It is notorious in America, that public works undertaken by the government are generally ill done and very wastefully. Hence, common sense excludes the government from enterprises of internal improvement, and confides them either to individuals or companies, without hesitating thus to create privileged orders and to favor a moneyed aristocracy. To have a great work well done, passions as well as interests must be engaged in it; personal character, pride, and ambition, as well as skill and capital; and where many persons must co-operate, there is no guarantee of harmony in action and of successful result so sure as that corporate zeal which religion employs with so much power, and which religion alone can bring to bear. This is indeed a holy fire, enkindled and kept alive upon objects of charity, that purges away dross. If the Catholic Church has in all ages conducted her enterprises with the greatest success, it is because she has known how to enlist the greatest number of motives, the strongest and the best. On the other hand, it will be readily confessed that the great public hospitals under secular control do not even bring into play the common levers of interest which secure results in the management of railroads, of hotels or banking-houses, nor those of ambition, which animate the army and navy. Charity, as a secular business, is always poorly paid, rendered grudgingly, distastefully, and so as to excite aversion. Many will rather die than have recourse to it. It always carries with it a certain stigma of inferiority and contempt. No personal character or corporate zeal is identified with it, still less can there exist that unison of feeling and of effort which places the seal of the divine humanity on such institutions as those of the sisters. We transcribe from one of the most remarkable works of modern travel, _The Pillars of Hercules_, by David Urquhart, his impression of the last remaining hospitals of the religious order in Spain. Let us note that Mr. Urquhart is an Englishman and a Protestant: {51} "The Hospicio of Cadiz is at once a poor-house and a house of industry, a school, a foundling hospital, a hospital, and a mad-house; that is, it supplies the places of all these institutions. It is imposing in its form, embellished in its interior, and as unlike in all its attributes and effects as anything can be to the edifices consecrated to the remedying of human misery, by our own charity and wisdom. "Hospital De La Sangre, (Seville.)