were continually destroying valuable city property, and ruinous monetary panics happened every few years.  And all this in an age that prided itself on being advanced!  An age that produced the telephone, but crowded up lunatic asylums!  That cabled messages all round the world, but filled its prisons to the doors!  That named the metals in the sun, but could not cleanse its cities!  An age, in fact, that was but one remove from the unmitigated barbarism of medieval times!  How marvellous is the change wrought by a hundred years!  We have not been shocked by a murder in Canada for more than fifty years, nor has a suicide been heard of for a very long period.  Epidemic diseases belong to the past.  The sewage question, that source of vexation to the municipalities of old, has been scientifically settled—­to the saving of enormous sums of money, and to the permanent benefit of the community’s health.  Malignant scourges, like consumption, epilepsy, cancer, etc., are never heard of except in less favored countries.  There is but one prison to a province, and that is sometimes empty.  Our cities are all fire-proof, and the night air is never startled now by the hideous jangling of fire-bells, arousing the citizens from sleep to view the destruction of their city.  So rational and interesting has daily life become, that mind and body are constantly in healthy occupation; the fearful nervous hurry of old times, that broke down so many minds and bodies, having died out, to give way to a robust force of character which accomplishes much more with half the fuss.  Of course, advantages such as these, did not spring upon society all at once; they have come about by comparatively slow degrees.

The first president of the Society of Benefactors, who died some years ago at an advanced age, was the man who started the new order of things.  When he commenced to give the world the benefit of his views, he met with a good deal of opposition and ridicule, being told that the world was going on all right and was improving all the time, and that if people would only stop preaching and set to work at doing a little more, things would get better more quickly.  He could not be convinced, however, that society had any grounds for its satisfaction, but he took the hint about preaching and stopped his lectures, which he had been giving all through the country.  He then set to work at organization, and as he had inherited ample means from a millionaire father, he commenced under good auspices.  He went into his work with great eagerness, gathering together all sorts of people, who held views similar to his own, though usually in a vague unpractical way, and formed his first committee of a bishop, celebrated for his enlightened opinions, two physicians, two lawyers, several wealthy merchants, and several working men who were good speakers and had influence among their fellows.  His capacity for organization was great, and his success in gaining over to his side young men of means, remarkable.