh line which you may have leisure to write to me. "Anxiously hoping that I may make your personal acquaintance, and that you may return to us in health to receive the homage of all geographers,--I remain, my dear Sir, yours most faithfully, "RODCK* I. MURCHISON," The other subject that chiefly occupied Livingstone's mind at this time was missionary labor. This, like all other labor, required to be organized, on the principle of making the very best use of all the force that was or could be contributed for missionary effort. With his fair, open mind, he weighed the old method of monastic establishments, and, _mutatis mutandis_, he thought something of the kind might be very useful. He thought it unfair to judge of what these monasteries were in their periods of youth and vigor, from the rottenness of their decay. Modern missionary stations, indeed, with their churches, schools, and hospitals, were like Protestant monasteries, conducted on the more wholesome principle of family life; but they wanted stability; they had not farms like monasteries, and hence they required to depend on the mother country. From infancy to decay they were pauper institutions. In Livingstone's judgment they needed to have more of the self-supporting element: