NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 609 



real sacrifice of religion in its highest sense. One piece of re- 

 cent history enables us to answer this question. The Second 

 Empire in France had its head in Napoleon III, a noted Vol- 

 tairean. At the climax of his power he determined to erect an 

 Academy of Music, which should be the noblest building of its 

 kind in the world. It was projected on a scale never before 

 known, at least in modern times, and carried on for years, millions 

 being lavished upon it. But at the same time the emperor deter- 

 mined 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. In the erection of 

 these two buildings the emperor's determination was distinctly 

 made known, that with the highest provision for intellectual en- 

 joyment there should be a similar provision, and moving on par- 

 allel lines with it, 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 

 for hundreds of years, 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 consciousness that while making enor- 

 mous 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 re- 

 lief from human suffering, to justify provision for the sumptuous 

 enjoyment of art : it was reserved for the second half of the nine- 

 teenth century to develop this feeling so strongly, though quietly, 

 that Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was 

 obliged to recognize it and to set this great example. 



Nor has the recent history of the United States been less fruit- 

 ful 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 



VOL. XXXIX. 43 



