322 ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 



gradually work out that great revolution whose full extent can 

 already be perceived. Shall I dare to tell men of science my inmost 

 thought ? They themselves will have an advantage in possessing 

 always at hand these objects of study under so convenient a form 

 and in enlarged proportions, which greatly diminish the fatigue 

 of attention. A thousand objects, which seem to us different 

 because different in size, recover their analogies, and reappear 

 in their true relative forms, through the simple process of enlarge- 

 ment. 



America, I may add, appears more keenly sensible of these advan- 

 tages than we are. An American speculator had desired M. Auzoux 

 to supply him yearly with two thousand copies of his figure of man, 

 being certain of disposing of them in all the small towns, and even in 

 the villages. Every American village, says M. Auzoux, endeavours 

 to obtain a museum, an observatory, &c. 



Page 157. The suppression of pain. — To prevent death is 

 undoubtedly impossible ; but we may prolong life. We may even- 

 tually render rarer, less cruel, and almost suppress pain. 



That the hardened old world laughs at this expression is so much 

 the better. We have seen this spectacle in the days when our 

 Europe, barbarized by war, centred all medical art in surgery, and 

 only knew how to cure by the knife by a horrible prodigality of 

 suffering, young America discovered the miracle of that profound 

 dream in which all pain is annihilated.* 



* Our author refers to the discovery of the anjBsthetic properties of ether by an 

 American. It was a surgeon of old Europe, ho-wever, that gave the world the far more 

 powerful anaesthetic of chloroform. — Translator. 



