r introduced from the mountains. Moreover, at the last outburst
of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done which by its moral
effect exercised a widespread healing power. Upon hearing of this
terrific outbreak of pestilence, King Humbert, though under the ban of
the Church, broke from all the entreaties of his friends and family,
went directly into the plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets,
public places, and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick
and dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the pestilence.
To the credit of the Church it should also be said that the Cardinal
Archbishop San Felice joined him in this.

Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king seems to have
surpassed anything that St. Januarius could do, for it gave confidence
and courage which very soon showed their effects in diminishing the
number of deaths. It would certainly appear that in this matter the king
was more directly under Divine inspiration and guidance than was the
Pope; for the fact that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his
life, while Leo XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed
the Italian people in favour of the new regime and against the old as
nothing else could have done.

In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the new Italian
government. Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially Rome, which under the
sway of the popes was scandalously filthy, are now among the cleanest
cities in Europe. What the relics of St. Januarius, St. Anthony, and
a multitude of local fetiches throughout Italy were for ages utterly
unable to do, has been accomplished by the development of the simplest
sanitary principles.

Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where theological
considerations have been all-controlling for centuries. Down to the
interference of Napoleon with that kingdom, all sanitary efforts
were looked upon as absurd if not impious. The most sober accounts of
travellers in the Spanish Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes
irresistibly comic in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining
arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted in an
American backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop pestilence
by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses bestowed upon the local
Madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful scepticism has begun to work for
good. The outbreaks of cholera in recent years have don