3 months. From 1800 to 1833, 43 years 6 months.

One more pertinent fact. Take in England any number of families you
please, whose parents can read and write, and an equal number of
families whose parents cannot read and write, and the number of children
in the latter class of families who will die before the age of five
years will greatly exceed that in the former class,--some thirty or
forty per cent. So surely does a thoughtful ordering of life come in the
train of intelligence. If faith is to be placed in statistics of any
sort, then it holds true in foreign countries that human life is long in
proportion to the degree that knowledge, refinement, and virtue are
diffused. That is, sainthood, so far from destroying the body, preserves
it.

* * * * *

I anticipate the objection which may be made to our last argument.
Abroad, we are told, there is such an element of healthy, out-door life,
that any ill effects which might naturally follow in the train of
general education are neutralized. Abroad, too, education with the
masses is elementary, and advanced also with more moderation than with
us. Abroad, moreover, the whole social being is not pervaded with the
intense intellectual activity and fervor which are so characteristic
especially of New England life.

Come home, then, to our own Massachusetts, which some will have is
school-mad. What do you find? Here, in a climate proverbially changeable
and rigorous,--here, where mental and moral excitements rise to
fever-heat,--here, where churches adorn every landscape, and
school-houses greet us at every corner, and lyceums are established in
every village,--here, where newspapers circulate by the hundred
thousand, and magazines for our old folks, and "Our Young Folks," too,
reach fifty thousand,--here, in Massachusetts, health is at its climax:
greater and more enduring than in bonnie England, or vine-clad France,
or sunny Italy. I read some statistics the other day, and I have ever
since had a greater respect for the land of "east-winds, and salt-fish
and school-houses," as scandalous people have termed Massachusetts. What
do these statistics say? That, while in England the deaths reach
annually 2.21 per cent of the whole population, and in France 2.36 per
cent, and in Italy 2.94 per cent, and in Austria 3.34 per cent, in
Massachusetts, the deaths are only 1.82 per cent annually. Even in
Boston, with its large proportion of foreign eleme