240. And who can say how far the employment of men, in the cases alluded to, may have assisted in producing this change, so disgraceful to the present age, and so injurious to the female sex? The prostitution and the swarms of illegitimate children have a natural and inevitable tendency to lessen that respect, and that kind and indulgent feeling, which is due from all men to virtuous women. It is well known that the unworthy members of any profession, calling, or rank in life, cause, by their acts, the whole body to sink in the general esteem; it is well known, that the habitual dishonesty of merchants trading abroad, the habitual profligate behaviour of travellers from home, the frequent proofs of abject submission to tyrants; it is well known, that these may give the character of dishonesty, profligacy, or cowardice, to a whole nation. There are, doubtless, many men in Switzerland, who abhor the infamous practices of men selling themselves, by whole regiments, to fight for any foreign state that will pay them, no matter in what cause, and no matter whether against their own parents or brethren; but the censure falls upon the whole nation: and 'no money, no Swiss,' is a proverb throughout the world. It is, amidst those scenes of prostitution and bastardy, impossible for men in general to respect the female sex to the degree that they formerly did; while numbers will be apt to adopt the unjust sentiment of the old bachelor, POPE, that 'every woman is, at heart, a rake.'

241. Who knows, I say, in what degree the employment of men-operators may have tended to produce this change, so injurious to the female sex? Aye, and to encourage unfeeling and brutal men to propose that the dead bodies of females, if poor, should be sold for the purpose of exhibition and dissection before an audience of men; a proposition that our 'rude ancestors' would have answered, not by words, but by blows! Alas! our women may talk of 'small-clothes' as long as they please; they may blush to scarlet at hearing animals designated by their sexual appellations; it may, to give the world a proof of our excessive modesty and delicacy, even pass a law (indeed we have done it) to punish 'an exposure of the person'; but as long as our streets swarm with prostitutes, our asylums and private houses with bastards; as long as we have man-operators in the delicate cases alluded to, and as long as the exhibiting of the dead body of a virtuous female before an audience of men shall not be punished by the law, and even with death; as long as we shall appear to be satisfied in this state of things, it becomes us, at any rate, to be silent about purity of mind, improvement of manners, and an increase of refinement and delicacy.

242. This practice has brought the 'doctor' into every family in the kingdom, which is of itself no small evil. I am not thinking of the expense; for, in cases like these, nothing in that way ought to be spared. If necessary to the safety of his wife, a man ought not only to part with his last shilling, but to pledge his future labour. But we all know that there are imaginary ailments, many of which are absolutely created by the habit of talking with or about the 'doctor.' Read the 'DOMESTIC MEDICINE,' and by the time that you have done, you will imagine that you have, at times, all the diseases of which it treats. This practice has added to, has doubled, aye, has augmented, I verily believe, ten-fold the number of the gentlemen who are, in common parlance, called 'doctors'; at which, indeed, I, on my own private account, ought to rejoice; for, invariably I have, even in the worst of times, found them every where amongst my staunchest and kindest friends. But though these gentlemen are not to blame for this, any more than attorneys are for their increase in number; and amongst these gentlemen, too, I have, with very few exceptions, always found sensible men and zealous friends; though the parties pursuing these professions are not to blame; though the increase of attorneys has arisen from the endless number and the complexity of the laws, and from the ten-fold mass of crimes caused by poverty arising from oppressive taxation; and though the increase of 'doctors' has arisen from the diseases and the imaginary ailments arising from that effeminate luxury which has been created by the drawing of wealth from the many, and giving it to the few; and, as the lower classes will always endeavour to imitate the higher, so the 'accoucheur' has, along with the 'small-clothes,' descended from the loan-monger's palace down to the hovel of the pauper, there to take his fee out of the poor-rates; though these parties are not to blame, the thing is not less an evil. Both professions have lost in character, in proportion to the increase in the number of its members; peaches, if they grew on hedges, would rank but little above the berries of the bramble.

243. But to return once more to the matter of risk of life; can it be that nature has so ordered it, that, as a general thing, the life of either mother or child shall be in danger, even if there were no attendant at all? Can this be? Certainly it cannot: safety must be the rule, and danger the exception; this must be the case, or the world never could have been peopled; and, perhaps, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, if nature were left wholly to herself, all would be right. The great doctor in these cases, is, comforting, consoling, cheering up. And who can perform this office like women? who have for these occasions a language and sentiments which seem to have been invented for the purpose; and be they what they may as to general demeanour and character, they have all, upon these occasions, one common feeling, and that so amiable, so excellent, as to admit of no adequate description. They completely forget, for the time, all rivalships, all squabbles, all animosities, all hatred even; every one feels as if it were her own particular concern.

244. These, we may be well assured, are the proper attendants on these occasions; the mother, the aunt, the sister, the cousin, and female neighbour; these are the suitable attendants, having some experienced woman to afford extraordinary aid, if such be necessary; and in the few cases where the preservation of life demands the surgeon's skill, he is always at hand. The contrary practice, which we got from the French, is not, however, so general in France as in England. We have outstripped all the world in this, as we have in every thing which proceeds from luxury and effeminacy on the one hand, and from poverty on the other; the millions have been stripped of their means to heap wealth on the thousands, and have been corrupted in manners, as well as in morals, by vicious examples set them by the possessors of that wealth. As reason says that the practice of which I complain cannot be cured without a total change in society, it would be presumption in me to expect such cure from any efforts of mine. I therefore must content myself with hoping that such change will come, and with declaring, that if I had to live my life over again, I would act upon the opinions which I have thought it my bounden duty here to state and endeavour to maintain.

245. Having gotten over these thorny places as quickly as possible, I gladly come back to the BABIES; with regard to whom I shall have no prejudices, no affectation, no false pride, no sham fears to encounter; every heart (except there be one made of flint) being with me here. 'Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' A figure most forcibly expressive of the character and beauty of innocence, and, at the same time, most aptly illustrative of the doctrine of regeneration. And where is the man; the woman who is not fond of babies is not worthy the name; but where is the man who does not feel his heart softened; who does not feel himself become gentler; who does not lose all the hardness of his temper; when, in any way, for any purpose, or by any body, an appeal is made to him in behalf of these so helpless and so perfectly innocent little creatures?

246. SHAKSPEARE, who is cried up as the great interpreter of the human heart, has said, that the man in whose soul there is no music, or love of music, is 'fit for murders, treasons, stratagems, and spoils.' 'Our immortal bard,' as the profligate SHERIDAN used to call him in public, while he laughed at him in private; our 'immortal bard' seems to have forgotten that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were flung into the fiery furnace (made seven times hotter than usual) amidst the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music; he seems to have forgotten that it was a music and a dance-loving damsel that chose, as a recompense for her elegant performance, the bloody head of John the Baptist, brought to her in a charger; he seems to have forgotten that, while Rome burned, Nero fiddled: he did not know, perhaps, that cannibals always dance and sing while their victims are roasting; but he might have known, and he must have known, that England's greatest tyrant, Henry VIII., had, as his agent in blood, Thomas Cromwell, expressed it, 'his sweet soul enwrapped in the celestial sounds of music;' and this was just at the time when the ferocious tyrant was ordering Catholics and Protestants to be tied back to back on the same hurdle, dragged to Smithfield on that hurdle, and there tied to, and burnt from, the same stake. Shakspeare must have known these things, for he lived immediately after their date; and if he had lived in our day, he would have seen instances enough of 'sweet souls' enwrapped in the same manner, and capable, if not of deeds equally bloody, of others, discovering a total want of feeling for sufferings not unfrequently occasioned by their own wanton waste, and waste arising, too, in part, from their taste for these 'celestial sounds.'

247. O no! the heart of man is not to be known by this test: a great fondness for music is a mark of great weakness, great vacuity of mind: not of hardness of heart; not of vice; not of downright folly; but of a want of capacity, or inclination, for sober thought. This is not always the case: accidental circumstances almost force the taste upon people: but, generally speaking, it is a preference of sound to sense. But the man, and especially the father, who is not fond of babies; who does not feel his heart softened when he touches their almost boneless limbs; when he sees their little eyes first begin to discern; when he hears their tender accents; the man whose heart does not beat truly to this test, is, to say the best of him, an object of compassion.

248. But the mother's feelings are here to be thought of too; for, of all gratifications, the very greatest that a mother can receive, is notice taken of, and praise bestowed on, her baby. The moment that gets into her arms, every thing else diminishes in value, the father only excepted. Her own personal charms, notwithstanding all that men say and have written on the subject, become, at most, a secondary object as soon as the baby arrives. A saying of the old, profligate King of Prussia is frequently quoted in proof of the truth of the maxim, that a woman will forgive any thing but calling her ugly; a very true maxim, perhaps, as applied to prostitutes, whether in high or low life; but a pretty long life of observation has told me, that a mother, worthy of the name, will care little about what you say of her person, so that you will but extol the beauty of her baby. Her baby is always the very prettiest that ever was born! It is always an eighth wonder of the world! And thus it ought to be, or there would be a want of that wondrous attachment to it which is necessary to bear her up through all those cares and pains and toils inseparable from the preservation of its life and health.

249. It is, however, of the part which the husband has to act, in participating in these cares and toils, that I am now to speak. Let no man imagine that the world will despise him for helping to take care of his own child: thoughtless fools may attempt to ridicule; the unfeeling few may join in the attempt; but all, whose good opinion is worth having, will applaud his conduct, and will, in many cases, be disposed to repose confidence in him on that very account. To say of a man, that he is fond of his family, is, of itself, to say that, in private life at least, he is a good and trust-worthy man; aye, and in public life too, pretty much; for it is no easy matter to separate the two characters; and it is naturally concluded, that he who has been flagrantly wanting in feeling for his own flesh and blood, will not be very sensitive towards the rest of mankind. There is nothing more amiable, nothing more delightful to behold, than a young man especially taking part in the work of nursing the children; and how often have I admired this in the labouring men in Hampshire! It is, indeed, generally the same all over England; and as to America, it would be deemed brutal for a man not to take his full share of these cares and labours.

250. The man who is to gain a living by his labour, must be drawn away from home, or, at least, from the cradle-side, in order to perform that labour; but this will not, if he be made of good stuff, prevent him from doing his share of the duty due to his children. There are still many hours in the twenty-four, that he will have to spare for this duty; and there ought to be no toils, no watchings, no breaking of rest, imposed by this duty, of which he ought not to perform his full share, and that, too, without grudging. This is strictly due from him in payment for the pleasures of the marriage state. What right has he to the sole possession of a woman's person; what right to a husband's vast authority; what right to the honourable title and the boundless power of father: what right has he to all, or any of these, unless he can found his claim on the faithful performance of all the duties which these titles imply?

251. One great source of the unhappiness amongst mankind arises, however, from a neglect of these duties; but, as if by way of compensation for their privations, they are much more duly performed by the poor than by the rich. The fashion of the labouring people is this: the husband, when free from his toil in the fields, takes his share in the nursing, which he manifestly looks upon as a sort of reward for his labour. However distant from his cottage, his heart is always at that home towards which he is carried, at night, by limbs that feel not their weariness, being urged on by a heart anticipating the welcome of those who attend him there. Those who have, as I so many hundreds of times have, seen the labourers in the woodland parts of Hampshire and Sussex, coming, at night-fall, towards their cottage-wickets, laden with fuel for a day or two; whoever has seen three or four little creatures looking out for the father's approach, running in to announce the glad tidings, and then scampering out to meet him, clinging round his knees, or hanging on his skirts; whoever has witnessed scenes like this, to witness which has formed one of the greatest delights of my life, will hesitate long before he prefer a life of ease to a life of labour; before he prefer a communication with children intercepted by servants and teachers to that communication which is here direct, and which admits not of any division of affection.

252. Then comes the Sunday; and, amongst all those who keep no servants, a great deal depends on the manner in which the father employs that day. When there are two or three children, or even one child, the first thing, after the breakfast (which is late on this day of rest), is to wash and dress the child or children. Then, while the mother is dressing the dinner, the father, being in his Sunday-clothes himself, takes care of the child or children. When dinner is over, the mother puts on her best; and then, all go to church, or, if that cannot be, whether from distance or other cause, all pass the afternoon together. This used to be the way of life amongst the labouring people; and from this way of life arose the most able and most moral people that the world ever saw, until grinding taxation took from them the means of obtaining a sufficiency of food and of raiment; plunged the whole, good and bad, into one indiscriminate mass, under the degrading and hateful name of paupers.

253. The working man, in whatever line, and whether in town or country, who spends his day of rest, or any part of it, except in case of absolute necessity, away from his wife and children, is not worthy of the name of father, and is seldom worthy of the trust of any employer. Such absence argues a want of fatherly and of conjugal affection, which want is generally duly repaid by a similar want in the neglected parties; and, though stern authority may command and enforce obedience for a while, the time soon comes when it will be set at defiance; and when such a father, having no example, no proofs of love, to plead, complains of filial ingratitude, the silent indifference of his neighbours, and which is more poignant, his own heart, will tell him that his complaint is unjust.

254. Thus far with regard to working people; but much more necessary is it to inculcate these principles in the minds of young men in the middle rank of life, and to be more particular, in their case, with regard to the care due to very young children, for here servants come in; and many are but too prone to think, that when they have handed their children over to well-paid and able servants, they have done their duty by them, than which there can hardly be a more mischievous error. The children of the poorer people are, in general, much fonder of their parents than those of the rich are of theirs: this fondness is reciprocal; and the cause is, that the children of the former have, from their very birth, had a greater share than those of the latter—of the personal attention, and of the never-ceasing endearments of their parents.

255. I have before urged upon young married men, in the middle walks of life, to keep the servants out of the house as long as possible; and when they must come at last, when they must be had even to assist in taking care of children, let them be assistants in the most strict sense of the word; let them not be confided in; let children never be left to them alone; and the younger the child, the more necessary a rigid adherence to this rule. I shall be told, perhaps, by some careless father, or some play-haunting mother, that female servants are women, and have the tender feelings of women. Very true; and, in general, as good and kind in their nature as the mother herself. But they are not the mothers of your children, and it is not in nature that they should have the care and anxiety adequate to the necessity of the case. Out of the immediate care and personal superintendence of one or the other of the parents, or of some trusty relation, no young child ought to be suffered to be, if there be, at whatever sacrifice of ease or of property, any possibility of preventing it: because, to insure, if possible, the perfect form, the straight limbs, the sound body, and the sane mind of your children, is the very first of all your duties. To provide fortunes for them; to make provision for their future fame; to give them the learning necessary to the calling for which you destine them: all these may be duties, and the last is a duty; but a duty far greater than, and prior to, all these, is the duty of neglecting nothing within your power to insure them a sane mind in a sound and undeformed body. And, good God! how many are the instances of deformed bodies, of crooked limbs, of idiocy, or of deplorable imbecility, proceeding solely from young children being left to the care of servants! One would imagine, that one single sight of this kind to be seen, or heard of, in a whole nation, would be sufficient to deter parents from the practice. And what, then, must those parents feel, who have brought this life-long sorrowing on themselves! When once the thing is done, to repent is unavailing. And what is now the worth of all the ease and all the pleasures, to enjoy which the poor sufferer was abandoned to the care of servants!

256. What! can I plead example, then, in support of this rigid precept? Did we, who have bred up a family of children, and have had servants during the greater part of the time, never leave a young child to the care of servants? Never; no, not for one single hour. Were we, then, tied constantly to the house with them? No; for we sometimes took them out; but one or the other of us was always with them, until, in succession, they were able to take good care of themselves; or until the elder ones were able to take care of the younger, and then they sometimes stood sentinel in our stead. How could we visit then? Why, if both went, we bargained beforehand to take the children with us; and if this were a thing not to be proposed, one of us went, and the other stayed at home, the latter being very frequently my lot. From this we never once deviated. We cast aside all consideration of convenience; all calculations of expense; all thoughts of pleasure of every sort. And, what could have equalled the reward that we have received for our care and for our unshaken resolution in this respect?

257. In the rearing of children, there is resolution wanting as well as tenderness. That parent is not truly affectionate who wants the courage to do that which is sure to give the child temporary pain. A great deal, in providing for the health and strength of children, depends upon their being duly and daily washed, when well, in cold water from head to foot. Their cries testify to what a degree they dislike this. They squall and kick and twist about at a fine rate; and many mothers, too many, neglect this, partly from reluctance to encounter the squalling, and partly, and much too often, from what I will not call idleness, but to which I cannot apply a milder term than neglect. Well and duly performed, it is an hour's good tight work; for, besides the bodily labour, which is not very slight when the child gets to be five or six months old, there is the singing to overpower the voice of the child. The moment the stripping of the child used to begin, the singing used to begin, and the latter never ceased till the former had ceased. After having heard this go on with all my children, ROUSSEAU taught me the philosophy of it. I happened, by accident, to look into his EMILE, and there I found him saying, that the nurse subdued the voice of the child and made it quiet, by drowning its voice in hers, and thereby making it perceive that it could not be heard, and that to continue to cry was of no avail. 'Here, Nancy,' said I (going to her with the book in my hand), 'you have been a great philosopher all your life, without either of us knowing it.' A silent nurse is a poor soul. It is a great disadvantage to the child, if the mother be of a very silent, placid, quiet turn. The singing, the talking to, the tossing and rolling about, that mothers in general practise, are very beneficial to the children: they give them exercise, awaken their attention, animate them, and rouse them to action. It is very bad to have a child even carried about by a dull, inanimate, silent servant, who will never talk, sing or chirrup to it; who will but just carry it about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and hearing nothing to give it life and spirit. It requires nothing but a dull creature like this, and the washing and dressing left to her, to give a child the rickets, and make it, instead of being a strong straight person, tup-shinned, bow-kneed, or hump-backed; besides other ailments not visible to the eye. By-and-by, when the deformity begins to appear, the doctor is called in, but it is too late: the mischief is done; and a few months of neglect are punished by a life of mortification and sorrow, not wholly unaccompanied with shame.

258. It is, therefore, a very spurious kind of tenderness that prevents a mother from doing the things which, though disagreeable to the child, are so necessary to its lasting well-being. The washing daily in the morning is a great thing; cold water winter or summer, and this never left to a servant, who has not, in such a case, either the patience or the courage that is necessary for the task. When the washing is over, and the child dressed in its day-clothes, how gay and cheerful it looks! The exercise gives it appetite, and then disposes it to rest; and it sucks and sleeps and grows, the delight of all eyes, and particularly those of the parents. 'I can't bear that squalling!' I have heard men say; and to which I answer, that 'I can't bear such men!' There are, I thank God, very few of them; for, if they do not always reason about the matter, honest nature teaches them to be considerate and indulgent towards little creatures so innocent and so helpless and so unconscious of what they do. And the noise: after all, why should it disturb a man? He knows the exact cause of it: he knows that it is the unavoidable consequence of a great good to his child, and of course to him: it lasts but an hour, and the recompense instantly comes in the looks of the rosy child, and in the new hopes which every look excites. It never disturbed me, and my occupation was one of those most liable to disturbance by noise. Many a score papers have I written amidst the noise of children, and in my whole life never bade them be still. When they grew up to be big enough to gallop about the house, I have, in wet weather, when they could not go out, written the whole day amidst noise that would have made some authors half mad. It never annoyed me at all. But a Scotch piper, whom an old lady, who lived beside us at Brompton, used to pay to come and play a long tune every day, I was obliged to bribe into a breach of contract. That which you are pleased with, however noisy, does not disturb you. That which is indifferent to you has not more effect. The rattle of coaches, the clapper of a mill, the fall of water, leave your mind undisturbed. But the sound of the pipe, awakening the idea of the lazy life of the piper, better paid than the labouring man, drew the mind aside from its pursuit; and, as it really was a nuisance, occasioned by the money of my neighbour, I thought myself justified in abating it by the same sort of means.

259. The cradle is in poor families necessary; because necessity compels the mother to get as much time as she can for her work, and a child can rock the cradle. At first we had a cradle; and I rocked the cradle, in great part, during the time that I was writing my first work, that famous MAITRE D'ANGLAIS, which has long been the first book in Europe, as well as in America, for teaching of French people the English language. But we left off the use of the cradle as soon as possible. It causes sleep more, and oftener, than necessary: it saves trouble; but to take trouble was our duty. After the second child, we had no cradle, however difficult at first to do without it. When I was not at my business, it was generally my affair to put the child to sleep: sometimes by sitting with it in my arms, and sometimes by lying down on a bed with it, till it fell asleep. We soon found the good of this method. The children did not sleep so much, but they slept more soundly. The cradle produces a sort of dosing, or dreaming sleep. This is a matter of great importance, as every thing must be that has any influence on the health of children. The poor must use the cradle, at least until they have other children big enough to hold the baby, and to put it to sleep; and it is truly wonderful at how early an age they, either girls or boys, will do this business faithfully and well. You see them in the lanes, and on the skirts of woods and commons, lugging a baby about, when it sometimes weighs half as much as the nurse. The poor mother is frequently compelled, in order to help to get bread for her children, to go to a distance from home, and leave the group, baby and all, to take care of the house and of themselves, the eldest of four or five, not, perhaps, above six or seven years old; and it is quite surprising, that, considering the millions of instances in which this is done in England, in the course of a year, so very, very few accidents or injuries arise from the practice; and not a hundredth part so many as arise in the comparatively few instances in which children are left to the care of servants. In summer time you see these little groups rolling about up the green, or amongst the heath, not far from the cottage, and at a mile, perhaps, from any other dwelling, the dog their only protector. And what fine and straight and healthy and fearless and acute persons they become! It used to be remarked in Philadelphia, when I lived there, that there was not a single man of any eminence, whether doctor, lawyer, merchant, trader, or any thing else, that had not been born and bred in the country, and of parents in a low state of life. Examine London, and you will find it much about the same. From this very childhood they are from necessity entrusted with the care of something valuable. They practically learn to think, and to calculate as to consequences. They are thus taught to remember things; and it is quite surprising what memories they have, and how scrupulously a little carter-boy will deliver half-a-dozen messages, each of a different purport from the rest, to as many persons, all the messages committed to him at one and the same time, and he not knowing one letter of the alphabet from another. When I want to remember something, and am out in the field, and cannot write it down, I say to one of the men, or boys, come to me at such a time, and tell me so and so. He is sure to do it; and I therefore look upon the memorandum as written down. One of these children, boy or girl, is much more worthy of being entrusted with the care of a baby, any body's baby, than a servant-maid with curled locks and with eyes rolling about for admirers. The locks and the rolling eyes, very nice, and, for aught I know, very proper things in themselves; but incompatible with the care of your baby, Ma'am; her mind being absorbed in contemplating the interesting circumstances which are to precede her having a sweet baby of her own; and a sweeter than yours, if you please, Ma'am; or, at least, such will be her anticipations. And this is all right enough; it is natural that she should think and feel thus; and knowing this, you are admonished that it is your bounden duty not to delegate this sacred trust to any body.

260. The courage, of which I have spoken, so necessary in the case of washing the children in spite of their screaming remonstrances, is, if possible, more necessary in cases of illness, requiring the application of medicine, or of surgical means of cure. Here the heart is put to the test indeed! Here is anguish to be endured by a mother, who has to force down the nauseous physic, or to apply the tormenting plaster! Yet it is the mother, or the father, and more properly the former, who is to perform this duty of exquisite pain. To no nurse, to no hireling, to no alien hand, ought, if possible to avoid it, this task to be committed. I do not admire those mothers who are too tender-hearted to inflict this pain on their children, and who, therefore, leave it to be inflicted by others. Give me the mother who, while the tears stream down her face, has the resolution scrupulously to execute, with her own hands, the doctor's commands. Will a servant, will any hireling, do this? Committed to such hands, the least trouble will be preferred to the greater: the thing will, in general, not be half done; and if done, the suffering from such hands is far greater in the mind of the child than if it came from the hands of the mother. In this case, above all others, there ought to be no delegation of the parental office. Here life or limb is at stake; and the parent, man or woman, who, in any one point, can neglect his or her duty here, is unworthy of the name of parent. And here, as in all the other instances, where goodness in the parents towards the children gives such weight to their advice when the children grow up, what a motive to filial gratitude! The children who are old enough to deserve and remember, will witness this proof of love and self-devotion in their mother. Each of them feels that she has done the same towards them all; and they love her and admire and revere her accordingly.

261. This is the place to state my opinions, and the result of my experience, with regard to that fearful disease the SMALL-POX; a subject, too, to which I have paid great attention. I was always, from the very first mention of the thing, opposed to the Cow-Pox scheme. If efficacious in preventing the Small-Pox, I objected to it merely on the score of its beastliness. There are some things, surely, more hideous than death, and more resolutely to be avoided; at any rate, more to be avoided than the mere risk of suffering death. And, amongst other things, I always reckoned that of a parent causing the blood, and the diseased blood too, of a beast to be put into the veins of human beings, and those beings the children of that parent. I, therefore, as will be seen in the pages of the Register of that day, most strenuously opposed the giving of twenty thousand pounds to JENNER out of the taxes, paid in great part by the working people, which I deemed and asserted to be a scandalous waste of the public money.

262. I contended, that this beastly application could not, in nature, be efficacious in preventing the Small-Pox; and that, even if efficacious for that purpose, it was wholly unnecessary. The truth of the former of these assertions has now been proved in thousands upon thousands of instances. For a long time, for ten years, the contrary was boldly and brazenly asserted. This nation is fond of quackery of all sorts; and this particular quackery having been sanctioned by King, Lords and Commons, it spread over the country like a pestilence borne by the winds. Speedily sprang up the 'ROYAL Jennerian Institution,' and Branch Institutions, issuing from the parent trunk, set instantly to work, impregnating the veins of the rising and enlightened generation with the beastly matter. 'Gentlemen and Ladies' made the commodity a pocket-companion; and if a cottager's child (in Hampshire at least), even seen by them, on a common, were not pretty quick in taking to its heels, it had to carry off more or less of the disease of the cow. One would have thought, that one-half of the cows in England must have been tapped to get at such a quantity of the stuff.

263. In the midst of all this mad work, to which the doctors, after having found it in vain to resist, had yielded, the real small-pox, in its worst form, broke out in the town of RINGWOOD, in HAMPSHIRE, and carried off, I believe (I have not the account at hand), more than a hundred persons, young and old, every one of whom had had the cow-pox 'so nicely!' And what was now said? Was the quackery exploded, and were the granters of the twenty thousand pounds ashamed of what they had done? Not at all: the failure was imputed to unskilful operators; to the staleness of the matter; to its not being of the genuine quality. Admitting all this, the scheme stood condemned; for the great advantages held forth were, that any body might perform the operation, and that the matter was every where abundant and cost-free. But these were paltry excuses; the mere shuffles of quackery; for what do we know now? Why, that in hundreds of instances, persons cow-poxed by JENNER HIMSELF, have taken the real small-pox afterwards, and have either died from the disorder, or narrowly escaped with their lives! I will mention two instances, the parties concerned being living and well-known, one of them to the whole nation, and the other to a very numerous circle in the higher walks of life. The first is Sir RICHARD PHILLIPS, so well known by his able writings, and equally well known by his exemplary conduct as Sheriff of London, and by his life-long labours in the cause of real charity and humanity. Sir Richard had, I think, two sons, whose veins were impregnated by the grantee himself. At any rate he had one, who had, several years after Jenner had given him the insuring matter, a very hard struggle for his life, under the hands of the good, old-fashioned, seam-giving, and dimple-dipping small-pox. The second is PHILIP CODD, Esq., formerly of Kensington, and now of Rumsted Court, near Maidstone, in Kent, who has a son that had a very narrow escape under the real small-pox, about four years ago, and who also had been cow-poxed by Jenner himself. This last-mentioned gentleman I have known, and most sincerely respected, from the time of our both being about eighteen years of age. When the young gentleman, of whom I am now speaking, was very young, I having him upon my knee one day, asked his kind and excellent mother, whether he had been inoculated. 'Oh, no!' said she, 'we are going to have him vaccinated.' Whereupon I, going into the garden to the father, said, 'I do hope, Codd, that you are not going to have that beastly cow-stuff put into that fine boy.' 'Why,' said he, 'you see, Cobbett, it is to be done by Jenner himself.' What answer I gave, what names and epithets I bestowed upon Jenner and his quackery, I will leave the reader to imagine.

264. Now, here are instances enough; but, every reader has heard of, if not seen, scores of others. Young Mr. Codd caught the small-pox at a school; and if I recollect rightly, there were several other 'vaccinated' youths who did the same, at the same time. Quackery, however, has always a shuffle left. Now that the cow-pox has been proved to be no guarantee against the small-pox, it makes it' milder' when it comes! A pretty shuffle, indeed, this! You are to be all your life in fear of it, having as your sole consolation, that when it comes (and it may overtake you in a camp, or on the seas), it will be 'milder!' It was not too mild to kill at RINGWOOD; and its mildness, in case of young Mr. Codd, did not restrain it from blinding him for a suitable number of days. I shall not easily forget the alarm and anxiety of the father and mother upon this occasion; both of them the best of parents, and both of them now punished for having yielded to this fashionable quackery. I will not say, justly punished; for affection for their children, in which respect they were never surpassed by any parents on earth, was the cause of their listening to the danger-obviating quackery. This, too, is the case with other parents; but parents should be under the influence of reason and experience, as well as under that of affection; and now, at any rate, they ought to set this really dangerous quackery at nought.

265. And, what does my own experience say on the other side? There are my seven children, the sons as tall, or nearly so, as their father, and the daughters as tall as their mother; all, in due succession, inoculated with the good old-fashioned face-tearing small-pox; neither of them with a single mark of that disease on their skins; neither of them having been, that we could perceive, ill for a single hour, in consequence of the inoculation. When we were in the United States, we observed that the Americans were never marked with the small-pox; or, if such a thing were seen, it was very rarely. The cause we found to be, the universal practice of having the children inoculated at the breast, and, generally, at a month or six weeks old. When we came to have children, we did the same. I believe that some of ours have been a few months old when the operation has been performed, but always while at the breast, and as early as possible after the expiration of six weeks from the birth; sometimes put off a little while by some slight disorder in the child, or on account of some circumstance or other; but, with these exceptions, done at, or before, the end of six weeks from the birth, and always at the breast. All is then pure: there is nothing in either body or mind to favour the natural fury of the disease. We always took particular care about the source from which the infectious matter came. We employed medical men, in whom we could place perfect confidence: we had their solemn word for the matter coming from some healthy child; and, at last, we had sometimes to wait for this, the cow-affair having rendered patients of this sort rather rare.

266. While the child has the small-pox, the mother should abstain from food and drink, which she may require at other times, but which might be too gross just now. To suckle a hearty child requires good living; for, besides that this is necessary to the mother, it is also necessary to the child. A little forbearance, just at this time, is prudent; making the diet as simple as possible, and avoiding all violent agitation either of the body or the spirits; avoiding too, if you can, very hot or very cold weather.

267. There is now, however, this inconvenience, that the far greater part of the present young women have been be-Jennered; so that they may catch the beauty-killing disease from their babies! To hearten them up, however, and more especially, I confess, to record a trait of maternal affection and of female heroism, which I have never heard of any thing to surpass, I have the pride to say, that my wife had eight children inoculated at her breast, and never had the small-pox in her life. I, at first, objected to the inoculating of the child, but she insisted upon it, and with so much pertinacity that I gave way, on condition that she would be inoculated too. This was done with three or four of the children, I think, she always being reluctant to have it done, saying that it looked like distrusting the goodness of God. There was, to be sure, very little in this argument; but the long experience wore away the alarm; and there she is now, having had eight children hanging at her breast with that desolating disease in them, and she never having been affected by it from first to last. All her children knew, of course, the risk that she voluntarily incurred for them. They all have this indubitable proof, that she valued their lives above her own; and is it in nature, that they should ever wilfully do any thing to wound the heart of that mother; and must not her bright example have great effect on their character and conduct! Now, my opinion is, that the far greater part of English or American women, if placed in the above circumstances, would do just the same thing; and I do hope, that those, who have yet to be mothers, will seriously think of putting an end, as they have the power to do, to the disgraceful and dangerous quackery, the evils of which I have so fully proved.

268. But there is, in the management of babies, something besides life, health, strength and beauty; and something too, without which all these put together are nothing worth; and that is sanity of mind. There are, owing to various causes, some who are born ideots; but a great many more become insane from the misconduct, or neglect, of parents; and, generally, from the children being committed to the care of servants. I knew, in Pennsylvania, a child, as fine, and as sprightly, and as intelligent a child as ever was born, made an ideot for life by being, when about three years old, shut into a dark closet, by a maid servant, in order to terrify it into silence. The thoughtless creature first menaced it with sending it to 'the bad place,' as the phrase is there; and, at last, to reduce it to silence, put it into the closet, shut the door, and went out of the room. She went back, in a few minutes, and found the child in a fit. It recovered from that, but was for life an ideot. When the parents, who had been out two days and two nights on a visit of pleasure, came home, they were told that the child had had a fit; but, they were not told the cause. The girl, however, who was a neighbour's daughter, being on her death-bed about ten years afterwards, could not die in peace without sending for the mother of the child (now become a young man) and asking forgiveness of her. The mother herself was, however, the greatest offender of the two: a whole lifetime of sorrow and of mortification was a punishment too light for her and her husband. Thousands upon thousands of human beings have been deprived of their senses by these and similar means.

269. It is not long since that we read, in the newspapers, of a child being absolutely killed, at Birmingham, I think it was, by being thus frightened. The parents had gone out into what is called an evening party. The servants, naturally enough, had their party at home; and the mistress, who, by some unexpected accident, had been brought home at an early hour, finding the parlour full of company, ran up stairs to see about her child, about two or three years old. She found it with its eyes open, but fixed; touching it, she found it inanimate. The doctor was sent for in vain: it was quite dead. The maid affected to know nothing of the cause; but some one of the parties assembled discovered, pinned up to the curtains of the bed, a horrid figure, made up partly of a frightful mask! This, as the wretched girl confessed, had been done to keep the child quiet, while she was with her company below. When one reflects on the anguish that the poor little thing must have endured, before the life was quite frightened out of it, one can find no terms sufficiently strong to express the abhorrence due to the perpetrator of this crime, which was, in fact, a cruel murder; and, if it was beyond the reach of the law, it was so and is so, because, as in the cases of parricide, the law, in making no provision for punishment peculiarly severe, has, out of respect to human nature, supposed such crimes to be impossible. But if the girl was criminal; if death, or a life of remorse, was her due, what was the due of her parents, and especially of the mother! And what was the due of the father, who suffered that mother, and who, perhaps, tempted her to neglect her most sacred duty!

270. If this poor child had been deprived of its mental faculties, instead of being deprived of its life, the cause would, in all likelihood, never have been discovered. The insanity would have been ascribed to 'brain-fever,' or to some other of the usual causes of insanity; or, as in thousands upon thousands of instances, to some unaccountable cause. When I was, in No. IX., paragraphs from 227 to 233, both inclusive, maintaining with all my might, the unalienable right of the child to the milk of its mother, I omitted, amongst the evils arising from banishing the child from the mother's breast, to mention, or, rather, it had never occurred to me to mention, the loss of reason to the poor, innocent creatures, thus banished. And now, as connected with this measure, I have an argument of experience, enough to terrify every young man and woman upon earth from the thought of committing this offence against nature. I wrote No. IX. at CAMBRIDGE, on Sunday, the 28th of March; and before I quitted SHREWSBURY, on the 14th of May, the following facts reached my ears. A very respectable tradesman, who, with his wife, have led a most industrious life, in a town that it is not necessary to name, said to a gentleman that told it to me: 'I wish to God I had read No. IX. of Mr. Cobbett's ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN fifteen years ago!' He then related, that he had had ten children, all put out to be suckled, in consequence of the necessity of his having the mother's assistance to carry on his business; and that two out of the ten had come home ideots; though the rest were all sane, and though insanity had never been known in the family of either father or mother! These parents, whom I myself saw, are very clever people, and the wife singularly industrious and expert in her affairs.

271. Now the motive, in this case, unquestionably was good; it was that the mother's valuable time might, as much as possible, be devoted to the earning of a competence for her children. But, alas! what is this competence to these two unfortunate beings! And what is the competence to the rest, when put in the scale against the mortification that they must, all their lives, suffer on account of the insanity of their brother and sister, exciting, as it must, in all their circle, and even in themselves, suspicions of their own perfect soundness of mind! When weighed against this consideration, what is all the wealth in the world! And as to the parents, where are they to find compensation for such a calamity, embittered additionally, too, by the reflection, that it was in their power to prevent it, and that nature, with loud voice, cried out to them to prevent it! MONEY! Wealth acquired in consequence of this banishment of these poor children; these victims of this, I will not call it avarice, but over-eager love of gain! wealth, thus acquired! What wealth can console these parents for the loss of reason in these children! Where is the father and the mother, who would not rather see their children ploughing in other men's fields, and sweeping other men's houses, than led about parks or houses of their own, objects of pity even of the menials procured by their wealth?

272. If what I have now said be not sufficient to deter a man from suffering any consideration, no matter what, to induce him to delegate the care of his children, when very young, to any body whomsoever, nothing that I can say can possibly have that effect; and I will, therefore, now proceed to offer my advice with regard to the management of children when they get beyond the danger of being crazed or killed by nurses or servants.

273. We here come to the subject of education in the true sense of that word, which is rearing up, seeing that the word comes from the Latin educo, which means to breed up, or to rear up. I shall, afterwards, have to speak of education in the now common acceptation of the word, which makes it mean, book-learning. At present, I am to speak of education in its true sense, as the French (who, as well as we, take the word from the Latin) always use it. They, in their agricultural works, talk of the 'education du Cochon, de l'Alouette, &c.,' that is of the hog, the lark, and so of other animals; that is to say, of the manner of breeding them, or rearing them up, from their being little things till they be of full size.

274. The first thing, in the rearing of children, who have passed from the baby-state, is, as to the body, plenty of good food; and, as to the mind, constant good example in the parents. Of the latter I shall speak more by-and-by. With regard to the former, it is of the greatest importance, that children be well fed; and there never was a greater error than to believe that they do not need good food. Every one knows, that to have fine horses, the colts must be kept well, and that it is the same with regard to all animals of every sort and kind. The fine horses and cattle and sheep all come from the rich pastures. To have them fine, it is not sufficient that they have plenty of food when young, but that they have rich food. Were there no land, no pasture, in England, but such as is found in Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey, we should see none of those coach-horses and dray-horses, whose height and size make us stare. It is the keep when young that makes the fine animal.

275. There is no other reason for the people in the American States being generally so much taller and stronger than the people in England are. Their forefathers went, for the greater part, from England. In the four Northern States they went wholly from England, and then, on their landing, they founded a new London, a new Falmouth, a new Plymouth, a new Portsmouth, a new Dover, a new Yarmouth, a new Lynn, a new Boston, and a new Hull, and the country itself they called, and their descendants still call, NEW ENGLAND. This country of the best and boldest seamen, and of the most moral and happy people in the world, is also the country of the tallest and ablest-bodied men in the world. And why? Because, from their very birth, they have an abundance of good food; not only of food, but of rich food. Even when the child is at the breast, a strip of beef-stake, or something of that description, as big and as long as one's finger, is put into its hand. When a baby gets a thing in its hand, the first thing it does is to poke some part of it into its mouth. It cannot bite the meat, but its gums squeeze out the juice. When it has done with the breast, it eats meat constantly twice, if not thrice, a day. And this abundance of good food is the cause, to be sure, of the superior size and strength of the people of that country.

276. Nor is this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter. A tall man is, whether as labourer, carpenter, bricklayer, soldier or sailor, or almost anything else, worth more than a short man: he can look over a higher thing; he can reach higher and wider; he can move on from place to place faster; in mowing grass or corn he takes a wider swarth, in pitching he wants a shorter prong; in making buildings he does not so soon want a ladder or a scaffold; in fighting he keeps his body farther from the point of his sword. To be sure, a man may be tall and weak; but, this is the exception and not the rule: height and weight and strength, in men as in speechless animals, generally go together. Aye, and in enterprise and courage too, the powers of the body have a great deal to do. Doubtless there are, have been, and always will be, great numbers of small and enterprizing and brave men; but it is not in nature, that, generally speaking, those who are conscious of their inferiority in point of bodily strength, should possess the boldness of those who have a contrary description.

277. To what but this difference in the size and strength of the opposing combatants are we to ascribe the ever-to-be-blushed-at events of our last war against the United States! The hearts of our seamen and soldiers were as good as those of the Yankees: on both sides they had sprung from the same stock: on both sides equally well supplied with all the materials of war: if on either side, the superior skill was on ours: French, Dutch, Spaniards, all had confessed our superior prowess: yet, when, with our whole undivided strength, and to that strength adding the flush and pride of victory and conquest, crowned even in the capital of France; when, with all these tremendous advantages, and with all the nations of the earth looking on, we came foot to foot and yard-arm to yard-arm with the Americans, the result was such as an English pen refuses to describe. What, then, was the great cause of this result, which filled us with shame and the world with astonishment? Not the want of courage in our men. There were, indeed, some moral causes at work; but the main cause was, the great superiority of size and of bodily strength on the part of the enemy's soldiers and sailors. It was so many men on each side; but it was men of a different size and strength; and, on the side of the foe, men accustomed to daring enterprise from a consciousness of that strength.

278. Why are abstinence and fasting enjoined by the Catholic Church? Why, to make men humble, meek, and tame; and they have this effect too: this is visible in whole nations as well as in individuals. So that good food, and plenty of it, is not more necessary to the forming of a stout and able body than to the forming of an active and enterprizing spirit. Poor food, short allowance, while they check the growth of the child's body, check also the daring of the mind; and, therefore, the starving or pinching system ought to be avoided by all means. Children should eat often, and as much as they like at a time. They will, if at full heap, never take, of plain food, more than it is good for them to take. They may, indeed, be stuffed with cakes and sweet things till they be ill, and, indeed, until they bring on dangerous disorders: but, of meat plainly and well cooked, and of bread, they will never swallow the tenth part of an ounce more than it is necessary for them to swallow. Ripe fruit, or cooked fruit, if no sweetening take place, will never hurt them; but, when they once get a taste for sugary stuff, and to cram down loads of garden vegetables; when ices, creams, tarts, raisins, almonds, all the endless pamperings come, the doctor must soon follow with his drugs. The blowing out of the bodies of children with tea, coffee, soup, or warm liquids of any kind, is very bad: these have an effect precisely like that which is produced by feeding young rabbits, or pigs, or other young animals upon watery vegetables: it makes them big-bellied and bare-boned at the same time; and it effectually prevents the frame from becoming strong. Children in health want no drink other than skim milk, or butter-milk, or whey; and, if none of those be at hand, water will do very well, provided they have plenty of good meat. Cheese and butter do very well for part of the day. Puddings and pies; but always without sugar, which, say what people will about the wholesomeness of it, is not only of no use in the rearing of children, but injurious: it forces an appetite: like strong drink, it makes daily encroachments on the taste: it wheedles down that which the stomach does not want: it finally produces illness: it is one of the curses of the country; for it, by taking off the bitter of the tea and coffee, is the great cause of sending down into the stomach those quantities of warm water by which the body is debilitated and deformed and the mind enfeebled. I am addressing myself to persons in the middle walk of life; but no parent can be sure that his child will not be compelled to labour hard for its daily bread: and then, how vast is the difference between one who has been pampered with sweets and one who has been reared on plain food and simple drink!

279. The next thing after good and plentiful and plain food is good air. This is not within the reach of every one; but, to obtain it is worth great sacrifices in other respects. We know that there are smells which will cause instant death; we know, that there are others which will cause death in a few years; and, therefore, we know that it is the duty of parents to provide, if possible, against this danger to the health of their offspring. To be sure, when a man is so situated that he cannot give his children sweet air without putting himself into a jail for debt: when, in short, he has the dire choice of sickly children, children with big heads, small limbs, and ricketty joints: or children sent to the poor-house: when this is his hard lot, he must decide for the former sad alternative: but before he will convince me that this is his lot, he must prove to me, that he and his wife expend not a penny in the decoration of their persons; that on his table, morning, noon, or night, nothing ever comes that is not the produce of English soil; that of his time not one hour is wasted in what is called pleasure; that down his throat not one drop or morsel ever goes, unless necessary to sustain life and health. How many scores and how many hundreds of men have I seen; how many thousands could I go and point out, to-morrow, in London, the money expended on whose guzzlings in porter, grog and wine, would keep, and keep well, in the country, a considerable part of the year, a wife surrounded by healthy children, instead of being stewed up in some alley, or back room, with a parcel of poor creatures about her, whom she, though their fond mother, is almost ashamed to call hers! Compared with the life of such a woman, that of the labourer, however poor, is paradise. Tell me not of the necessity of providing money for them, even if you waste not a farthing: you can provide them with no money equal in value to health and straight limbs and good looks: these it is, if within your power, your bounden duty to provide for them: as to providing them with money, you deceive yourself; it is your own avarice, or vanity, that you are seeking to gratify, and not to ensure the good of your children. Their most precious possession is health and strength; and you have no right to run the risk of depriving them of these for the sake of heaping together money to bestow on them: you have the desire to see them rich: it is to gratify yourself that you act in such a case; and you, however you may deceive yourself, are guilty of injustice towards them. You would be ashamed to see them without fortune; but not at all ashamed to see them without straight limbs, without colour in their cheeks, without strength, without activity, and with only half their due portion of reason.

280. Besides sweet air, children want exercise. Even when they are babies in arms, they want tossing and pulling about, and want talking and singing to. They should be put upon their feet by slow degrees, according to the strength of their legs; and this is a matter which a good mother will attend to with incessant care. If they appear to be likely to squint, she will, always when they wake up, and frequently in the day, take care to present some pleasing object right before, and never on the side of their face. If they appear, when they begin to talk, to indicate a propensity to stammer, she will stop them, repeat the word or words slowly herself, and get them to do the same. These precautions are amongst the most sacred of the duties of parents; for, remember, the deformity is for life; a thought which will fill every good parent's heart with solicitude. All swaddling and tight covering are mischievous. They produce distortions of some sort or other. To let children creep and roll about till they get upon their legs of themselves is a very good way. I never saw a native American with crooked limbs or hump-back, and never heard any man say that he had seen one. And the reason is, doubtless, the loose dress in which children, from the moment of their birth, are kept, the good food that they always have, and the sweet air that they breathe in consequence of the absence of all dread of poverty on the part of the parents.

281. As to bodily exercise, they will, when they begin to get about, take, if you let them alone, just as much of it as nature bids them, and no more. That is a pretty deal, indeed, if they be in health; and, it is your duty, now, to provide for their taking of that exercise, when they begin to be what are called boys and girls, in a way that shall tend to give them the greatest degree of pleasure, accompanied with the smallest risk of pain: in other words, to make their lives as pleasant as you possibly can. I have always admired the sentiment of ROUSSEAU upon this subject. 'The boy dies, perhaps, at the age of ten or twelve. Of what use, then, all the restraints, all the privations, all the pain, that you have inflicted upon him? He falls, and leaves your mind to brood over the possibility of your having abridged a life so dear to you.' I do not recollect the very words; but the passage made a deep impression upon my mind, just at the time, too, when I was about to become a father; and I was resolved never to bring upon myself remorse from such a cause; a resolution from which no importunities, coming from what quarter they might, ever induced me, in one single instance, or for one single moment, to depart. I was resolved to forego all the means of making money, all the means of living in any thing like fashion, all the means of obtaining fame or distinction, to give up every thing, to become a common labourer, rather than make my children lead a life of restraint and rebuke; I could not be sure that my children would love me as they loved their own lives; but I was, at any rate, resolved to deserve such love at their hands; and, in possession of that, I felt that I could set calamity, of whatever description, at defiance.

282. Now, proceeding to relate what was, in this respect, my line of conduct, I am not pretending that every man, and particularly every man living in a town, can, in all respects, do as I did in the rearing up of children. But, in many respects, any man may, whatever may be his state of life. For I did not lead an idle life; I had to work constantly for the means of living; my occupation required unremitted attention; I had nothing but my labour to rely on; and I had no friend, to whom, in case of need, I could fly for assistance: I always saw the possibility, and even the probability, of being totally ruined by the hand of power; but, happen what would, I was resolved, that, as long as I could cause them to do it, my children should lead happy lives; and happy lives they did lead, if ever children did in this whole world.

283. The first thing that I did, when the fourth child had come, was to get into the country, and so far as to render a going backward and forward to London, at short intervals, quite out of the question. Thus was health, the greatest of all things, provided for, as far as I was able to make the provision. Next, my being always at home was secured as far as possible; always with them to set an example of early rising, sobriety, and application to something or other. Children, and especially boys, will have some out-of-door pursuits; and it was my duty to lead them to choose such pursuits as combined future utility with present innocence. Each his flower-bed, little garden, plantation of trees; rabbits, dogs, asses, horses, pheasants and hares; hoes, spades, whips, guns; always some object of lively interest, and as much earnestness and bustle about the various objects as if our living had solely depended upon them. I made everything give way to the great object of making their lives happy and innocent. I did not know what they might be in time, or what might be my lot; but I was resolved not to be the cause of their being unhappy then, let what might become of us afterwards. I was, as I am, of opinion, that it is injurious to the mind to press book-learning upon it at an early age: I always felt pain for poor little things, set up, before 'company,' to repeat verses, or bits of plays, at six or eight years old. I have sometimes not known which way to look, when a mother (and, too often, a father), whom I could not but respect on account of her fondness for her child, has forced the feeble-voiced eighth wonder of the world, to stand with its little hand stretched out, spouting the soliloquy of Hamlet, or some such thing. I remember, on one occasion, a little pale-faced creature, only five years old, was brought in, after the feeding part of the dinner was over, first to take his regular half-glass of vintner's brewings, commonly called wine, and then to treat us to a display of his wonderful genius. The subject was a speech of a robust and bold youth, in a Scotch play, the title of which I have forgotten, but the speech began with, 'My name is Norval: on the Grampian Hills my father fed his flocks...' And this in a voice so weak and distressing as to put me in mind of the plaintive squeaking of little pigs when the sow is lying on them. As we were going home (one of my boys and I) he, after a silence of half a mile perhaps, rode up close to the side of my horse, and said, 'Papa, where be the Grampian Hills?' 'Oh,' said I, 'they are in Scotland; poor, barren, beggarly places, covered with heath and rushes, ten times as barren as Sherril Heath.' 'But,' said he, 'how could that little boy's father feed his flocks there, then?' I was ready to tumble off the horse with laughing.

284. I do not know any thing much more distressing to the spectators than exhibitions of this sort. Every one feels, not for the child, for it is insensible to the uneasiness it excites, but for the parents, whose amiable fondness displays itself in this ridiculous manner. Upon these occasions, no one knows what to say, or whither to direct his looks. The parents, and especially the fond mother, looks sharply round for the so-evidently merited applause, as an actor of the name of MUNDEN, whom I recollect thirty years ago, used, when he had treated us to a witty shrug of his shoulders, or twist of his chin, to turn his face up to the gallery for the clap. If I had to declare on my oath which have been the most disagreeable moments of my life, I verily believe, that, after due consideration, I should fix upon those, in which parents, whom I have respected, have made me endure exhibitions like these; for, this is your choice, to be insincere, or to give offence.

285. And, as towards the child, it is to be unjust, thus to teach it to set a high value on trifling, not to say mischievous, attainments; to make it, whether it be in its natural disposition or not, vain and conceited. The plaudits which it receives, in such cases, puffs it up in its own thoughts, sends it out into the world stuffed with pride and insolence, which must and will be extracted out of it by one means or another; and none but those who have had to endure the drawing of firmly-fixed teeth, can, I take it, have an adequate idea of the painfulness of this operation. Now, parents have no right thus to indulge their own feelings at the risk of the happiness of their children.

286. The great matter is, however, the spoiling of the mind by forcing on it thoughts which it is not fit to receive. We know well, we daily see, that in men, as well as in other animals, the body is rendered comparatively small and feeble by being heavily loaded, or hard worked, before it arrive at size and strength proportioned to such load and such work. It is just so with the mind: the attempt to put old heads upon young shoulders is just as unreasonable as it would be to expect a colt six months old to be able to carry a man. The mind, as well as the body, requires time to come to its strength; and the way to have it possess, at last, its natural strength, is not to attempt to load it too soon; and to favour it in its progress by giving to the body good and plentiful food, sweet air, and abundant exercise, accompanied with as little discontent or uneasiness as possible. It is universally known, that ailments of the body are, in many cases, sufficient to destroy the mind, and to debilitate it in innumerable instances. It is equally well known, that the torments of the mind are, in many cases, sufficient to destroy the body. This, then, being so well known, is it not the first duty of a father to secure to his children, if possible, sound and strong bodies? LORD BACON says, that 'a sound mind in a sound body is the greatest of God's blessings.' To see his children possess these, therefore, ought to be the first object with every father; an object which I cannot too often endeavour to fix in his mind.

287. I am to speak presently of that sort of learning which is derived from books, and which is a matter by no means to be neglected, or to be thought little of, seeing that it is the road, not only to fame, but to the means of doing great good to one's neighbours and to one's country, and, thereby, of adding to those pleasant feelings which are, in other words, our happiness. But, notwithstanding this, I must here insist, and endeavour to impress my opinion upon the mind of every father, that his children's happiness ought to be first object; that book-learning, if it tend to militate against this, ought to be disregarded; and that, as to money, as to fortune, as to rank and title, that father who can, in the destination of his children, think of them more than of the happiness of those children, is, if he be of sane mind, a great criminal. Who is there, having lived to the age of thirty, or even twenty, years, and having the ordinary capacity for observation; who is there, being of this description, who must not be convinced of the inadequacy of riches and what are called honours to insure happiness? Who, amongst all the classes of men, experience, on an average, so little of real pleasure, and so much of real pain as the rich and the lofty? Pope gives us, as the materials for happiness, 'health, peace, and competence.' Aye, but what is peace, and what is competence? If, by peace, he mean that tranquillity of mind which innocence and good deeds produce, he is right and clear so far; for we all know that, without health, which has a well-known positive meaning, there can be no happiness. But competence is a word of unfixed meaning. It may, with some, mean enough to eat, drink, wear and be lodged and warmed with; but, with others, it may include horses, carriages, and footmen laced over from top to toe. So that, here, we have no guide; no standard; and, indeed, there can be none. But as every sensible father must know that the possession of riches do not, never did, and never can, afford even a chance of additional happiness, it is his duty to inculcate in the minds of his children to make no sacrifice of principle, of moral obligation of any sort, in order to obtain riches, or distinction; and it is a duty still more imperative on him, not to expose them to the risk of loss of health, or diminution of strength, for purposes which have, either directly or indirectly, the acquiring of riches in view, whether for himself or for them.

288. With these principles immoveably implanted in my mind, I became the father of a family, and on these principles I have reared that family. Being myself fond of book-learning, and knowing well its powers, I naturally wished them to possess it too; but never did I impose it upon any one of them. My first duty was to make them healthy and strong if I could, and to give them as much enjoyment of life as possible. Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that they should be bred up in it too. Enjoying rural scenes and sports, as I had done, when a boy, as much as any one that ever was born, I was resolved, that they should have the same enjoyments tendered to them. When I was a very little boy, I was, in the barley-sowing season, going along by the side of a field, near WAVERLY ABBEY; the primroses and blue-bells bespangling the banks on both sides of me; a thousand linnets singing in a spreading oak over my head; while the jingle of the traces and the whistling of the ploughboys saluted my ear from over the hedge; and, as it were to snatch me from the enchantment, the hounds, at that instant, having started a hare in the hanger on the other side of the field, came up scampering over it in full cry, taking me after them many a mile. I was not more than eight years old; but this particular scene has presented itself to my mind many times every year from that day to this. I always enjoy it over again; and I was resolved to give, if possible, the same enjoyments to my children.

289. Men's circumstances are so various; there is such a great variety in their situations in life, their business, the extent of their pecuniary means, the local state in which they are placed, their internal resources; the variety in all these respects is so great, that, as applicable to every family, it would be impossible to lay down any set of rules, or maxims, touching every matter relating to the management and rearing up of children. In giving an account, therefore, of my own conduct, in this respect, I am not to be understood as supposing, that every father can, or ought, to attempt to do the same; but while it will be seen, that there are many, and these the most important parts of that conduct, that all fathers may imitate, if they choose, there is no part of it which thousands and thousands of fathers might not adopt and pursue, and adhere to, to the very letter.

290. I effected every thing without scolding, and even without command. My children are a family of scholars, each sex its appropriate species of learning; and, I could safely take my oath, that I never ordered a child of mine, son or daughter, to look into a book, in my life. My two eldest sons, when about eight years old, were, for the sake of their health, placed for a very short time, at a Clergyman's at MICHELDEVER, and my eldest daughter, a little older, at a school a few miles from Botley, to avoid taking them to London in the winter. But, with these exceptions, never had they, while children, teacher of any description; and I never, and nobody else ever, taught any one of them to read, write, or any thing else, except in conversation; and, yet, no man was ever more anxious to be the father of a family of clever and learned persons.

291. I accomplished my purpose indirectly. The first thing of all was health, which was secured by the deeply-interesting and never-ending sports of the field and pleasures of the garden. Luckily these things were treated of in books and pictures of endless variety; so that on wet days, in long evenings, these came into play. A large, strong table, in the middle of the room, their mother sitting at her work, used to be surrounded with them, the baby, if big enough, set up in a high chair. Here were ink-stands, pens, pencils, India rubber, and paper, all in abundance, and every one scrabbled about as he or she pleased. There were prints of animals of all sorts; books treating of them: others treating of gardening, of flowers, of husbandry, of hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of every thing, with regard to which we had something to do. One would be trying to imitate a bit of my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or horses, a third poking over Bewick's Quadrupeds and picking out what he said about them; but our book of never-failing resource was the French MAISON RUSTIQUE, or FARM-HOUSE, which, it is said, was the book that first tempted DUQUESNOIS (I think that was the name), the famous physician, in the reign of Louis XIV., to learn to read. Here are all the four-legged animals, from the horse down to the mouse, portraits and all; all the birds, reptiles, insects; all the modes of rearing, managing, and using the tame ones; all the modes of taking the wild ones, and of destroying those that are mischievous; all the various traps, springs, nets; all the implements of husbandry and gardening; all the labours of the field and the garden exhibited, as well as the rest, in plates; and, there was I, in my leisure moments, to join this inquisitive group, to read the French, and tell them what it meaned in English, when the picture did not sufficiently explain itself. I never have been without a copy of this book for forty years, except during the time that I was fleeing from the dungeons of CASTLEREAGH and SIDMOUTH, in 1817; and, when I got to Long Island, the first book I bought was another MAISON RUSTIQUE.

292. What need had we of schools? What need of teachers? What need of scolding and force, to induce children to read, write, and love books? What need of cards, dice, or of any games, to 'kill time;' but, in fact, to implant in the infant heart a love of gaming, one of the most destructive of all human vices? We did not want to 'kill time;' we were always busy, wet weather or dry weather, winter or summer. There was no force in any case; no command; no authority; none of these was ever wanted. To teach the children the habit of early rising was a great object; and every one knows how young people cling to their beds, and how loth they are to go to those beds. This was a capital matter; because, here were industry and health both at stake. Yet, I avoided command even here; and merely offered a reward. The child that was down stairs first, was called the LARK for that day; and, further, sat at my right hand at dinner. They soon discovered, that to rise early, they must go to bed early; and thus was this most important object secured, with regard to girls as well as boys. Nothing more inconvenient, and, indeed, more disgusting, than to have to do with girls, or young women, who lounge in bed: 'A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep.' SOLOMON knew them well: he had, I dare say, seen the breakfast cooling, carriages and horses and servants waiting, the sun coming burning on, the day wasting, the night growing dark too early, appointments broken, and the objects of journeys defeated; and all this from the lolloping in bed of persons who ought to have risen with the sun. No beauty, no modesty, no accomplishments, are a compensation for the effects of laziness in women; and, of all the proofs of laziness, none is so unequivocal as that of lying late in bed. Love makes men overlook this vice (for it is a vice), for a while; but, this does not last for life. Besides, health demands early rising: the management of a house imperiously demands it; but health, that most precious possession, without which there is nothing else worth possessing, demands it too. The morning air is the most wholesome and strengthening: even in crowded cities, men might do pretty well with the aid of the morning air; but, how are they to rise early, if they go to bed late?

293. But, to do the things I did, you must love home yourself; to rear up children in this manner, you must live with them; you must make them, too, feel, by your conduct, that you prefer this to any other mode of passing your time. All men cannot lead this sort of life, but many may; and all much more than many do. My occupation, to be sure, was chiefly carried on at home; but, I had always enough to do; I never spent an idle week, or even day, in my whole life. Yet I found time to talk with them, to walk, or ride, about with them; and when forced to go from home, always took one or more with me. You must be good-tempered too with them; they must like your company better than any other person's; they must not wish you away, not fear your coming back, not look upon your departure as a holiday. When my business kept me away from the scrabbling-table, a petition often came, that I would go and talk with the group, and the bearer generally was the youngest, being the most likely to succeed. When I went from home, all followed me to the outer-gate, and looked after me, till the carriage, or horse, was out of sight. At the time appointed for my return, all were prepared to meet me; and if it were late at night, they sat up as long as they were able to keep their eyes open. This love of parents, and this constant pleasure at home, made them not even think of seeking pleasure abroad; and they, thus, were kept from vicious playmates and early corruption.

294. This is the age, too, to teach children to be trust-worthy, and to be merciful and humane. We lived in a garden of about two acres, partly kitchen-garden with walls, partly shrubbery and trees, and partly grass. There were the peaches, as tempting as any that ever grew, and yet as safe from fingers as if no child were ever in the garden. It was not necessary to forbid. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the whitethroats, and even that very shy bird the goldfinch, had their nests and bred up their young-ones, in great abundance, all about this little spot, constantly the play-place of six children; and one of the latter had its nest, and brought up its young-ones, in a raspberry-bush, within two yards of a walk, and at the time that we were gathering the ripe raspberries. We give dogs, and justly, great credit for sagacity and memory; but the following two most curious instances, which I should not venture to state, if there were not so many witnesses to the facts, in my neighbours at Botley, as well as in my own family, will show, that birds are not, in this respect, inferior to the canine race. All country people know that the skylark is a very shy bird; that its abode is the open fields: that it settles on the ground only; that it seeks safety in the wideness of space; that it avoids enclosures, and is never seen in gardens. A part of our ground was a grass-plat of about forty rods, or a quarter of an acre, which, one year, was left to be mowed for hay. A pair of larks, coming out of the fields into the middle of a pretty populous village, chose to make their nest in the middle of this little spot, and at not more than about thirty-five yards from one of the doors of the house, in which there were about twelve persons living, and six of those children, who had constant access to all parts of the ground. There we saw the cock rising up and singing, then taking his turn upon the eggs; and by-and-by, we observed him cease to sing, and saw them both constantly engaged in bringing food to the young ones. No unintelligible hint to fathers and mothers of the human race, who have, before marriage, taken delight in music. But the time came for mowing the grass! I waited a good many days for the brood to get away; but, at last, I determined on the day; and if the larks were there still, to leave a patch of grass standing round them. In order not to keep them in dread longer than necessary, I brought three able mowers, who would cut the whole in about an hour; and as the plat was nearly circular, set them to mow round, beginning at the outside. And now for sagacity indeed! The moment the men began to whet their scythes, the two old larks began to flutter over the nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but before the men had got round with the second swarth, they flew to the nest, and away they went, young ones and all, across the river, at the foot of the ground, and settled in the long grass in my neighbour's orchard.