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We have a very pleasant company of ladies. The gentlemen are representatives of almost every nation, all however very affable and entertaining. An English officer, who was wounded while engaged in the Queen's service in India, seems a sort of walking Encyclopedia, a perfect embodiment of general intelligence; this, united with an eloquent voice, makes him quite the intellectual star of our circle, and as we are allowed no time for reading, it is fortunate to have such an inexhaustible fund to draw from. There is a gentleman here too from St. Petersburgh, whose father was a Russian general, his mother a Polish lady, and when the country of the latter struck for freedom, the son "bared his breast" for the land of his mother, and of course can return to his home no more. He is gallant as a knight; and affable as a Frenchman, and more kind and attentive to the wants of all, than any one here.

Knowing this to be the resort of invalids, I expected to find all very quiet and sad, but a more merry group I never met. Here, to get well, the patients have a round of duties to perform, each tasked according to his ability. Indeed exercise is an important part of the treatment. When I arrived, some were playing ball, others were returning from long walks; some singing, playing the piano, organ, guitar, violin, and so on. We have one subject of conversation which never wears out, that is, diet, diet. They say it is the same at all establishments of this kind; the treatment makes people hungry; and besides, we are obliged to live plainly, and one meal is no sooner over, than little groups in the piazza and all around are talking about what they will have to eat the next time. Some have their food weighed to them. Eight ounces of coarse bread, or its equivalent, is, I believe, all that many are allowed.

Dr. S. is at present giving us a course of lectures upon Shrotes' theory of the Hunger Cure. This is indeed the strangest thing I have heard yet, starving a man to make him well. Shrotes' establishment is a little way up the mountain beyond Priessnitz. Dr. S. says he actually saw and conversed with a man there, who had not tasted food nor water for seven days, save what his body drank in from the surface, as he was every day several hours rolled in damp sheets.

Dr. N., President of Union College, is here, receiving treatment for inflammatory rheumatism. When he came he was moved only in his arm-chair, which has a wheel on each side, and so constructed that he rolls it himself by means of two levers. This morning he walked a little way on the piazza alone, and oh! how delighted he was, but he is yet a very great sufferer. A friend in New-York sends him every morning a basket of choice fruit, from which I am often favored. Mrs. N. has promised me a ride in their little three-wheeled carriage, a kind of vehicle that I never saw.

My health is certainly improving; cold water or something else has so shocked my nervous energies into life, that I can already walk several miles in a day. The treatment is not so disagreeable as I feared, and on the whole I am passing my time very pleasantly. Indeed I am entering into the full spirit of the water cure, and its every variety of bath. However, Mr. D., I shall heed your caution to examine every day my fingers and toes, and when I see them showing any signs of being connected by those thin membraneous substances, known to naturalists as webs, I will most assuredly, as you say, ask the doctor for his bill, and hurry home; for I have no idea of joining any of the finny tribes, whatever else may become of me. I can hardly think it possible that you wrote your last in an atmosphere heated to 92o Fahrenheit. Indeed if Hamlet had been with you, he might have realized personally his prayer --

"Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

You say, if Hydropathy, Allopathy and Homeopathy fail, there is still left Chrono-Thermal treatment. I do not know what that is, but fancy I should prefer Shrotes' fasting plan as my "dernier resort."

New-York Institution for the Blind,
March 22nd, 1849.

WHEN I heard of the cholera in New Orleans, I easily imagined the sad dilemma you were in. I saw you in the lonely hotel treading the floor, then stopping short, lost in troubled thought. I saw too the shadow of gloom that settled on your brow, and though far away, be assured I shared your fears, for I knew it was not for yourself you were suffering. Is it not possible that we have misnamed a part of our Heavenly Father's dispensations, for coming as they do, all from the same hand, why are they not all good? I wish I could say something this morning that would divest you of every care, and banish every shads from your thoughts. But the bravest and best have been those whose pilgrim feet were oftenest torn. *****

Across the way are some Germans, among them a young Baron who is sorely distressed, and my heart aches for him. Though but nineteen years old he has passed the ordeal of the Mexican war, and is now suffering its painful consequences. God pity the youth whose inexperienced feet have wandered so far from his home, where he has no one to speak an encouraging word or lead him again in the right way. His brother is one of the principal actors in the present revolutions of Germany, and his poor mother writes that her pillow is never dry from her tears for her lost son.