ess
that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the
national vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for charity.
Nor did the French nation, at those periods when it was most largely
under the control of theological considerations, seem to have any
inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision for
relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the sumptuous
enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half of the nineteenth
century to develop this feeling so strongly, though quietly, that
Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was obliged to
recognise it and to set this great example.

Nor has the recent history of the United States been less fruitful in
lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only Southern cities but
even New York and Philadelphia, has now been almost entirely warded off.
Such epidemics as that in Memphis a few years since, and the immunity of
the city from such visitations since its sanitary condition was changed
by Mr. Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to be
feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly, is now
rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the diseases which
in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in every country, now
cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought of little account, and
for the cure of which people therefore rely, to their cost, on quackery
instead of medical science.

This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the United States
has also been coincident with a marked change in the attitude of the
American pulpit as regards the theory of disease. In this country, as
in others, down to a period within living memory, deaths due to want of
sanitary precautions were constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as
"results of national sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view
has mainly passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of
the country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading useful
ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious press has been
especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every household more
just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living.

The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in church and
state has been changed by facts like these. Lord Palmerston refusing the
request