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effectually aroused those afflicted communities to the necessity of action, and already extensive works have been carried out in some of them, notably in Memphis. There is reason to hope and believe that this enlightened policy will effectually protect them against future visitations of pestilence. In all of our larger cities a sanitary staff has been appointed, hospitals built for small pox and fever cases, and for the control and limitation of epidemic diseases. Among the powers conferred upon these sanitary boards or staffs, is the important one of demolishing unwholesome dwellings, and prohibiting the erection of houses upon unhealthy sites. These old buildings were the permanent seats of disease and crime.— Where and whenever extensive drains have been constructed and a supply of pure water has been obtained for domestic use and with which to flush the sewers, the most gratifying diminution of the death rates has indicated the favorable effects of these sanitary measures. This has not only been the case in England, as we have seen from Dr. Latham's tables, but in every European country and in our own. In fact the death rate has declined in almost exact proportion to the energy and extent of the sanitary measures.

It is to be hoped that these cheering facts may have their influence upon the authorities of our prosperous and growing "city of the hills," and that something may be done by them in this direction before we are reminded of the necessity of such works by a visitation of disease and the decimation of our population by death. When undertaken, let us hope that the work may be upon a comprehensive plan for the accommodation of every part of the city and large enough to meet the wants of a much greater population than Staunton can now number. That our population is destined to be very much increased by accessions from abroad and within a comparative brief period, there is every reason to believe. With the introduction of pure water into towns, the abolition of under-ground and cellar dwellings. still so common in the crowded parts of London, Paris and New York and all large cities; the construction of drains and sewers, ventilated by shafts fixed at their highest points and carried above the eaves of the houses, the rapid conveyance of all excretal matters long distances from the towns and the utilization of all refuse. animal or vegetable manure, typhus and typhoid fever, once so common in those centres of population has become of comparatively rare occurrence; and all other infectious diseases have been largely reduced in amount while the general health has been improved.

That in any large city among its working classes typhus and typhoid fever should be nearly extinguished implies a diminution of human pain and misery which cannot be estimated. How terrible is the condition of the widows and orphans deprived of the

earnings of the husband and father by premature death at entrance or in the midst of the productive period of life, for the most prevalent and fatal forms of sickness among the poorer classes are deadly fevers. If typhus can be reduced to a very low point, a latent resource of civilization will be developed in a most obvious and beneficent manner, and a potent mode of enlarging the means of enjoyment and the possibilities of raising the race to a higher level of physical and moral health.

The philosopher's ideal of human health and the duration of human life may not be, with our present means and knowledge, Utopian, but it is a noble ideal to keep before us. Life extends naturally to five times the number of years required in the various orders of animals to arrive at maturity. The elephant is young at thirty, and lives to 150; the horse matures at five, and lives to 25 years; the lion and ox mature at four, and live to 20; the cat matures in eighteen months, and its full life is 7 years. Man arrives at maturity at about twenty, and ought therefore to live to one hundred. The body ceases to grow at the end of twenty years, but it does not cease to increase till forty, at which age it reaches its most complete physical condition. During the next thirty years, or to the age of 70, called the period of invigoration, all the functions become or ought to become more tain, all of its organization more perfect. At seventy old age should begin and last for about fifteen years; from eighty-five to one hundred there should be ripe old age, not accompanied by disease or pain, but marked by a gradual subsidence of the vital functions.

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The possibility of arriving at this great prolongation of the active, investigating, inventive and thinking years of human life is the most limitless of all the latent resources of civilization. With the present average longevity in the United States of thirty to forty years the course of public policy, peace or war, wisdom or folly, is determined by men of imperfect and misleading experience and reflection which are attained at about thirty. In a community living on the average twice as long as at the present, the control of affairs would be in the hands of men fortified by the large wisdom of 50 or 90 years; and every question, public or private, would be judged by men undisturbed in the exercise of their faculties by defective health or distressing pain. Consider even now what a bound forward we should accomplish if for a year there were not a single ailment in the land. Not only would the absence of pain and disease prolong and render more pro ductive in every material and mental sense the application of human labor and enterprise; but among its earliest effects would be the development of the degrees of symmetry and beauty in the

human frame. Deformity is no part of human nature and to any one who observes it is plain that nature never ceases in its efforts to diminish or cure it; and what is more, nature is ever on the alert to translate into perfection of faculty and form any improved circumstance of physical condition in food, clothing, shelter, or the abolition of degrading labor which may chance to be arrived at by the community; and so it comes about that the eye of reflective science, aided by the growing certainties of knowledge, can even now see that the tendencies toward a higher physical life within the reach of human power are beyond a doubt.

Human life is so transitory, under all circumstances, that no effort to prolong it should be lost. Pliny, the younger, thus speaks on this subject, and we cannot close this chapter better than by quoting the words of that intelligent and highly educated man. "Is there anything in nature," says he, "so short and limited as human life, even at its longest ? Does it not seem

to you but yesterday that Nero was alive? and yet not one of those who were consuls in his reign now remains! Though why should I wonder at this? Lucius Piso used to say, he did not see one person in the Senate whose opinion he had consulted when he was consul; in so short a space is the very term of life of such a multitude of beings comprised! so that to me those Royal tears seem not only worthy of pardon but of praise. For it is said that Xerxes, on surveying his immense army, wept at the reflection that so many thousand lives would in such a short space of time be extinct. The more ardent therefore should be our zeal to lengthen out this frail and transient portion of existence, if not by our deeds yet certainly by our literary accomplishments; and since long life is denied us, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ROYAL MINT A DISTINGUISHED MAN AND A CLUB CUBSIR JOHN SHELLEY-THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY.

Few strangers visit London without making an effort to see the Mint. One of the stock sights, it is pleasantly associated with new sovereigns and the jingling music of gold-"bright, yellow, hard and cold." Nor is the Royal mint without great memories, for the celebrated Sir Isaac Newton was once master of it. Antiquarians claim still greater associations for the spot, asserting that Cæsar coined money at this identical locality during the Roman occupation.

The American is not long in England, or, indeed, in any part. of Europe, without learning that history is one thing and tradition another and a very different thing. What is commonly called history is worth knowing, though if we are to confide in Neibuhr, Miller and other modern philosophical investigators, there is more of fiction than of fact even in history. This is especially and very naturally the case as to ancient history which has found, as to the Romans, for example, such a learned sponsor for its authority as Rollin. As for the stories or traditions related by guides to gaping tourists, to be retold on the traveler's return home, and many of which find their way into the average guide book, they are the merest stuff and rubbish, pure inventions, baseless as the fabric of a vision. Stories no more to be believed than are those "interesting" relics to be taken as genuine which are manufactured wholesale at Birmingham, to be retailed by vendors of curiosities as relics from the various battle-fields of Europe; spots so industriously visited by pilgrim cockneys and such sort of peripatetics. These wanderers who annually go forth in search of the picturesque, come back heavily laden-not always, however, with new ideas. One has Josephine's watch; another Peter the Great's punch bowl, another the first cannon ball fired at the siege of Metz, and a fourth the sword carried by the Bertrand du Guelin in the French wars against the English. But to be serious, two classes of people generally go to Europe for the summer, instead of the watering places at home-pleasure seekers and merchants engaged in the foreign trade. The latter generally take their families, or two or three of them at least.

This increasing international intercourse produces only good results on both sides of the Atlantic. These gigantic steamers, flying to and fro between Europe and America, like shuttles in a loom, are weaving the nations closer and closer together. Trade is benefitted, opinions are modified, manners improved and minds are expanded. Traveling is, indeed, the very best means of education; and yet something beside travel is essential to the mere pleasure seeker.

"A man may have studied and traveled abroad,
May sing like Apollo and paint like a Claud,
May speak all the languages south of the pole,
And have every gift in the world but a soul."

It is to be feared that the majority of those who now travel abroad belong to the class described by Lord Bacon: "He that traveleth into a country before he has some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel, and he knows not what things are worthy to be seen, what acquaintances they are to seek, what exercise or discipline the place yieldeth." In response to what kind of society the traveler should seek his lordship continues: "As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the secretary and employed men of ambassadors, for so in traveling in one country he shall seek the experience of many. Let him also see and visit eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great name abroad, that he may be able to tell how the life agreeth with the same." How few are governed by this safe counsel! How many return, bringing only spurious relics and the fabulous lore of gossipping guides.

But starting out to strip history and tradition, in a single sentence, of some of their illusions, we are digressing into other matters. Let us return by assuring the reader that we want faith in all stories connecting the Roman Dictator with money making on the spot now occupied by the Royal Mint. "Money making" was something to which the great Julius never descended, though he would have excelled in it, no doubt, had he chosen. He possessed, as all the world knows, that kind of universality of genius and practical sense, which his modern imitator epitomizes in these words, "There is nothing in war," said Napoleon. "which I can not do by my own hands. If there is nobody to make gunpowder I can manufacture it. The gun carriages I know how to construct. If it is necessary to make cannon at the forge I can make them. The details of working them in battle, if necessary to teach, I shall teach them. In administration it is I alone who arrange the

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