GIRL-WOMANHOOD.

IN THE EARLY STAGE.

HILD life, in its early conditions and characteristics, differs little for the two sexes; but, as we have seen while reviewing the facts and experi

ences of boy-manhood, the point of development after which it is unsafe to treat a boy as a childand nothing more-is not casily recognized, and must be assumed to occur early. I have fixed the period at the termination of the third year, and I do not think it should be placed later. Boys being practically removed from the nightnursery and the dressing-room at that age, a wise system of feminine government may be established in this department expressly for girls.

It is not within my purpose to treat at length of infancy and the nursing of little children; but the hints thrown out incidentally, when dealing

with the case of boys, may be repeated with equal earnestness for the sake of girls.

Parents do not adequately realize the extent or permanency of the mischief done by leaving the management of their children to coarse, and, as it often happens, lascivious, servants. It is necessary, I repeat, to speak plainly on this subject. Mothers are apt to be satisfied if they can secure the services of young women who evince feelings of kindness towards their little ones, and may be trusted to "take care" of them. It will seem a strange remark to make; but the nurse who allows her charge to fall into the fire or scalds it, does not do a greater or more enduring wrong than she who under the pretence of fondness, or to gratify her own vicious propensities, discharges the duties of her office immodestly and blights the life and happiness of a child, by prematurely awakening that self-consciousness which nature has ordained to slumber until riper years.

I believe the beginnings of epilepsy, hysteria, rickets, and a score of weaknesses and obscure maladies which make adult life a burden, besides vicious inclinations which render it a sorrow, may be traced to the excitement, and even

physical injury, to which young children of both sexes are subjected in the nursery. It is too much the practice to give morbid states of the organism and disorderly conditions of the nervous system long names and, raising them to the dignity of diseases with a set type, to cast about for great causes. The seed of a vast plant may be very small, and the effective cause of a revolution with results extending over centuries, may be comparatively insignificant. This is not the place, nor am I the person, to discuss the etiology of general disease; but in respect to those disorders of brain and nerve function which form so large a proportion of the ills that flesh is heir to, I can have no hesitation in affirming that they are more frequently than parents suppose, the fruit of practices encouraged and even suggested or induced by women of vulgar habits, grossly ignorant of the special duties their sex imposes upon them, and which it should be their pleasure to discharge.

It is probably too much to expect-in days when young women of humble family despise domestic service, and kitchen maids give themselves the airs of "fine ladies," while women of gentle birth neglect their home duties to seek

honour and happiness in public life-that the care of children will receive the consideration or elicit the interest it demands. Nevertheless, it does seem odd that fathers and mothers who love their offspring and desire their welfare, should hand them over to the custody of females who in their own persons embody the accumulated depravities resulting from early mismanagement and neglect.

There is something so grotesque that it would be comic if the subject were less serious, in the expectancy that young women who have themselves been reared in utter disregard of the decencies of life, perhaps in the midst of unfettered licence, should be fit guardians for children whom it is above all things wished to train wisely. From twelve to sixteen hours in every twenty-four, the younger members of an ordinary household are left at the mercy of servants whose only qualifications for the trust are apparent cleanliness, seeming good-temper, honesty so far as actions are concerned, and such sobriety as consists in not getting openly drunk. If I write strongly, let those upon whom it devolves to search for the remote causes of disease, say whether the case is over-stated.

No young woman who has not herself been

brought up with more than common prudence, or whose character has not been so reconstituted by experience and principle that she is keenly alive to the faults and defects of her own early management, should be entrusted with the care of children. Persons of unknown antecedents, or who are either vulgar or vain, ought to be rigidly excluded from the nursery even as visitors. Household servants should not be permitted to intrude on the "home" of childhood, and it is almost too obvious a remark to make, that a kitchen is no place for the young.

I repeat it is a fact which cannot be gainsaid, that many of the formidable troubles of adult life are the remote effects of frets and frights, the neglect of natural functions, physical injuries and corrupt moral influences, to which young children are exposed through the wrong-doing or negligence of those to whom the care of their infancy has been confided. It is a common rejoinder to this sort of remark that our grandmothers did well enough under the system here condemned. My answer to this is that there were servants in those days.

With such variations as will suggest themselves to the thoughtful reader all that has been said