that the military system was expensive, and much interfered with the
ordinary employments; but that Switzerland was the place for me to learn
and study the blending of the school system with military training, in
consequence of which every Swiss had a good education, understood the
use of arms and military drill, and was yet practical, industrious, and
sober, while the whole system was very inexpensive. He gave me a letter
of introduction to a friend of his in Switzerland, who could give me
every information I might desire, and all needful documents.

_Lake Como, April 1st._--This is the first place of rest and retirement
that we have had since we came to Europe. We are inhaling fresh country
air every day. We are in the centre of a natural magnificence, beauty,
and grandeur such as I have never witnessed--before us the little, deep,
Y-shaped lake, abounding in fish, dotted with skiffs, skirted with
flower gardens, walks, shrubs, and villas, and overhung on either side
by snow-capped mountains--roses and plants and green flowers at the
bottom of the mountains--craggy rocks and deep snow at the top, and all
apparently within a mile's distance. Here where we stop is the villa of
the Duke of Meiningen, and the palace-residence of the late Queen
Caroline of England (now an hotel), and the villa of the King of the
Belgians--a favourite place of retirement of the late King. What I have
witnessed here, in the quiet Sabbath of yesterday, has given me more
impressive views of the varied beauty and magnificence of the works of
God than I ever had before, though I had travelled much, and finished my
sixty-fourth year the Sabbath before.

_London, 30th April._--I was present two hours at the anniversary of the
Church Missionary Society--heard the report (a very good one) read, and
heard Lord Chichester (President), the Lord Bishop of Norwich, Dean of
Carlisle, and the Lord Bishop of Cork. The speaking was
evangelical--Methodistically experimental, but nothing like so able and
effective as that at the Wesleyan Missionary meeting yesterday.

I attended a meeting this afternoon at City Road Chapel, to hear an
address from Lord Shaftesbury on Ragged Schools, and to witness the
laying of the corner-stone of a chapel school-house in an alley about
six minutes' walk from City Road Wesleyan Chapel--one of the most
wretched neighbourhoods in London. I never knew before what the ragged
poor of London, in the lanes and alleys, were. I never