Thetis maetaer,
glaukae de d etikte thalassa Petrai t aelibatoi, hoti toi noos estin
apaenaes.]

_Mr. SPECTATOR_,

As your Paper is Part of the Equipage of the Tea-Table, I conjure you
to print what I now write to you; for I have no other Way to
communicate what I have to say to the fair Sex on the most important
Circumstance of Life, even the Care of Children. I do not understand
that you profess your Paper is always to consist of Matters which are
only to entertain the Learned and Polite, but that it may agree with
your Design to publish some which may tend to the Information of
Mankind in general; and when it does so, you do more than writing Wit
and Humour. Give me leave then to tell you, that of all the Abuses
that ever you have as yet endeavoured to reform, certainly not one
wanted so much your Assistance as the Abuse in [nursing [1]] Children.
It is unmerciful to see, that a Woman endowed with all the Perfections
and Blessings of Nature, can, as soon as she is delivered, turn off
her innocent, tender, and helpless Infant, and give it up to a Woman
that is (ten thousand to one) neither in Health nor good Condition,
neither sound in Mind nor Body, that has neither Honour nor
Reputation, neither Love nor Pity for the poor Babe, but more Regard
for the Money than for the whole Child, and never will take further
Care of it than what by all the Encouragement of Money and Presents
she is forced to; like _AEsop's_ Earth, which would not nurse the Plant
of another Ground, altho never so much improved, by reason that Plant
was not of its own Production. And since anothers Child is no more
natural to a Nurse than a Plant to a strange and different Ground, how
can it be supposed that the Child should thrive? and if it thrives,
must it not imbibe the gross Humours and Qualities of the Nurse, like
a Plant in a different Ground, or like a Graft upon a different Stock?
Do not we observe, that a Lamb sucking a Goat changes very much its
Nature, nay even its Skin and Wooll into the Goat Kind? The Power of a
Nurse over a Child, by infusing into it, with her Milk, her Qualities
and Disposition, is sufficiently and daily observed: Hence came that
old Saying concerning an ill-natured and malicious Fellow, that he had
imbibed his Malice with his Nurses Milk, or that some Brute or other
had been his Nurse. Hence _Romulus_ and _Remus_ were said to have been