THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



pulsory vaccination, the actual state of our Lunacy laws 

 is a permanent danger to liberty and to the free expres- 

 sion of opinion, and is a disgrace to the closing years of 

 our century. 



2. THE VAMPIRE OP WAR. 



Were half the power that fills the world with terror. 



Were half the wealth bestowed on Camps and Courts, 

 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 



There were no need for Arsenals and Forts. 

 The Warrior's name would be a name abhorred! 



And every nation that should lift again 

 Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 



Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain! 



Longfellow. 



Since tyrants by the sale of human life 

 Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 

 To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 

 Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 

 The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of WAR. 



Shelley. 



The first half of the nineteenth century was signalized 

 by the abolition of duelling. It had always been illegal, 

 and long been considered to be both absurd and wicked 

 by every advanced thinker; but only when forbidden to 

 military men by the War Office did it entirely disappear 

 among civilians. The same public opinion which 

 caused the disappearance of this form of private war 

 equally condemns war between nations as a means of set- 

 tling disputes, often of the most trivial kind; and rarely 

 of sufficient importance to justify the destruction of life 

 and property, the national hatreds, and the widespread 

 misery caused by it. Yet so far from any progress hav- 

 ing been made toward its abolition, the latter half of the 

 century has witnessed a revival of the war-spirit through- 



