p. 95 | English Children

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1877

English Children.

The new-born English aristocrat receives, as soon as born, a little bed with a hard mattress. From its earliest age it is taken, warmly wrapped, into the fresh air. After the first year, its meals are reduced to three, and this rule is so unchangeable that no child thinks of requiring anything more. After breakfast it remains several hours in the open air, and then sleeps. The whole afternoon is passed outside. From earliest childhood, the children of the aristocracy have the extremities clothed in the warmest manner. Never are English children intrusted to the care of a young nursery maid, but to an elderly, experienced person, under whose direction they are constantly are.

As soon as the young girl goes to school, the carriage of the head and shoulders becomes an object of attention, and under no circumstance is she permitted to sit otherwise than upright. “My child grows but once,” says an English mother, “and therefore nothing is so important as her physical development.” Everything else can be acquired later. An English child rises at seven, breakfasts at eight, dines at one, sups at seven, and at nine goes to bed. Until twelve years of age, it passes the greater part of the day in the open air, with only about four hours’ mental work. An English maiden, at eighteen, is fresh and blooming as a rose, with light step, and eyes beaming with pleasure and life. Her frequent laugh displays her beautiful teeth, and her hair is rich and abundant. Here, for the first time, fashionable Violet displays the fine fullness of her contour.

London possesses noble museums, galleries of art, and treasures of architecture; but one of the most charming of its sights may be seen on fine afternoons in Hyde Park—crowds of children merrily playing, earthly angels of incomparable beauty. A sight equally interesting may be witnessed after service on Sunday at the Foundling Hospital—several hundred children, ranging from five to thirteen years of age, of the most noble physique and absolutely bewildering beauty. Two of the most wonderful sights of Europe are the children of England and the flowers of Paris. Both appear to have descended from paradise, and scarcely to belong to earth. Nowhere else are seen such blooming maidens and children as in England. Of course, the life of gay society undermines to some extent what the early training has accomplished; but the sensible physical education of the first years leaves permanent effects, and the English woman remains equal to the duties of life and the requirements of wife and mother. If she does not continue perfectly well, she retains enough health to be ever beautiful.—Galaxy.