05 - Letter 5

LETTER V TO A FATHER

225. ’Little children,’ says the Scripture, ’are like arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them’; a beautiful figure to describe, in forcible terms, the support, the power, which a father derives from being surrounded by a family. And what father, thus blessed, is there who does not feel, in this sort of support, a reliance which he feels in no other? In regard to this sort of support there is no uncertainty, no doubts, no misgivings; it is yourself that you see in your children: their bosoms are the safe repository of even the whispers of your mind: they are the great and unspeakable delight of your youth, the pride of your prime of life, and the props of your old age. They proceed from that love, the pleasures of which no tongue or pen can adequately describe, and the various blessings which they bring are equally incapable of description.

226. But, to make them blessings, you must act your part well; for they may, by your neglect, your ill-treatment, your evil example, be made to be the contrary of blessings; instead of pleasure, they may bring you pain; instead of making your heart glad, the sight of them may make it sorrowful; instead of being the staff of your old age, they may bring your gray hairs in grief to the grave.

227. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance, that you here act well your part, omitting nothing, even from the very beginning, tending to give you great and unceasing influence over their minds; and, above all things, to ensure, if possible, an ardent love of their mother. Your first duty towards them is resolutely to prevent their drawing the means of life from any breast but hers. That is their own; it is their birthright; and if that fail from any natural cause, the place of it ought to be supplied by those means which are frequently resorted to without employing a hireling breast. I am aware of the too frequent practice of the contrary; I am well aware of the offence which I shall here give to many; but it is for me to do my duty, and to set, with regard to myself, consequences at defiance.

228. In the first place, no food is so congenial to the child as the milk of its own mother; its quality is made by nature to suit the age of the child; it comes with the child, and is calculated precisely for its stomach. And, then, what sort of a mother must that be who can endure the thought of seeing her child at another breast! The suckling may be attended with great pain, and it is so attended in many cases; but this pain is a necessary consequence of pleasures foregone; and, besides, it has its accompanying pleasures too. No mother ever suffered more than my wife did from suckling her children. How many times have I seen her, when the child was beginning to draw, bite her lips while the tears ran down her cheeks! Yet, having endured this, the smiles came and dried up the tears; and the little thing that had caused the pain received abundant kisses as its punishment.

229. Why, now, did I not love her the more for this? Did not this tend to rivet her to my heart? She was enduring this for me; and would not this endearing thought have been wanting, if I had seen the baby at a breast that I had hired and paid for; if I had had two women, one to bear the child and another to give it milk? Of all the sights that this world affords, the most delightful in my eyes, even to an unconcerned spectator, is, a mother with her clean and fat baby lugging at her breast, leaving off now-and-then and smiling, and she, occasionally, half smothering it with kisses. What must that sight be, then, to the father of the child?

230. Besides, are we to overlook the great and wonderful effect that this has on the minds of children? As they succeed each other, they see with their own eyes, the pain, the care, the caresses, which their mother has endured for, or bestowed, on them; and nature bids them love her accordingly. To love her ardently becomes part of their very nature; and when the time comes that her advice to them is necessary as a guide for their conduct, this deep and early impression has all its natural weight, which must be wholly wanting if the child be banished to a hireling breast, and only brought at times into the presence of the mother, who is, in fact, no mother, or, at least, but half a one. The children who are thus banished, love (as is natural and just) the foster-mother better than the real mother as long as they are at the breast. When this ceases, they are taught to love their own mother most; but this teaching is of a cold and formal kind. They may, and generally do, in a short time, care little about the foster-mother; the teaching weans all their affection from her, but it does not transfer it to the other.

231. I had the pleasure to know, in Hampshire, a lady who had brought up a family of ten children by hand, as they call it. Owing to some defect, she could not suckle her children; but she wisely and heroically resolved, that her children should hang upon no other breast, and that she would not participate in the crime of robbing another child of its birthright, and, as is mostly the case, of its life. Who has not seen these banished children, when brought and put into the arms of their mothers, screaming to get from them, and stretch out their little hands to get back into the arms of the nurse, and when safely got there, hugging the hireling as if her bosom were a place of refuge? Why, such a sight is, one would think, enough to strike a mother dead. And what sort of a husband and father, I want to know, must that be, who can endure the thought of his child loving another woman more than its own mother and his wife?

232. And besides all these considerations, is there no crime in robbing the child of the nurse, and in exposing it to perish? It will not do to say that the child of the nurse may be dead, and thereby leave her breast for the use of some other. Such cases must happen too seldom to be at all relied on; and, indeed, every one must see, that, generally speaking, there must be a child cast off for every one that is put to a hireling breast. Now, without supposing it possible, that the hireling will, in any case, contrive to get rid of her own child, every man who employs such hireling, must know, that he is exposing such child to destruction; that he is assisting to rob it of the means of life; and, of course, assisting to procure its death, as completely as a man can, in any case, assist in causing death by starvation; a consideration which will make every just man in the world recoil at the thought of employing a hireling breast. For he is not to think of pacifying his conscience by saying, that he knows nothing about the hireling’s child. He does know; for he must know, that she has a child, and that he is a principal in robbing it of the means of life. He does not cast it off and leave it to perish himself, but he causes the thing to be done; and to all intents and purposes, he is a principal in the cruel and cowardly crime.

233. And if an argument could possibly be yet wanting to the husband; if his feelings were so stiff as still to remain unmoved, must not the wife be aware that whatever face the world may put upon it, however custom may seem to bear her out; must she not be aware that every one must see the main motive which induces her to banish from her arms that which has formed part of her own body? All the pretences about her sore breasts and her want of strength are vain: nature says that she is to endure the pains as well as the pleasures: whoever has heard the bleating of the ewe for her lamb, and has seen her reconciled, or at least pacified, by having presented to her the skin or some of the blood of her dead lamb: whoever has witnessed the difficulty of inducing either ewe or cow to give her milk to an alien young one: whoever has seen the valour of the timid hen in defending her brood, and has observed that she never swallows a morsel that is fit for her young, until they be amply satisfied: whoever has seen the wild birds, though, at other times, shunning even the distant approach of man, flying and screaming round his head, and exposing themselves to almost certain death in defence of their nests: whoever has seen these things, or any one of them, must question the motive that can induce a mother to banish a child from her own breast to that of one who has already been so unnatural as to banish hers. And, in seeking for a motive sufficiently powerful to lead to such an act, women must excuse men, if they be not satisfied with the ordinary pretences; they must excuse me, at any rate, if I do not stop even at love of ease and want of maternal affection, and if I express my fear, that, superadded to the unjustifiable motives, there is one which is calculated to excite disgust; namely, a desire to be quickly freed from that restraint which the child imposes, and to hasten back, unbridled and undisfigured, to those enjoyments, to have an eagerness for which, or to wish to excite a desire for which, a really delicate woman will shudder at the thought of being suspected.

234. I am well aware of the hostility that I have here been exciting; but there is another, and still more furious, bull to take by the horns, and which would have been encountered some pages back (that being the proper place), had I not hesitated between my duty and my desire to avoid giving offence; I mean the employing of male-operators, on those occasions where females used to be employed. And here I have every thing against me; the now general custom, even amongst the most chaste and delicate women; the ridicule continually cast on old midwives; the interest of a profession, for the members of which I entertain more respect and regard than for those of any other; and, above all the rest, my own example to the contrary, and my knowledge that every husband has the same apology that I had. But because I acted wrong myself, it is not less, but rather more, my duty to endeavour to dissuade others from doing the same. My wife had suffered very severely with her second child, which, at last, was still-born. The next time I pleaded for the doctor; and, after every argument that I could think of, obtained a reluctant consent. Her life was so dear to me, that every thing else appeared as nothing. Every husband has the same apology to make; and thus, from the good, and not from the bad, feelings of men, the practice has become far too general, for me to hope even to narrow it; but, nevertheless, I cannot refrain from giving my opinion on the subject.

235. We are apt to talk in a very unceremonious style of our rude ancestors, of their gross habits, their want of delicacy in their language. No man shall ever make me believe, that those, who reared the cathedral of ELY (which I saw the other day), were rude, either in their manners or in their minds and words. No man shall make me believe, that our ancestors were a rude and beggarly race, when I read in an act of parliament, passed in the reign of Edward the Fourth, regulating the dresses of the different ranks of the people, and forbidding the LABOURERS to wear coats of cloth that cost more than two shillings a yard (equal to forty shillings of our present money), and forbidding their wives and daughters to wear sashes, or girdles, trimmed with gold or silver. No man shall make me believe that this was a rude and beggarly race, compared with those who now shirk and shiver about in canvass frocks and rotten cottons. Nor shall any man persuade me that that was a rude and beggarly state of things, in which (reign of Edward the Third) an act was passed regulating the wages of labour, and ordering that a woman, for weeding in the corn, should receive a penny a day, while a quart of red wine was sold for a penny, and a pair of men’s shoes for two-pence. No man shall make me believe that agriculture was in a rude state, when an act like this was passed, or that our ancestors of that day were rude in their minds, or in their thoughts. Indeed, there are a thousand proofs, that, whether in regard to domestic or foreign affairs, whether in regard to internal freedom and happiness, or to weight in the world, England was at her zenith about the reign of Edward the Third. The Reformation, as it is called, gave her a complete pull down. She revived again in the reigns of the Stuarts, as far as related to internal affairs; but the ’Glorious Revolution’ and its debt and its taxes, have, amidst the false glare of new palaces, roads, and canals, brought her down until she is become the land of domestic misery and of foreign impotence and contempt; and, until she, amidst all her boasted improvements and refinements, tremblingly awaits her fall.

236. However, to return from this digression, rude and unrefined as our mothers might be, plain and unvarnished as they might be in their language, accustomed as they might be to call things by their names, though they were not so very delicate as to use the word small-clothes; and to be quite unable, in speaking of horn-cattle, horses, sheep, the canine race, and poultry, to designate them by their sexual appellations; though they might not absolutely faint at hearing these appellations used by others; rude and unrefined and indelicate as they might be, they did not suffer, in the cases alluded to, the approaches of men, which approaches are unceremoniously suffered, and even sought, by their polished and refined and delicate daughters; and of unmarried men too, in many cases; and of very young men.

237. From all antiquity this office was allotted to woman. Moses’s life was saved by the humanity of the Egyptian midwife; and to the employment of females in this memorable case, the world is probably indebted for that which has been left it by that greatest of all law-givers, whose institutes, rude as they were, have been the foundation of all the wisest and most just laws in all the countries of Europe and America. It was the fellow feeling of the midwife for the poor mother that saved Moses. And none but a mother can, in such cases, feel to the full and effectual extent that which the operator ought to feel. She has been in the same state herself; she knows more about the matter, except in cases of very rare occurrence, than any man, however great his learning and experience, can ever know. She knows all the previous symptoms; she can judge more correctly than man can judge in such a case; she can put questions to the party, which a man cannot put; the communication between the two is wholly without reserve; the person of the one is given up to the other, as completely as her own is under her command. This never can be the case with a man-operator; for, after all that can be said or done, the native feeling of women, in whatever rank of life, will, in these cases, restrain them from saying and doing, before a man, even before a husband, many things which they ought to say and do. So that, perhaps, even with regard to the bare question of comparative safety to life, the midwife is the preferable person.

238. But safety to life is not ALL. The preservation of life is not to be preferred to EVERY THING. Ought not a man to prefer death to the commission of treason against his country? Ought not a man to die, rather than save his life by the prostitution of his wife to a tyrant, who insists upon the one or the other? Every man and every woman will answer in the affirmative to both these questions. There are, then, cases where people ought to submit to certain death. Surely, then, the mere chance, the mere possibility of it, ought not to outweigh the mighty considerations on the other side; ought not to overcome that inborn modesty, that sacred reserve as to their persons, which, as I said before, is the charm of charms of the female sex, and which our mothers, rude as they are called by us, took, we may be satisfied, the best and most effectual means of preserving.

239. But is there, after all, any thing real in this greater security for the life of either mother or child? If, then, risk were so great as to call upon women to overcome this natural repugnance to suffer the approaches of a man, that risk must be general; it must apply to all women; and, further, it must, ever since the creation of man, always have so applied. Now, resorting to the employment of men-operators has not been in vogue in Europe more than about seventy years, and has not been general in England more than about thirty or forty years. So that the risk in employing midwives must, of late years, have become vastly greater than it was even when I was a boy, or the whole race must have been extinguished long ago. And, then, how puzzled we should be to account for the building of all the cathedrals, and all the churches, and the draining of all the marshes, and all the fens, more than a thousand years before the word ’accoucheur’ ever came from the lips of woman, and before the thought came into her mind? And here, even in the use of this word, we have a specimen of the refined delicacy of the present age; here we have, varnish the matter over how we may, modesty in the word and grossness in the thought. Farmers’ wives, daughters, and maids, cannot now allude to, or hear named, without blushing, those affairs of the homestead, which they, within my memory, used to talk about as freely as of milking or spinning; but, have they become more really modest than their mothers were? Has this refinement made them more continent than those rude mothers? A jury at Westminster gave, about six years ago, damages to a man, calling himself a gentleman, against a farmer, because the latter, for the purpose for which such animals are kept, had a bull in his yard, on which the windows of the gentleman looked! The plaintiff alleged, that this was so offensive to his wife and daughters, that, if the defendant were not compelled to desist, he should be obliged to brick up his windows, or to quit the house! If I had been the father of these, at once, delicate and curious daughters, I would not have been the herald of their purity of mind; and if I had been the suitor of one of them, I would have taken care to give up the suit with all convenient speed; for how could I reasonably have hoped ever to be able to prevail on delicacy, so exquisite, to commit itself to a pair of bridal sheets? In spite, however, of all this ’refinement in the human mind,’ which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite of the ’small-clothes,’ and of all the other affected stuff, we have this conclusion, this indubitable proof, of the falling off in real delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes, formerly unknown, now swarm in our towns, and are seldom wanting even in our villages; and where there was one illegitimate child (including those coming before the time) only fifty years ago, there are now twenty.

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 MAÎTRE 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 ’éducation 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.

295. The other instance relates to a HOUSE-MARTEN. It is well known that these birds build their nests under the eaves of inhabited houses, and sometimes under those of door porches; but we had one that built its nest in the house, and upon the top of a common doorcase, the door of which opened into a room out of the main passage into the house. Perceiving the marten had begun to build its nest here, we kept the front-door open in the daytime; but were obliged to fasten it at night. It went on, had eggs, young ones, and the young ones flew. I used to open the door in the morning early, and then the birds carried on their affairs till night. The next year the MARTEN came again, and had another brood in the same place. It found its old nest; and having repaired it, and put it in order, went on again in the former way; and it would, I dare say, have continued to come to the end of its life, if we had remained there so long, notwithstanding there were six healthy children in the house, making just as much noise as they pleased.

296. Now, what sagacity in these birds, to discover that those were places of safety! And how happy must it have made us, the parents, to be sure that our children had thus deeply imbibed habits the contrary of cruelty! For, be it engraven on your heart, YOUNG MAN, that, whatever appearances may say to the contrary, cruelty is always accompanied with cowardice, and also with perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-usage of horses, and particularly asses, is a grave and a just charge against this nation. No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not only by blows, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile, and patient creatures; and especially towards the last, which is the most docile and patient and laborious of the two, while the food that satisfies it, is of the coarsest and least costly kind, and in quantity so small! In the habitual ill-treatment of this animal, which, in addition to all its labours, has the milk taken from its young ones to administer a remedy for our ailments, there is something that bespeaks ingratitude hardly to be described. In a REGISTER that I wrote from Long Island, I said, that amongst all the things of which I had been bereft, I regretted no one so much as a very diminutive mare, on which my children had all, in succession, learned to ride. She was become useless for them, and, indeed, for any other purpose; but the recollection of her was so entwined with so many past circumstances, which, at that distance, my mind conjured up, that I really was very uneasy, lest she should fall into cruel hands. By good luck, she was, after a while, turned out on the wide world to shift for herself; and when we got back, and had a place for her to stand in, from her native forest we brought her to Kensington, and she is now at Barn-Elm, about twenty-six years old, and I dare say, as fat as a mole. Now, not only have I no moral right (considering my ability to pay for keep) to deprive her of life; but it would be unjust and ungrateful, in me to withhold from her sufficient food and lodging to make life as pleasant as possible while that life last.

297. In the meanwhile the book-learning crept in of its own accord, by imperceptible degrees. Children naturally want to be like their parents, and to do what they do: the boys following their father, and the girls their mother; and as I was always writing or reading, mine naturally desired to do something in the same way. But, at the same time, they heard no talk from fools or drinkers; saw me with no idle, gabbling, empty companions; saw no vain and affected coxcombs, and no tawdry and extravagant women; saw no nasty gormandizing; and heard no gabble about play-houses and romances and the other nonsense that fit boys to be lobby-loungers, and girls to be the ruin of industrious and frugal young men.

298. We wanted no stimulants of this sort to keep up our spirits: our various pleasing pursuits were quite sufficient for that; and the book-learning came amongst the rest of the pleasures, to which it was, in some sort, necessary. I remember that, one year, I raised a prodigious crop of fine melons, under hand-glasses; and I learned how to do it from a gardening book; or, at least, that book was necessary to remind me of the details. Having passed part of an evening in talking to the boys about getting this crop, ’Come,’ said I, ’now, let us read the book.’ Then the book came forth, and to work we went, following very strictly the precepts of the book. I read the thing but once, but the eldest boy read it, perhaps, twenty times over; and explained all about the matter to the others. Why here was a motive! Then he had to tell the garden-labourer what to do to the melons. Now, I will engage, that more was really learned by this single lesson, than would have been learned by spending, at this son’s age, a year at school; and he happy and delighted all the while. When any dispute arose amongst them about hunting or shooting, or any other of their pursuits, they, by degrees, found out the way of settling it by reference to some book; and when any difficulty occurred, as to the meaning, they referred to me, who, if at home, always instantly attended to them, in these matters.

299. They began writing by taking words out of printed books; finding out which letter was which, by asking me, or asking those who knew the letters one from another; and by imitating bits of my writing, it is surprising how soon they began to write a hand like mine, very small, very faint-stroked, and nearly plain as print. The first use that any one of them made of the pen, was to write to me, though in the same house with them. They began doing this in mere scratches, before they knew how to make any one letter; and as I was always folding up letters and directing them, so were they; and they were sure to receive a prompt answer, with most encouraging compliments. All the meddlings and teazings of friends, and, what was more serious, the pressing prayers of their anxious mother, about sending them to school, I withstood without the slightest effect on my resolution. As to friends, preferring my own judgment to theirs, I did not care much; but an expression of anxiety, implying a doubt of the soundness of my own judgment, coming, perhaps, twenty times a day from her whose care they were as well as mine, was not a matter to smile at, and very great trouble it did give me. My answer at last was, as to the boys, I want them to be like me; and as to the girls, In whose hands can they be so safe as in yours? Therefore my resolution is taken: go to school they shall not.

300. Nothing is much more annoying than the intermeddling of friends, in a case like this. The wife appeals to them, and ’good breeding,’ that is to say, nonsense, is sure to put them on her side. Then, they, particularly the women, when describing the surprising progress made by their own sons at school, used, if one of mine were present, to turn to him, and ask, to what school he went, and what he was learning? I leave any one to judge of his opinion of her; and whether he would like her the better for that! ’Bless me, so tall, and not learned any thing yet!’ ’Oh yes, he has,’ I used to say, ’he has learned to ride, and hunt, and shoot, and fish, and look after cattle and sheep, and to work in the garden, and to feed his dogs, and to go from village to village in the dark.’ This was the way I used to manage with troublesome customers of this sort. And how glad the children used to be, when they got clear of such criticising people! And how grateful they felt to me for the protection which they saw that I gave them against that state of restraint, of which other people’s boys complained! Go whither they might, they found no place so pleasant as home, and no soul that came near them affording them so many means of gratification as they received from me.

301. In this happy state we lived, until the year 1810, when the government laid its merciless fangs upon me, dragged me from these delights, and crammed me into a jail amongst felons; of which I shall have to speak more fully, when, in the last Number, I come to speak of the duties of THE CITIZEN. This added to the difficulties of my task of teaching; for now I was snatched away from the only scene in which it could, as I thought, properly be executed. But even these difficulties were got over. The blow was, to be sure, a terrible one; and, oh God! how was it felt by these poor children! It was in the month of July when the horrible sentence was passed upon me. My wife, having left her children in the care of her good and affectionate sister, was in London, waiting to know the doom of her husband. When the news arrived at Botley, the three boys, one eleven, another nine, and the other seven, years old, were hoeing cabbages in that garden which had been the source of so much delight. When the account of the savage sentence was brought to them, the youngest could not, for some time, be made to understand what a jail was; and, when he did, he, all in a tremor, exclaimed, ’Now I’m sure, William, that PAPA is not in a place like that!’ The other, in order to disguise his tears and smother his sobs, fell to work with the hoe, and chopped about like a blind person. This account, when it reached me, affected me more, filled me with deeper resentment, than any other circumstance. And, oh! how I despise the wretches who talk of my vindictiveness; of my exultation at the confusion of those who inflicted those sufferings! How I despise the base creatures, the crawling slaves, the callous and cowardly hypocrites, who affect to be ’shocked’ (tender souls!) at my expressions of joy, and at the death of Gibbs, Ellenborough, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, and the rest of the tribe that I have already seen out, and at the fatal workings of that system, for endeavouring to check which I was thus punished! How I despise these wretches, and how I, above all things, enjoy their ruin, and anticipate their utter beggary! What! I am to forgive, am I, injuries like this; and that, too, without any atonement? Oh, no! I have not so read the Holy Scriptures; I have not, from them, learned that I am not to rejoice at the fall of unjust foes; and it makes a part of my happiness to be able to tell millions of men that I do thus rejoice, and that I have the means of calling on so many just and merciful men to rejoice along with me.

302. Now, then, the book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand. It was necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing, breeding; in short, with regard to every thing, and the things were endless in number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son and daughter could now write well and fast. One or the other of these was always at Botley; and I had with me (having hired the best part of the keeper’s house) one or two, besides either this brother or sister; the mother coming up to town about once in two or three months, leaving the house and children in the care of her sister. We had a HAMPER, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a week, or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country fare, for the carriage of which, cost free, I was indebted to as good a man as ever God created, the late Mr. GEORGE ROGERS, of Southampton, who, in the prime of life, died deeply lamented by thousands, but by none more deeply than by me and my family, who have to thank him, and the whole of his excellent family, for benefits and marks of kindness without number.

303. This HAMPER, which was always, at both ends of the line, looked for with the most lively feelings, became our school. It brought me a journal of labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and size uniform, and so contrived, as to margins, as to admit of binding. The journal used, when my son was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings of our dogs, colts, or any thing that he wanted me to have a correct idea of. The hamper brought me plants, bulbs, and the like, that I might see the size of them; and always every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers; the earliest violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and blue-bells; the earliest twigs of trees; and, in short, every thing that they thought calculated to delight me. The moment the hamper arrived, I, casting aside every thing else, set to work to answer every question, to give new directions, and to add anything likely to give pleasure at Botley. Every hamper brought one ’letter,’ as they called it, if not more, from every child; and to every letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, being sure that that was the way to produce other and better letters; for, though they could not read what I wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and afterwards, for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I always thanked them for their ’pretty letter’; and never expressed any wish to see them write better; but took care to write in a very neat and plain hand myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.

304. Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers, I found in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and most affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers. ’Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid.’ How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the little spuddling ’letters’ from Botley! This correspondence occupied a good part of my time: I had all the children with me, turn and turn about; and, in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used, for a part of the two years, to send them a few hours in the day to an ABBÉ, who lived in Castle-street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my mind; and, when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned fresh and cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope, of finally seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe; because, say what any one might, the community, taken as a whole, had suffered this thing to be done unto us.

305. The paying of the work-people, the keeping of the accounts, the referring to books, the writing and reading of letters; this everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own surprise, find, at the end of the two years, that I had a parcel of scholars growing up about me; and, long before the end of the time, I had dictated many Registers to my two eldest children. Then, there was copying out of books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the use, the necessity, of the thing, led to the study. By-and-by, we had to look into the laws to know what to do about the highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial affairs. I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures: the fangs had made me and them pennyless; but, they had not been able to take from us our health or our mental possessions; and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.

306. After the age that I have now been speaking of, fourteen, I suppose every one became a reader and writer according to fancy. As to books, with the exception of the Poets, I never bought, in my whole life, any one that I did not want for some purpose of utility, and of practical utility too. I have two or three times had the whole collection snatched away from me; and have begun again to get them together as they were wanted. Go and kick an ANT’s nest about, and you will see the little laborious, courageous creatures instantly set to work to get it together again; and if you do this ten times over, ten times over they will do the same. Here is the sort of stuff that men must be made of to oppose, with success, those who, by whatever means, get possession of great and mischievous power.

307. Now, I am aware, that that which I did, cannot be done by every one of hundreds of thousands of fathers, each of whom loves his children with all his soul: I am aware that the attorney, the surgeon, the physician, the trader, and even the farmer, cannot, generally speaking, do what I did, and that they must, in most cases, send their sons to school, if it be necessary for them to have book-learning. But while I say this, I know, that there are many things, which I did, which many fathers might do, and which, nevertheless, they do not do. It is in the power of every father to live at home with his family, when not compelled by business, or by public duty, to be absent: it is in his power to set an example of industry and sobriety and frugality, and to prevent a taste for gaming, dissipation, extravagance, from getting root in the minds of his children: it is in his power to continue to make his children hearers, when he is reproving servants for idleness, or commending them for industry and care: it is in his power to keep all dissolute and idly-talking companions from his house: it is in his power to teach them, by his uniform example, justice and mercy towards the inferior animals: it is in his power to do many other things, and something in the way of book-learning too, however busy his life may be. It is completely within his power to teach them early-rising and early going to bed; and, if many a man, who says that he has not time to teach his children, were to sit down, in sincerity, with a pen and a bit of paper, and put down all the minutes, which he, in every twenty-four hours, wastes over the bottle, or over cheese and oranges and raisins and biscuits, after he has dined; how many he lounges away, either at the coffee-house or at home, over the useless part of newspapers; how many he spends in waiting for the coming and the managing of the tea-table; how many he passes by candle-light, wearied of his existence, when he might be in bed; how many he passes in the morning in bed, while the sun and dew shine and sparkle for him in vain: if he were to put all these together, and were to add those which he passes in the reading of books for his mere personal amusement, and without the smallest chance of acquiring from them any useful practical knowledge: if he were to sum up the whole of these, and add to them the time worse than wasted in the contemptible work of dressing off his person, he would be frightened at the result; would send for his boys from school; and if greater book-learning than he possessed were necessary, he would choose for the purpose some man of ability, and see the teaching carried on under his own roof, with safety as to morals, and with the best chance as to health.

308. If after all, however, a school must be resorted to, let it, if in your power, be as little populous as possible. As ’evil communications corrupt good manners,’ so the more numerous the assemblage, and the more extensive the communication, the greater the chance of corruption. Jails, barracks, factories, do not corrupt by their walls, but by their condensed numbers. Populous cities corrupt from the same cause; and it is, because it must be, the same with regard to schools, out of which children come not what they were when they went in. The master is, in some sort, their enemy; he is their overlooker; he is a spy upon them; his authority is maintained by his absolute power of punishment; the parent commits them to that power; to be taught is to be held in restraint; and, as the sparks fly upwards, the teaching and the restraint will not be divided in the estimation of the boy. Besides all this, there is the great disadvantage of tardiness in arriving at years of discretion. If boys live only with boys, their ideas will continue to be boyish; if they see and hear and converse with nobody but boys, how are they to have the thoughts and the character of men? It is, at last, only by hearing men talk and seeing men act, that they learn to talk and act like men; and, therefore, to confine them to the society of boys, is to retard their arrival at the years of discretion; and in case of adverse circumstances in the pecuniary way, where, in all the creation, is there so helpless a mortal as a boy who has always been at school! But, if, as I said before, a school there must be, let the congregation be as small as possible; and, do not expect too much from the master; for, if it be irksome to you to teach your own sons, what must that teaching be to him? If he have great numbers, he must delegate his authority; and, like all other delegated authority, it will either be abused or neglected.

309. With regard to girls, one would think that mothers would want no argument to make them shudder at the thought of committing the care of their daughters to other hands than their own. If fortune have so favoured them as to make them rationally desirous that their daughters should have more of what are called accomplishments than they themselves have, it has also favoured them with the means of having teachers under their own eye. If it have not favoured them so highly as this (and it seldom has in the middle rank of life), what duty so sacred as that imposed on a mother to be the teacher of her daughters! And is she, from love of ease or of pleasure or of any thing else, to neglect this duty; is she to commit her daughters to the care of persons, with whose manners and morals it is impossible for her to be thoroughly acquainted; is she to send them into the promiscuous society of girls, who belong to nobody knows whom, and come from nobody knows whither, and some of whom, for aught she can know to the contrary, may have been corrupted before, and sent thither to be hidden from their former circle; is she to send her daughters to be shut up within walls, the bare sight of which awaken the idea of intrigue and invite to seduction and surrender; is she to leave the health of her daughters to chance, to shut them up with a motley bevy of strangers, some of whom, as is frequently the case, are proclaimed bastards, by the undeniable testimony given by the colour of their skin; is she to do all this, and still put forward pretensions to the authority and the affection due to a mother! And, are you to permit all this, and still call yourself a father!

310. Well, then, having resolved to teach your own children, or, to have them taught, at home, let us now see how they ought to proceed as to books for learning. It is evident, speaking of boys, that, at last, they must study the art, or science, that you intend them to pursue; if they be to be surgeons, they must read books on surgery; and the like in other cases. But, there are certain elementary studies; certain books to be used by all persons, who are destined to acquire any book-learning at all. Then there are departments, or branches of knowledge, that every man in the middle rank of life, ought, if he can, to acquire, they being, in some sort, necessary to his reputation as a well-informed man, a character to which the farmer and the shopkeeper ought to aspire as well as the lawyer and the surgeon. Let me now, then, offer my advice as to the course of reading, and the manner of reading, for a boy, arrived at his fourteenth year, that being, in my opinion, early enough for him to begin.

311. And, first of all, whether as to boys or girls, I deprecate romances of every description. It is impossible that they can do any good, and they may do a great deal of harm. They excite passions that ought to lie dormant; they give the mind a taste for highly-seasoned matter; they make matters of real life insipid; every girl, addicted to them, sighs to be a SOPHIA WESTERN, and every boy, a TOM JONES. What girl is not in love with the wild youth, and what boy does not find a justification for his wildness? What can be more pernicious than the teachings of this celebrated romance? Here are two young men put before us, both sons of the same mother; the one a bastard (and by a parson too), the other a legitimate child; the former wild, disobedient, and squandering; the latter steady, sober, obedient, and frugal; the former every thing that is frank and generous in his nature, the latter a greedy hypocrite; the former rewarded with the most beautiful and virtuous of women and a double estate, the latter punished by being made an outcast. How is it possible for young people to read such a book, and to look upon orderliness, sobriety, obedience, and frugality, as virtues? And this is the tenor of almost every romance, and of almost every play, in our language. In the ’School for Scandal,’ for instance, we see two brothers; the one a prudent and frugal man, and, to all appearance, a moral man, the other a hair-brained squanderer, laughing at the morality of his brother; the former turns out to be a base hypocrite and seducer, and is brought to shame and disgrace; while the latter is found to be full of generous sentiment, and Heaven itself seems to interfere to give him fortune and fame. In short, the direct tendency of the far greater part of these books, is, to cause young people to despise all those virtues, without the practice of which they must be a curse to their parents, a burden to the community, and must, except by mere accident, lead wretched lives. I do not recollect one romance nor one play, in our language, which has not this tendency. How is it possible for young princes to read the historical plays of the punning and smutty Shakspeare, and not think, that to be drunkards, blackguards, the companions of debauchees and robbers, is the suitable beginning of a glorious reign?

312. There is, too, another most abominable principle that runs through them all, namely, that there is in high birth, something of superior nature, instinctive courage, honour, and talent. Who can look at the two royal youths in CYMBELINE, or at the noble youth in DOUGLAS, without detesting the base parasites who wrote those plays? Here are youths, brought up by shepherds, never told of their origin, believing themselves the sons of these humble parents, but discovering, when grown up, the highest notions of valour and honour, and thirsting for military renown, even while tending their reputed fathers’ flocks and herds! And, why this species of falsehood? To cheat the mass of the people; to keep them in abject subjection; to make them quietly submit to despotic sway. And the infamous authors are guilty of the cheat, because they are, in one shape or another, paid by oppressors out of means squeezed from the people. A true picture would give us just the reverse; would show us that ’high birth’ is the enemy of virtue, of valour, and of talent; would show us, that with all their incalculable advantages, royal and noble families have, only by mere accident, produced a great man; that, in general, they have been amongst the most effeminate, unprincipled, cowardly, stupid, and, at the very least, amongst the most useless persons, considered as individuals, and not in connexion with the prerogatives and powers bestowed on them solely by the law.

313. It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form their opinions from the writings of poets and romances. Nine times out of ten, the morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad tendency. Their wit is employed to ridicule virtue, as you will almost always find, if you examine the matter to the bottom. The world owes a very large part of its sufferings to tyrants; but what tyrant was there amongst the ancients, whom the poets did not place amongst the gods? Can you open an English poet, without, in some part or other of his works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and noble persons? How are young people not to think that the praises bestowed on these persons are just? DRYDEN, PARNELL, GAY, THOMSON, in short, what poet have we had, or have we, POPE only excepted, who was not, or is not, a pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched dependent of some part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the powers of writers in producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in the cases of Dr. JOHNSON and BURKE. The former, at a time when it was a question whether war should be made on America to compel her to submit to be taxed by the English parliament, wrote a pamphlet, entitled, ’Taxation no Tyranny,’ to urge the nation into that war. The latter, when it was a question, whether England should wage war against the people of France, to prevent them from reforming their government, wrote a pamphlet to urge the nation into that war. The first war lost us America, the last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded us with forty millions a year of taxes. JOHNSON, however, got a pension for his life, and BURKE a pension for his life, and for three lives after his own! CUMBERLAND and MURPHY, the play-writers, were pensioners; and, in short, of the whole mass, where has there been one, whom the people were not compelled to pay for labours, having for their principal object the deceiving and enslaving of that same people? It is, therefore, the duty of every father, when he puts a book into the hands of his son or daughter, to give the reader a true account of who and what the writer of the book was, or is.

314. If a boy be intended for any particular calling, he ought, of course, to be induced to read books relating to that calling, if such books there be; and, therefore, I shall not be more particular on that head. But, there are certain things, that all men in the middle rank of life, ought to know something of; because the knowledge will be a source of pleasure; and because the want of it must, very frequently, give them pain, by making them appear inferior, in point of mind, to many who are, in fact, their inferiors in that respect. These things are grammar, arithmetic, history, accompanied with geography Without these, a man, in the middle rank of life, however able he may be in his calling, makes but an awkward figure. Without grammar he cannot, with safety to his character as a well-informed man, put his thoughts upon paper; nor can he be sure, that he is speaking with propriety. How many clever men have I known, full of natural talent, eloquent by nature, replete with every thing calculated to give them weight in society; and yet having little or no weight, merely because unable to put correctly upon paper that which they have in their minds! For me not to say, that I deem my English Grammar the best book for teaching this science, would be affectation, and neglect of duty besides; because I know, that it is the best; because I wrote it for the purpose; and because, hundreds and hundreds of men and women have told me, some verbally, and some by letter, that, though (many of them) at grammar schools for years, they really never knew any thing of grammar, until they studied my book. I, who know well all the difficulties that I experienced when I read books upon the subject, can easily believe this, and especially when I think of the numerous instances in which I have seen university-scholars unable to write English, with any tolerable degree of correctness. In this book, the principles are so clearly explained, that the disgust arising from intricacy is avoided; and it is this disgust, that is the great and mortal enemy of acquiring knowledge.

315. With regard to ARITHMETIC, it is a branch of learning absolutely necessary to every one, who has any pecuniary transactions beyond those arising out of the expenditure of his week’s wages. All the books on this subject that I had ever seen, were so bad, so destitute of every thing calculated to lead the mind into a knowledge of the matter, so void of principles, and so evidently tending to puzzle and disgust the learner, by their sententious, and crabbed, and quaint, and almost hieroglyphical definitions, that I, at one time, had the intention of writing a little work on the subject myself. It was put off, from one cause or another; but a little work on the subject has been, partly at my suggestion, written and published by Mr. THOMAS SMITH of Liverpool, and is sold by Mr. SHERWOOD, in London. The author has great ability, and a perfect knowledge of his subject. It is a book of principles; and any young person of common capacity, will learn more from it in a week, than from all the other books, that I ever saw on the subject, in a twelve-month.

316. While the foregoing studies are proceeding, though they very well afford a relief to each other, HISTORY may serve as a relaxation, particularly during the study of grammar, which is an undertaking requiring patience and time. Of all history, that of our own country is of the most importance; because, for want of a thorough knowledge of what has been, we are, in many cases, at a loss to account for what is, and still more at a loss, to be able to show what ought to be. The difference between history and romance is this; that that which is narrated in the latter, leaves in the mind nothing which it can apply to present or future circumstances and events; while the former, when it is what it ought to be, leaves the mind stored with arguments for experience, applicable, at all times, to the actual affairs of life. The history of a country ought to show the origin and progress of its institutions, political, civil, and ecclesiastical; it ought to show the effects of those institutions upon the state of the people; it ought to delineate the measures of the government at the several epochs; and, having clearly described the state of the people at the several periods, it ought to show the cause of their freedom, good morals, and happiness; or of their misery, immorality, and slavery; and this, too, by the production of indubitable facts, and of inferences so manifestly fair, as to leave not the smallest doubt upon the mind.

317. Do the histories of England which we have, answer this description? They are very little better than romances. Their contents are generally confined to narrations relating to battles, negociations, intrigues, contests between rival sovereignties, rival nobles, and to the character of kings, queens, mistresses, bishops, ministers, and the like; from scarcely any of which can the reader draw any knowledge which is at all applicable to the circumstances of the present day.

318. Besides this, there is the falsehood; and the falsehoods contained in these histories, where shall we find any thing to surpass? Let us take one instance. They all tell us, that William the Conqueror knocked down twenty-six parish churches, and laid waste the parishes in order to make the New Forest; and this in a tract of the very poorest land in England, where the churches must then have stood at about one mile and two hundred yards from each other. The truth is, that all the churches are still standing that were there when William landed, and the whole story is a sheer falsehood from the beginning to the end.

319. But, this is a mere specimen of these romances; and that too, with regard to a matter comparatively unimportant to us. The important falsehoods are, those which misguide us by statement or by inference, with regard to the state of the people at the several epochs, as produced by the institutions of the country, or the measures of the Government. It is always the object of those who have power in their hands, to persuade the people that they are better off than their forefathers were: it is the great business of history to show how this matter stands; and, with respect to this great matter, what are we to learn from any thing that has hitherto been called a history of England! I remember, that, about a dozen years ago, I was talking with a very clever young man, who had read twice or thrice over the History of England, by different authors; and that I gave the conversation a turn that drew from him, unperceived by himself, that he did not know how tithes, parishes, poor-rates, church-rates, and the abolition of trial by jury in hundreds of cases, came to be in England; and, that he had not the smallest idea of the manner in which the Duke of Bedford came to possess the power of taxing our cabbages in Covent-Garden. Yet, this is history. I have done a great deal, with regard to matters of this sort, in my famous History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION; for I may truly call that famous, which has been translated and published in all the modern languages.

320. But, it is reserved for me to write a complete history of the country from the earliest times to the present day; and this, God giving me life and health, I shall begin to do in monthly numbers, beginning on the first of September, and in which I shall endeavour to combine brevity with clearness. We do not want to consume our time over a dozen pages about Edward the Third dancing at a ball, picking up a lady’s garter, and making that garter the foundation of an order of knighthood, bearing the motto of ’Honi soit qui mal y pense? It is not stuff like this; but we want to know what was the state of the people; what were a labourer’s wages; what were the prices of the food, and how the labourers were dressed in the reign of that great king. What is a young person to imbibe from a history of England, as it is called, like that of Goldsmith? It is a little romance to amuse children; and the other historians have given us larger romances to amuse lazy persons who are grown up. To destroy the effects of these, and to make the people know what their country has been, will be my object; and this, I trust, I shall effect. We are, it is said, to have a History of England from SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH; a History of Scotland from SIR WALTER SCOTT; and a HISTORY OF IRELAND from Tommy Moore, the luscious poet. A Scotch lawyer, who is a pensioner, and a member for Knaresborough, which is well known to the Duke of Devonshire, who has the great tithes of twenty parishes in Ireland, will, doubtless, write a most impartial History of England, and particularly as far as relates to boroughs and tithes. A Scotch romance-writer, who, under the name of Malagrowther, wrote a pamphlet to prove, that one-pound-notes were the cause of riches to Scotland, will write, to be sure, a most instructive History of Scotland. And, from the pen of a Irish poet, who is a sinecure placeman, and a protégé of an English peer that has immense parcels of Irish confiscated estates, what a beautiful history shall we not then have of unfortunate Ireland! Oh, no! We are not going to be content with stuff such as these men will bring out. Hume and Smollett and Robertson have cheated us long enough. We are not in a humour to be cheated any longer.

321. GEOGRAPHY is taught at schools, if we believe the school-cards. The scholars can tell you all about the divisions of the earth, and this is very well for persons who have leisure to indulge their curiosity; but it does seem to me monstrous that a young person’s time should be spent in ascertaining the boundaries of Persia or China, knowing nothing all the while about the boundaries, the rivers, the soil, or the products, or of the any thing else of Yorkshire or Devonshire. The first thing in geography is to know that of the country in which we live, especially that in which we were born: I have now seen almost every hill and valley in it with my own eyes; nearly every city and every town, and no small part of the whole of the villages. I am therefore qualified to give an account of the country; and that account, under the title of Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales, I am now having printed as a companion to my history.

322. When a young man well understands the geography of his own country; when he has referred to maps on this smaller scale; when, in short, he knows all about his own country, and is able to apply his knowledge to useful purposes, he may look at other countries, and particularly at those, the powers or measures of which are likely to affect his own country. It is of great importance to us to be well acquainted with the extent of France, the United States, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, and Russia; but what need we care about the tribes of Asia and Africa, the condition of which can affect us no more than we would be affected by any thing that is passing in the moon?

323. When people have nothing useful to do, they may indulge their curiosity; but, merely to read books, is not to be industrious, is not to study, and is not the way to become learned. Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. A book is an admirable excuse for sitting still; and, a man who has constantly a newspaper, a magazine, a review, or some book or other in his hand, gets, at last, his head stuffed with such a jumble, that he knows not what to think about any thing. An empty coxcomb, that wastes his time in dressing, strutting, or strolling about, and picking his teeth, is certainly a most despicable creature, but scarcely less so than a mere reader of books, who is, generally, conceited, thinks himself wiser than other men, in proportion to the number of leaves that he has turned over. In short, a young man should bestow his time upon no book, the contents of which he cannot apply to some useful purpose.

324. Books of travels, of biography, natural history, and particularly such as relate to agriculture and horticulture, are all proper, when leisure is afforded for them; and the two last are useful to a very great part of mankind; but, unless the subjects treated of are of some interest to us in our affairs, no time should be wasted upon them, when there are so many duties demanded at our hands by our families and our country. A man may read books for ever, and be an ignorant creature at last, and even the more ignorant for his reading.

325. And, with regard to young women, everlasting book-reading is absolutely a vice. When they once get into the habit, they neglect all other matters, and, in some cases, even their very dress. Attending to the affairs of the house: to the washing, the baking, the brewing, the preservation and cooking of victuals, the management of the poultry and the garden; these are their proper occupations. It is said (with what truth I know not) of the present Queen (wife of William IV), that she was an active, excellent manager of her house. Impossible to bestow on her greater praise; and I trust that her example will have its due effect on the young women of the present day, who stand, but too generally, in need of that example.

326. The great fault of the present generation, is, that, in all ranks, the notions of self-importance are too high. This has arisen from causes not visible to many, out the consequences are felt by all, and that, too, with great severity. There has been a general sublimating going on for many years. Not to put the word Esquire before the name of almost any man who is not a mere labourer or artisan, is almost an affront. Every merchant, every master-manufacturer, every dealer, if at all rich, is an Esquire; squires’ sons must be gentlemen, and squires’ wives and daughters ladies. If this were all; if it were merely a ridiculous misapplication of words, the evil would not be great; but, unhappily, words lead to acts and produce things; and the ’young gentleman’ is not easily to be moulded into a tradesman or a working farmer. And yet the world is too small to hold so many gentlemen and ladies. How many thousands of young men have, at this moment, cause to lament that they are not carpenters, or masons, or tailors, or shoemakers; and how many thousands of those, that they have been bred up to wish to disguise their honest and useful, and therefore honourable, calling! ROUSSEAU observes, that men are happy, first, in proportion to their virtue, and next, in proportion to their independence; and that, of all mankind, the artisan, or craftsman, is the most independent; because he carries about, in his own hands and person, the means of gaining his livelihood; and that the more common the use of the articles on which he works, the more perfect his independence. ’Where,’ says he, ’there is one man that stands in need of the talents of the dentist, there are a hundred thousand that want those of the people who supply the matter for the teeth to work on; and for one who wants a sonnet to regale his fancy, there are a million clamouring for men to make or mend their shoes.’ Aye, and this is the reason, why shoemakers are proverbially the most independent part of the people, and why they, in general, show more public spirit than any other men. He who lives by a pursuit, be it what it may, which does not require a considerable degree of bodily labour, must, from the nature of things, be, more or less, a dependent; and this is, indeed, the price which he pays for his exemption from that bodily labour. He may arrive at riches, or fame, or both; and this chance he sets against the certainty of independence in humbler life. There always have been, there always will be, and there always ought to be, some men to take this chance: but to do this has become the fashion, and a fashion it is the most fatal that ever seized upon a community.

327. With regard to young women, too, to sing, to play on instruments of music, to draw, to speak French, and the like, are very agreeable qualifications; but why should they all be musicians, and painters, and linguists? Why all of them? Who, then, is there left to take care of the houses of farmers and traders? But there is something in these ’accomplishments’ worse than this; namely, that they think themselves too high for farmers and traders: and this, in fact, they are; much too high; and, therefore, the servant-girls step in and supply their place. If they could see their own interest, surely they would drop this lofty tone, and these lofty airs. It is, however, the fault of the parents, and particularly of the father, whose duty it is to prevent them from imbibing such notions, and to show them, that the greatest honour they ought to aspire to is, thorough skill and care in the economy of a house. We are all apt to set too high a value on what we ourselves have done; and I may do this; but I do firmly believe, that to cure any young woman of this fatal sublimation, she has only patiently to read my COTTAGE ECONOMY, written with an anxious desire to promote domestic skill and ability in that sex, on whom so much of the happiness of man must always depend. A lady in Worcestershire told me, that until she read COTTAGE ECONOMY she had never baked in the house, and had seldom had good beer; that, ever since, she had looked after both herself; that the pleasure she had derived from it, was equal to the profit, and that the latter was very great. She said, that the article ’on baking bread,’ was the part that roused her to the undertaking; and, indeed, if the facts and arguments, there made use of, failed to stir her up to action, she must have been stone dead to the power of words.

328. After the age that we have now been supposing, boys and girls become men and women; and, there now only remains for the father to act towards them with impartiality. If they be numerous, or, indeed, if they be only two in number, to expect perfect harmony to reign amongst, or between, them, is to be unreasonable; because experience shows us, that, even amongst the most sober, most virtuous, and most sensible, harmony so complete is very rare. By nature they are rivals for the affection and applause of the parents; in personal and mental endowments they become rivals; and, when pecuniary interests come to be well understood and to have their weight, here is a rivalship, to prevent which from ending in hostility, require more affection and greater disinterestedness than fall to the lot of one out of one hundred families. So many instances have I witnessed of good and amiable families living in harmony, till the hour arrived for dividing property amongst them, and then, all at once, becoming hostile to each other, that I have often thought that property, coming in such a way, was a curse, and that the parties would have been far better off, had the parent had merely a blessing to bequeath them from his or her lips, instead of a will for them to dispute and wrangle over.

329. With regard to this matter, all that the father can do, is to be impartial; but, impartiality does not mean positive equality in the distribution, but equality in proportion to the different deserts of the parties, their different wants, their different pecuniary circumstances, and different prospects in life; and these vary so much, in different families, that it is impossible to lay down any general rule upon the subject. But there is one fatal error, against which every father ought to guard his heart; and the kinder that heart is, the more necessary such guardianship. I mean the fatal error of heaping upon one child, to the prejudice of the rest; or, upon a part of them. This partiality sometimes arises from mere caprice; sometimes from the circumstance of the favourite being more favoured by nature than the rest; sometimes from the nearer resemblance to himself, that the father sees in the favourite; and, sometimes, from the hope of preventing the favoured party from doing that which would disgrace the parent. All these motives are highly censurable, but the last is the most general, and by far the most mischievous in its effects. How many fathers have been ruined, how many mothers and families brought to beggary, how many industrious and virtuous groups have been pulled down from competence to penury, from the desire to prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to give way: but, you must resist them all; or, your ruin, and that of the rest of your family, are decreed. Suffering is the natural and just punishment of idleness, drunkenness, squandering, and an indulgence in the society of prostitutes; and, never did the world behold an instance of an offender, in this way, reclaimed but by the infliction of this punishment; particularly, if the society of prostitutes made part of the offence; for, here is something that takes the heart from you. Nobody ever yet saw, and nobody ever will see, a young man, linked to a prostitute, and retain, at the same time, any, even the smallest degree of affection, for parents or brethren. You may supplicate, you may implore, you may leave yourself pennyless, and your virtuous children without bread; the invisible cormorant will still call for more; and, as we saw, only the other day, a wretch was convicted of having, at the instigation of his prostitute, beaten his aged mother, to get from her the small remains of the means necessary to provide her with food. In HERON’S collection of God’s judgments on wicked acts, it is related of an unnatural son, who fed his aged father upon orts and offal, lodged him in a filthy and crazy garret, and clothed him in sackcloth, while he and his wife and children lived in luxury; that, having bought sackcloth enough for two dresses for his father, the children took away the part not made up, and hid it, and that, upon asking them what they could do this for, they told him that they meant to keep it for him, when he should become old and walk with a stick! This, the author relates, pierced his heart; and, indeed, if this failed, he must have had the heart of a tiger; but, even this would not succeed with the associate of a prostitute. When this vice, this love of the society of prostitutes; when this vice has once got fast hold, vain are all your sacrifices, vain your prayers, vain your hopes, vain your anxious desire to disguise the shame from the world; and, if you have acted well your part, no part of that shame falls on you, unless you have administered to the cause of it. Your authority has ceased; the voice of the prostitute, or the charms of the bottle, or the rattle of the dice, has been more powerful than your advice and example: you must lament this: but, it is not to bow you down; and, above all things, it is weak, and even criminally selfish, to sacrifice the rest of your family, in order to keep from the world the knowledge of that, which, if known, would, in your view of the matter, bring shame on yourself.

330. Let me hope, however, that this is a calamity which will befall very few good fathers; and that, of all such, the sober, industrious, and frugal habits of their children, their dutiful demeanor, their truth and their integrity, will come to smooth the path of their downward days, and be the objects on which their eyes will close. Those children must, in their turn, travel the same path; and they may be assured, that, ’Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,’ is a precept, a disregard of which never yet failed, either first or last, to bring its punishment. And, what can be more just than that signal punishment should follow such a crime; a crime directly against the voice of nature itself? Youth has its passions, and due allowance justice will make for these; but, are the delusions of the boozer, the gamester, or the harlot, to be pleaded in excuse for a disregard of the source of your existence? Are those to be pleaded in apology for giving pain to the father who has toiled half a lifetime in order to feed and clothe you, and to the mother whose breast has been to you the fountain of life? Go, you, and shake the hand of the boon-companion; take the greedy harlot to your arms; mock at the tears of your tender and anxious parents; and, when your purse is empty and your complexion faded, receive the poverty and the scorn due to your base ingratitude!