nts, the percentage of
deaths is only 2.35. It may be said, in criticism of these statements,
that in our country statistics are not kept with sufficient accuracy to
furnish correct data. However this may be in our rural districts, it
certainly is not true of the metropolis. The figures are not at hand,
but they exist, and they prove conclusively that those wards in Boston
which have a population most purely native reach a salubrity unexcelled.
So that, with all the real drawbacks of climate, and the pretended
drawbacks of unnatural or excessive mental stimulus, the health here is
absolutely unequalled by that of any country in Europe. Certainly, if
the mental and moral sainthood which we have does not build up the body,
it cannot be said that it does any injury to it.

Have we noted what a splendid testimony the war which has just closed
has given to the physical results of our New England villages and put
into the ranks of our army--young men who learned the alphabet at four,
who all through boyhood had the advantages of our common-school system,
who had felt to the full the excitement of the intellectual life about
them--have stood taller, weighed heavier, fought more bravely and
intelligently, won victory out of more adverse circumstances, and, what
is more to the point, endured more hardship with less sickness, than a
like number of any other race on earth. We care not where you look for
comparison, whether to Britain, or to France, or to Russia, where the
spelling-book has almost been tabooed, or to Spain, where in times past
the capacity to read the Bible was scarcely less than rank heresy, at
least for the common people. This war has been brought to a successful
issue by the best educated army that ever fought on battle-field, or, as
the new book has it, by "the thinking bayonet," by men whose physical
manhood has received no detriment from their intellectual culture.

These assertions are founded upon statistics which have been preserved
regiments whose members were almost exclusively native-born. And the
results are certainly in accordance with all candid observation. It may,
indeed, be said that the better health of our army has been after all
the result of the better care which the soldier has taken of himself. We
answer, the better care was the product of his education. It may be said
again that this health was owing in a great measure to the superior
watchfulness exercised over the soldier by others, by th