eautiful and, at the same time,
holiest function,--the healthy rearing of their offspring,--the cases
are sufficiently numerous to establish the exception, where the mother
is either physically or socially incapacitated from undertaking these
most pleasing duties herself, and where, consequently, she is compelled
to trust to adventitious aid for those natural benefits which are at
once the mother's pride and delight to render to her child.

2446. In these cases, when obliged to call in the services of hired
assistance, she must trust the dearest obligation of her life to one
who, from her social sphere, has probably notions of rearing children
diametrically opposed to the preconceived ideas of the mother, and at
enmity with all her sentiments of right and prejudices of position.

2447. It has justly been said--we think by Hood--that the children of
the poor are not brought up, but _dragged up_. However facetious this
remark may seem, there is much truth in it; and that children, reared in
the reeking dens of squalor and poverty, live at all, is an apparent
anomaly in the course of things, that, at first sight, would seem to set
the laws of sanitary provision at defiance, and make it appear a perfect
waste of time to insist on pure air and exercise as indispensable
necessaries of life, and especially so as regards infantine existence.

2448. We see elaborate care bestowed on a family of children, everything
studied that can tend to their personal comfort,--pure air, pure water,
regular ablution, a dietary prescribed by art, and every precaution
adopted that medical judgment and maternal love can dictate, for the
well-being of the parents' hope; and find, in despite of all this care
and vigilance, disease and death invading the guarded treasure. We turn
to the foetor and darkness that, in some obscure court, attend the
robust brood who, coated in dirt, and with mud and refuse for
playthings, live and thrive, and grow into manhood, and, in contrast to
the pale face and flabby flesh of the aristocratic child, exhibit
strength, vigour, and well-developed frames, and our belief in the
potency of the life-giving elements of air, light, and cleanliness
receives a shock that, at first sight, would appear fatal to the implied
benefits of these, in reality, all-sufficient attributes of health and
life.

2449. But as we must enter more largely on this subject hereafter, we
shall leave its consideration for the present, and retur