hat a wonderful one might be. So far as I can understand
it, I think that in the vast majority of cases it is an evil, or one of
Nature's innumerable mistakes or divagations, not as yet outgrown or
corrected; and it is the great error of Buddhistic-Christianity that it
_accepts_ pain not merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it,
instead of making every conceivable exertion to _diminish_ it. Herein
clearly lies the difference between Science and Religion. Science
strives in every way to alleviate pain and suffering; erroneous
"Religion" is based on it. During the Middle Ages, the Church did all in
its power to hinder, if not destroy, the healing art. It made anatomy of
the human body a crime, and carried its precautions so far that, quite
till the Reformation, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was
chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners. _Torturers_,
chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the
healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as people say, "the age"
which caused all this--it was the result of religion based on crucifixion
and martyrdoms and pain--in fact, on that element of _torture_ which we
are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the
devil in hell. The _cant_ of this still survives in Longfellow's "Suffer
and be strong," and in the pious praise of endurance of pain. What the
world wants is the hope held out to it, or enforced on it as a religion
or conviction, that pain and suffering are to be diminished, and that our
chief duty should consist in diminishing them, instead of always praising
or worshipping them as a cross!

We left our friends and went for a short time to Switzerland, where we
visited Lucerne, Interlaken, Basle, and Berne. Thence we returned to
London and the Langham Hotel. This was at that time under the management
of Mr. John Sanderson, an American, whom I had known of old. He was a
brother of Professor Sanderson, of Philadelphia, who wrote a remarkably
clever work entitled _The American in Paris_. John Sanderson himself had
contributed many articles to Appletons' _Cyclopaedia_, belonged to the
New York Century Club, and, like all the members of his family, had
culture in music and literary taste. While he managed the Langham it was
crowded during all the year, as indeed any decent hotel almost anywhere
may be by simple proper liberal management. This is a subject which I
have studie