Chapter XI: Letter V: To a Father (1)

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.