As all the members of the family, including the two invalids, proposed this year to start at once, there was unusual bustle of preparation. I confess to a little anxiety on my private account, for Mary’s condition especially, but as it regards public matters I never had so little. The mission is almost ready to take care of itself. We started at about noon. Seven of our party, and three servants. Took the train on the Great Western railway to Swindon, and from thence on a local road to Chettenham, where we got ourselves very comfortably established at the Queen’s Hotel. The Valley in which this place reposes is a picturesque and fruitful rural region. It is carved the range of the Cotswold hills which makes it warm in winter— At this season, perhaps the objection to it is that the air is not sufficiently bracing. As a watering place, the fashion seems rather to be leaving it. In the evening there was a band of music in a large inclosure called the Montpelier gardens. But there were not exceeding a couple of hundred persons present. At this very spacious and well conducted Hotel, there is scarcely a person but ourselves.