e of avoiding them is not by praying to the saints, but by insuring
personal and municipal cleanliness. In the twelfth century it was
found necessary to pave the streets of Paris, the stench in them was so
dreadful At once dysenteries and spotted fever diminished; a sanitary
condition approaching that of the Moorish cities of Spain, which had
been paved for centuries, was attained. In that now beautiful metropolis
it was forbidden to keep swine, an ordinance resented by the monks
of the abbey of St. Anthony, who demanded that the pigs of that saint
should go where they chose; the government was obliged to compromise the
matter by requiring that bells should be fastened to the animals' necks.
King Philip, the son of Louis the Fat, had been killed by his horse
stumbling over a sow. Prohibitions were published against throwing slops
out of the windows. In 1870 an eye-witness, the author of this book,
at the close of the pontifical rule in Rome, found that, in walking the
ordure-defiled streets of that city, it was more necessary to inspect
the earth than to contemplate the heavens, in order to preserve personal
purity. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the streets of
Berlin were never swept. There was a law that every countryman, who came
to market with a cart, should carry back a load of dirt!

Paving was followed by attempts, often of an imperfect kind, at
the construction of drains and sewers. It had become obvious to all
reflecting men that these were necessary to the preservation of health,
not only in towns, but in isolated houses. Then followed the lighting
of the public thoroughfares. At first houses facing the streets were
compelled to have candles or lamps in their windows; next the system
that had been followed with so much advantage in Cordova and Granada--of
having public lamps--was tried, but this was not brought to perfection
until the present century, when lighting by gas was invented.
Contemporaneously with public lamps were improved organizations for
night-watchmen and police.

By the sixteenth century, mechanical inventions and manufacturing
improvements were exercising a conspicuous influence on domestic and
social life. There were looking-glasses and clocks on the walls, mantels
over the fireplaces. Though in many districts the kitchen-fire was still
supplied with turf, the use of coal began to prevail. The table in the
dining-room offered new delicacies; commerce was bringing to it forei