dth of view, to self-reliance and self-respect, is a
thousand times better than an over-crowded one with everything at loose
ends. As with the village, so with the family. There ought to be no
more children than can be healthily and thoroughly reared, as regards
the moral, physical, and intellectual nature both of themselves and
their parents. All beyond this is wrong and disastrous. I know of no
greater crime than to give life to souls, and then degrade them, or
suffer them to be degraded. Children are the poor man's blessing and
Cornelia's jewels, just so long as Cornelia and the poor man can make
adequate provision for them. But the ragged, filthy, squalid,
unearthly little wretches that wallow before the poor man's shanty-door
are the poor man's shame and curse. The sickly, sallow, sorrowful
little ones, shadowed too early by life's cares, are something other
than a blessing. When Cornelia finds children too many for her, when
her step trembles and her cheek fades, when the sparkle dies on her
chalice-brim and her salt has lost its savor, her jewels are Tarpeian
jewels. One child educated by healthy and happy parents is better than
seven dragging their mother into the grave, notwithstanding the
unmeasured reprobation of our little book. Of course, if they can
stand seven, very well. Seven and seventy times seven, if you like,
only let them be buds, not blights. If we obeyed the laws of God,
children would be like spring blossoms. They would impart as much
freshness and strength as they abstract. They are a natural
institution, and Nature is eminently healthy. But when they "come
crowding into the home-nest," as our book daintily says, they are
unnatural. God never meant the home-nest to be crowded. There is room
enough and elbow-room enough in the world for everything that ought to
be in it. The moment there is crowding, you may be sure something
wrong is going on. Either a bad thing is happening, or too much of a
good thing, which counts up just the same. The parents begin to repair
the evil by a greater one. They attempt to patch their own rents by
dilapidating their children. They recruit their own exhausted energies
by laying hold of the young energies around them, and older children
are wearied, and fretted, and deformed in figure and temper by the care
of younger children. This is horrible. Some care and task and
responsibility are good for a child's own development; but care and
toil and