er enforce.

Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France: thanks
to the decline of theological control over the universities, to the
abolition of monasteries, and to such labours in hygienic research and
improvement as those of Tardieu, Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change
has been wrought in public health. Statistics carefully kept show that
the mean length of human life has been remarkably increased. In the
eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to 1830
it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864, thirty-seven
years and six months.

IV. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.

The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary science has
been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in its highest sense.
One piece of recent history indicates an answer to this question.
The Second Empire in France had its head in Napoleon III, a noted
Voltairean. At the climax of his power he determined to erect an Academy
of Music which should be the noblest building of its kind. It was
projected on a scale never before known, at least in modern times, and
carried on for years, millions being lavished upon it. At the same
time the emperor determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris
hospital; this, too, was projected on a greater scale than anything
of the kind ever before known, and also required millions. But in
the erection of these two buildings the emperor's determination was
distinctly made known, that with the highest provision for aesthetic
enjoyment there should be a similar provision, moving on parallel lines,
for the relief of human suffering. This plan was carried out to the
letter: the Palace of the Opera and the Hotel-Dieu went on with equal
steps, and the former was not allowed to be finished before the latter.
Among all the "most Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who had
preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to
the religious and moral sense of the nation. Catharine de' Medici and
her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion, never
showed any such feeling; Louis XIV, revoking the Edict of Nantes for the
glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow during many generations,
never dreamed of making the construction of his palaces and public
buildings wait upon the demands of charity. Louis XV, so subservient
to the Church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousn