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fe <T CHILDREN.

j.art of them. But the rich have not this excuse. It is their businessto see their children daily carried abroad, and that they be kept inthe open air for a sufficient time. This will always succeed better ifthe mother goes along with them. Servants are often negligentand allow a child to sit or lie on the damp ground, instead o)leading or carrying it about. The mother surely needs air as wellas her children; and how can she be better employed than iuattending them ?

A very bad custom prevails, of making children sleep in smallapartments, or crowding two or three beds into one chamber. In-stead of this, the nursery ought to be the largest and best aired room,n the house. When children are confined in small apartments, theair not only becomes unwholesome, but the heat relaxes their solids,fenders them delicate, and disposes them to colds and other dis-orders. Nor is the custom of wrapping them up too close in cra-dles less pernicious. One would think that nurses were afraid lessjhildren should suffer by breathing free air, as many of them ac-tually cover the child's face while asleep, and others wrap a cover-ing over the whole cradle, by which means the child is forced tonreathe the same air over and over all the time it sleeps. Cradlesindeed are on many accounts hurtful to children, and it wouldbe better if they were totally laid aside.

A child is generally laid to sleep with all its cloths on ; and if anumber of others are heaped above them, it must be overheated ;by which means it cannot fail to catch cold on being taken out ofihe cradre, and exposed to the open air with only its usual clothing,which is too frequently the case.

Children who are kept within doors all day, and sleep all nio-htin warm close apartments, may, with great propriety, be comparedto plants nursed in a hot-house, instead of the open air. Thoughsuch plants may by this means be kept alive for some time, theywill never arrive at that degree of strength, vigour, and magni-tude, which they would have acquired in the open air, nor wouldthey be able to bear it afterwards, should they be exposed to it.

Children brought up in the country, who have been accustomedto open air, should not be too early sent to great towns, where itis confined and unwholesome. This is frequently done with a viewto forward their education, but proves very hurtful to their health.All schools and seminaries of learning ought, if possible, to be sosituated as to have fresh, dry, wholesome air, and should never betoo much crowded.

Without entering into a detail of the particular advantages ofwholesome air to children, or of the bad consequences which pro-ceed from the want of it, I shall only observe, that of several thou-sands of children which have been under my care, I do not remem-ber one instance of a single child who continued healthy in a closeconfined situation ; but have often known the most obstinate dis-eases cured by removing them from such a situation to an open fre€air. Infants apparently expiring in convulsion-fits have been reco-vered by being removed into the fresh air, and by being divestedof the many folds cf flannel ir. which tl.ey were rolled and muffled.