Still, practically, the functions of each power are distinct. It is admitted, in regard to the divers organizations of fire companies, for instance, that the payment of fixed salaries is an efficient or adequate motive for the protection of houses. This service was once confided to public spirit; there was no lack of heroic devotion in its exercise; but salaried firemen were found to be more amenable to discipline, and their organizations to be more permanent and reliable. {44} Now, the contrary is true of hospital service and kindred functions, which employ in some places the religious orders of charity, in others hired assistants. Physicians, patients, and inspectors, all proclaim the superiority of the former. Visit our great secular establishments, such as Bellevue or the Charity Hospital, where the service is either hired or compulsory by convicts, and then the hospitals of religious orders, even the poorest, such as that of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, which is supported by begging from door to door, not to mention the more richly endowed hospitals of St. Vincent de Paul or St. Luke, all free to every needy patient: scent the air of the wards, share the food of the refectory, feel the human magnetism of these spheres, take time and mood to appreciate all their conditions, and you will find their difference amount to a contrast in many essentials of hygiene, physical as well as moral, although science is impartially represented at the secular as at the religious establishments. The former have been largely endowed by private and public benefaction; energy, ability, and good will are not wanting among their officers; yet they inspire such aversion that the decent poor will often rather perish than resort to them. The characteristic superiority of religious charities is historical, and remounts to the earliest epochs of Christendom; although the secular interest of states in the health and contentment of their peoples has been the same in all times and all countries. If their conduct has been different, the reasons of this difference may be found in the nature of their religions and the fervor or torpor of their piety. Conversely, just in proportion as our modern states alienate their "public charities" from the influence of religion, they become perverted by the same cruelty and heartlessness that characterized the behavior of the pagan world toward its unfortunate classes. Between the philanthropy of the English workhouse and that of Rome which sent poor slaves to perish on the "_dismal island_" in the Tiber, the shorter course seems preferable to us, because less degrading to the soul of the victim, and because it has the courage, at least, of its crime.