French literature of foster-brothers and foster-sisters, who were the peasant children brought up in the same lap, and at the same breast as the young lords and ladies. The wet-nurse who lived in the family was—and is still—commonly a Burgundian, an ample, handsome, and good-natured type of woman, something like our own woman of Devonshire. The fine Burgundian nurse is still a feature of Parisian life, with her black eyes, her rich colour, and her opulent form, her red cloak, her full-bordered cap, and her long, floating ribbons. It is evident that this large and productive type is very old, for there is a curious statute in ancient French law, called the "droit de douze enfants" it obtained only in Burgundy, and it enacted that all parents of a dozen children should be exempt from the payment of any taxes whatever.
A Burgundian nurse.
Before we finally turn, whither we have all this while been tending, to the completest and wholesomest treatment of babies, let us note one or two remarkable curiosities in that way. There is, first of all, the well-worn, and now almost out-worn, tradition that Chinese female babies have their feet tortured by tight bandaging to make and keep them small. That practice, let us say at once, was never prevalent, except in very high society—like really tight-lacing in England—and even there it is now gradually becoming obsolete. But, among the sweltering millions of China there is a practice which seems to have a curious result.
The mother carries her infant in a kind of bag or pannier on her back, and not—as in other countries where the dorsal carriage is affected with the face turned outwards, but—as, probably, we ought to expect in China, where everything seems to go and come by the rule of contraries—with the face turned inwards. The result of that is that the baby's nose is of necessity pressed against its mother's back, whence, no doubt, say the learned in these matters, has been evolved, in the course of ages, the peculiarly flattened or blunted nose, characteristic of the Chinaman. Furthermore, Chinese girls, even when allowed to live, are little thought of. In the family generally they bear no names: they are known as Number One or Number Two, like convicts, and they are no more reckoned members of the family than the cat or the dog. So when a Chinaman is asked what family he has, he counts only his boys. And a boy is treated with great honour and ceremony by the women. When he is four months old, he is set for the first time in a chair, and his mother's mother sends or brings him many presents, notably among which is sugar-candy. The candy is emblematic of the sweet things of life, and it is stuck to the chair to signify the hope that he may never lack such things. His first birthday is the second great day of rejoicing. He is then set upon a table in front of many
