[1] When asked what benefit it would produce, he replied, “C’est pour
perfectionner l’art des arts, l’art de penser!” This, at first regarded
as a _mot_, became a proverb.
[2] The title of this essay is “Waardye van Lyf-Renten naer proportie
van Losrenten;” or, the “Value of Life Annuities in Proportion to
Redeemable Annuities.”
[3] There was no just cause for surprise in these periodical
visitations. The thinkers of the day understood the connection between
cleanliness and health; and the following will show that such as these
hit on the right source of pestilence:--
“I often wonder,” says Erasmus in a letter to Dr. Francis, “and not
without concern, whence it comes to pass, that England for so many
years hath been continually afflicted with pestilence, and above all,
with the sweating sickness, which seems in a manner peculiar to that
country.... They glaze a great part of the sides with small panes,
designed to admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are
full of chinks, through which enters a percolated air, which stagnating
in the room, is more noxious than the wind.
“As to the floors, they are usually made of clay, covered with rushes
that grew in fens, which are so slightly removed now and then, that
the lower part remains sometimes for twenty years together, and in it
a collection of spittle, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beer, scraps
of fish, and other filthiness not to be named. Hence, upon change of
weather, a vapour is exhaled very pernicious, in my opinion, to the
human body.”
[4] The first parish registers were kept in England in 1538, in
consequence of an injunction from Thomas Cromwell. They had been
kept for a long time previous in Augsburg and Breslau, though it was
not till the beginning of the 17th century that they were general
in Europe. It is worth mentioning, that long ere this, the paternal
government of Peru kept a register of all the births and deaths
throughout the country; exact returns of the population being made
every year by officers appointed by the state.