the earth." And so a great deal of poetry is pessimistic, and therefore unChristian.

The greatest poets, however, almost always consider it to be their function to discover an optimism on the further side of this pessimism; and thus, even when they do not name the Christian name, they range themselves under the Christian standard. For this enterprise a larger canvas is necessary than the pure lyric can supply. When it is at tempted in too short compass either the pessimism must be undervalued or else the poet's passion exhausts itself over that, and the optimism becomes merely abstract,-becomes gnomic poetry, which is not poetry at all. It must be recognized that sometimes this "dialectical" work has been effectively accomplished "within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground." A very fine instance is Milton's sonnet on his blindness, in which the often-quoted line, "They also serve who only stand and wait," escapes the unimpressiveness usual with gnomic verse by carrying always along with it the passion of what has preceded, the systole and diastole of the poet's heart pleading with his maker. It is in the wide spaces of the epic, in the drama, with its slow development, its crises, its catastrophe, that the vindication of the spiritual forces of life is most adequately undertaken. In the Shake spearian drama there is no fate no fate, at least, of which man is not master-and no laws but the laws of the spirit. Among our later poets, Browning has signalized himself by such an endeavor as we are describing. His failures are conspicuous enough; example, it must have struck every reader that in the epilogue to "Dramatis Personæ," where David, Renan, and the poet epiloguize, the poetic nature of Browning has thrown all its passion and imagination into the pessimistic view of Renan, which, as a theologian, he is endeavoring to combat; but his successes are not less conspic

for

uous. Consider the light he has poured on the Christian dogma, that the divine spirit is a spirit of love, and that there

is no human heart so hard that a redeeming spark may not be struck from it. Take his character of Guido in "The Ring and the Book." The old pope has seen that the one remaining chance for Guido lies in the value of the love he has known and has despised being flashed upon him by the suddenness of his fate, and so it comes about. Who can ever forget the cry that breaks from him in the agony of the realized nearness of the death he had so callously dealt to others and felt himself so secure from, the scream with which he calls upon all possible and impossible saviours, human and divine,

Abate, Cardinal, Christ, Maria, God, and, for climax, the name of his murdered wife,—

Own

Pompilia, will you let them murder me?

From Nature. PATHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS ON ANI

MALS.1

There is one aspect of a pathological institute which I feel some delicacy in alluding to, because there are some people who take strange views with regard to these matters-exaggerated views. There are people who do not object to eating a mutton-chop-people who do not even object to shooting a pheasant with the considerable chance that it may be only wounded and may have to die after lingering in pain, unable to obtain its proper nutriment-and yet who consider it something monstrous to introduce under the skin of a guineapig a little inoculation of some microbe to ascertain its action. Those seem to me to be most inconsistent views. With regard to all matters in which we are concerned in this world, everything depends upon the motive. A murderer may cut a man's throat to kill him; any

opening of the new pathological and physiological laboratories in Queen's College, Belfast, by Lord Lister, P. R. S.

1 An address delivered in connection with the

one of you medical students may have to cut a man's throat to save his life. The father who chastises his son for the sake of the good of his morals is a most humane man; a father who should beat his son for the mere sake of inflicting pain upon him would be an inhuman monster. And so it is with the necessary experiments upon lower animals. If they were made, as some people seem to assume, for the mere sport of the thing, they would be indeed to be deprecated and decried; but if they are made with the wholly noble object of not only increasing human knowledge, but also diminishing human suffering, then I hold that such investigations are deserving of all praise. Those little know who lightly speak on these matters how much self-denial is required in the prosecution of such researches when they are conducted, as indeed they always are, so far as I am aware, with the object of establishing new truth. The exercise of a little charity might lead those who speak of us as inhuman to reflect that possibly we may be as humane as themselves. The profession to which I have the great honor to belong is, I firmly believe, on the average, the most humane of all professions. The medical student may be sometimes a rough diamond; but when he comes to have personal charge of patients, and to have the life and health of a fellow-creature depending upon his individual care, he becomes a changed man, and from that day forth his life becomes a constant exercise of beneficence. With that beneficence there is associated benevolence; and, in that practical way, our profession becomes the most benevolent of all. If our detractors knew this, common sense would enable them to see that our profession would not be unanimously in favor of these researches if they were the iniquitous things which they are sometimes represented to be. I was reading the other day a very interesting account of Pasteur's work on rabies, written by one who was associated with him from an early period (M. Duclaux). It had been established that the introduction

of a portion of the brain of a mad dog under the skin of a healthy animal was liable to cause rabies, and Pasteur had reason to believe that it was principally in the nervous centres that the poison accumulated. He felt a very strong desire to introduce some of the poison into the brain of an animal; but he was a peculiarly humane man. He never could shoot an animal for sport. He was more humane than the great majority of human beings; and for a long time he could not bring himself to make the experiment of trephining an animal's skull, and introducing some of the poison of rabies into the brain. He was exceedingly desirous of doing it to establish the pathology of the disease, but he shrank from it. On one occasion, when he was absent from home, one of his assistants did the experiment, and when Pasteur came back ne told him that he had done so. "Oh!" said Pasteur, "the poor creature! His brain has been touched. I am afraid he will be affected with paralysis." The assistant went into a neighboring room and brought in the animal which was a dog. It came in frisking about and investigating everything in a perfectly natural manner; and Pasteur was exceedingly pleased, and though he did not like dogs, yet he lavished his affection upon that particular animal and petted it; and from that time forth he felt his scruples need no longer exist. The truth is that the pain inflicted by this process of trephining is exceedingly slight, and yet the operation is sometimes described as being a hideously painful one. That is a mistake. In point of fact the operation is always done now under anæsthetics, so that the animal does not feel it at all; but even without that the operation is not seriously painful. I look forward to the time when there will be an institute in connection with this college, where, investigations of the kind to which I have referred can be carried on, and where pathological knowledge of the first importance may be promoted. Think also of the practical advantages of an institution where the materials can be provided for the treatment of

diseases on the principles which have been recently established. It appears to be now placed beyond doubt that that dreadful disease diphtheria may by the antitoxic treatment be reduced in mortality from about thirty per cent. to about five per cent. if the proper material is promptly used. It is exceedingly important that in a city like Belfast the supply of such material should be within easy reach of the practitionerthat he should not be compelled to send to London for the requisite serum, and thus lose much valuable time. Every hour that is lost in the treatment of a case of this nature is a very serious loss indeed. But it is by no means only in diphtheria that such an institute is likely to confer benefits of this kind. In the case of the streptococcus, which is the cause of erysipelas and kindred disorders, including that very terrible disease, puerperal fever, there are very promising indications that the use of antitoxic serum will rescue patients from otherwise hopeless conditions. Let any one picture to himself the case

of a young wife after her first confinement afflicted with this dreadful puerperal fever, and doomed under ordinary treatment to certain death. The practitioner makes an injection of this serum under the skin, with the result that the lady rapidly recovers, and in a few days is perfectly well. Let any man conceive such a case as this, and all objections to the investigations necessary to bring about such a state of things must vanish into thin air. So soon as our poor selves are directly concerned our objections disappear. If a tiger threatened to attack a camp, who would care much about what kind of a trap was set for it, or what suffering the trap caused the animal, so long as it was caught? When the matter affects only the welfare of others, including generations yet unborn, the good done does not appeal to the individual, and the objector sees only the horrors of modern scientific investigation; of which horrors, however, he quickly loses the sense as soon as he becomes personally concerned.

Rome as a Health Resort.-Dr. J. J. Eyre, one of the foremost living authorities on the climate of Rome, has contributed to the Queen a paper entitled "Rome as a Health Resort," which will be a surprise to some people who have remained under the traditional impression of the unhealthiness of the city and district. Doctor Eyre points out that it was recognized some thirty or forty years ago, by eminent authorities on climate, including Sir James Clarke, that the Roman climate was particularly beneficial in the case of persons suffering from consumption or chronic bronchitis. But at that time malarial fever was still prevalent, and the sanitary state of the city left much

to be desired; so that nervous invalids and their friends had some excuse for fighting shy of the Eternal City as a place of abode for their transitory selves. But the "Roman Fever" is now a thing of the past, owing to the great sanitary improvements which have taken place during the last fifteen years or so, and Rome is now, not only the healthiest city in Italy, but compares very favorably as to hygienic conditions with the large towns of Europe and America. The sewers are well constructed and thoroughly flushed, the water supply is one of the purest and most abundant in the world, and the cleanliness of the streets is almost invariably commented on by visitors.