• HOW I MANAGED MY CHILDREN.*

Tars is not quite so exciting a work as How I Managed nay House on Two Hundred Pounds a Year, and has consequently only reached its "tenth thousand," while the earlier book has reached its thirty-seventh thousand. All mothers more or less "manage their children from infancy to marriage," though often rather less than more ; but very few women professing gentility manage their house on 2001. a year, and when those somewhat narrow limits are prescribed, there is something of passion in the feelings of managing women in pressing the competing claims of their various petty expenses and petty economies, which gives a noble and arduous interest to the subject. When food, coals, and Candles are all to be " managed " for 9s. a week per head— the baby's share and casual guests' to be thrown in without extra allowance—the rivalry between different items becomes intense. Housewives naturally feel eager as to when the clean shirt carried the day against the parlour fire, and when the mutton-chop against the clean shirt. Questions of this nicety are not to be decided without enlisting a good deal of romantic and party feeling on both sides, and the mere prospect of hearing them discussed, and hear- ing perhaps wholly new and sublime economies broached by Mrs. Warren,—a prospect not adequately realized by that distinguished authoress,—no doubt greatly contributed to the sale of her first book. The subject of managing children is not equally speci- fic, and therefore not equally inviting. It is moral, and of the success of moralities there is no scientific test ; besides this the subject leaves a much larger verge to an imaginative woman like Mrs. Warren for " free composition." When Mrs. Warren tells us, for instance, that were a blot to fall on the reputation of either of her daughters "my heart would be no longer human, but seared and shrivelled, fearing that some past conduct of mine, some un- guarded word, might have sown the seed," we feel that Mrs. Warren is calling upon us for an exercise of imagination far beyond any of Which we are capable, and which therefore conveys to us no more distinct idea than do the scientific dicta about its taking four hundred millions of vibrations of a wave of light to produce -vision, and so forth. Mrs. Warren, "no longer human, but seared and shrivelled," is a conception of which man is incapable. Is it not of such as her that Herbert wrote— "Only a pure and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives,

But when the whole world turns to coal Then chiefly lives ?"

And therefore the suggestion of the hypothetical ease in which she might become 'seared and shrivelled' merely strikes us as another mode of expressing impossibility. And though the sen- timent is sublime, it does not strike home with the force of those realistic details of "management on 2001. a year" which in the first of Mrs. Warren's compositions ended comfortably and naturally in the softening of her husband's brain.

Still the resource of an artist is shown in his treatment of a comparatively poor subject, and though Mrs. Warren is not now "that strength which in old days moved wives and husbands," "that which she is, she is." She is certainly not seared and shrivelled,' certainly she has not ceased to be human, but is the same virtuous, managing Mrs. Warren still. There is one great artistic device by which Mrs. Warren tries to make us feel that she is not too far, not too hopelessly above her readers. She artfully supposes herself, in the beginning of her narrative rationales of domestic life, a weak mother and blundering housekeeper, like her erring sisters. The true Mrs Warren lurks behind in some matron ex maehinci, some Nurse Adams of chastened wisdom, who in the nick of time, when baby's gums are in that inflamed state (from mismanage- ment) which portends physical convulsions to the child and moral convulsions to the household, descends into the arena grasping honey and poppy syrup in one hand, and a castor-oil bottle in the other, to heal the wounds of the distracted State. This condescen- sion on the part of Mrs. Warren, which almost persuades young mothers that she has once been even as incompetent as they are in dealing with baby when "he drivels very much and bites his fist," shows real artistic feeling. The reader is thereby not too much humiliated in her own eyes, and sits at Mrs. Chapman's, or Mrs. Norton's, or nurse Adams's feet more willingly than she could at the feet of one who, in her own name, and with the irritating egotism of superior knowledge, had known how to give the timely castor oil, or Liebig's "double concentration of mother's milk," by virtue merely of more precocious wisdom.

Mrs. Warren, too, shows the highest art in the way in which she carefully alternates her moral and physical recipes. From Gregory's

* Hoto I Managed my Children from I4fancy to M, triage. By Mrr. Warren. London Houlaton and Wright

powder it is pleasant to pass suddenly to self-control, and from milk and biscuit to motherhood in general. Mrs. Warren is very clever at these changes. If she ever becomes a little more sentimental than usual, be sure she will plunge into suet within a page. If she has been deep in onions, you may look for the sweet breath of dawn and the music of children's laughter. Measles, castor oil, and Gregory's powders are pleasantly relieved by the happy sentiment, "A son is the pride of a mother's heart, a daughter is a part of her soul." When Alice is in love, and has in consequence a pallid transparency of complexion and eyes glassily bright, she is much relieved by the following :—

" The raw white of a new-laid egg beaten to a froth in a wineglassful of cold water ; this dose to be taken three times a day, a quarter of an hour before breakfast, dinner, and supper—or tea."

But in spite of this valuable remedy, she is still liable to become on sight of her lover "pale as the earliest snowdrop." What a depth of insight in that word "earliest !"—the earliest snowdrop being always so much paler than its successors.

Mrs. Warren's little educational hints are rather sketchy and grand than satisfying. The designs are always kept far in advance of the execution. This is the modest commencement of her drawing lessons :—

"My way of teaching them was perhaps peculiar, though at first, ana at no regular intervals, by way of pastime I challenged them as to which could draw the straightest and longest line, then the curve, then two sides of a triangle, then the triangle, the square, the round, and the oval. They were not at all aware there was any design in this, not the slightest suspicion that it was a task, or else, I fear, I should not have got on so well."

But the prescience of this teaching is shown when a year later the mother's eye falls suddenly upon a gum-bottle :-

"More than a year passed before any use was suggested of these lines and curves, which by this time could be made tolerably, but not uni- formly, correct One day, as I was sitting in rather an abstracted mood., my eye fell upon a email bottle containing gum, but which originally had held pomade. The shape of this bottle seemed to stand out dis- tinctly before my eyes in its curves and lines. Look here !' I ex- claimed, here is a bottle made up of curves and lines. There are two straight lines down the sides; a half-circle at the bottom ; near the top. is more than a half-circle, and the top, you Bee, ia a circle.'—' No, mamma,' said Dot, 'not a circle ; it is almost an ovaL'— Not so; it is a circle, though it looks like an oval,' I replied, showing them the top of the bottle, as I held it in my hand.—' So it is but what makes it look like an oval ?'—' The position, and the distance from which you view it,' said I; and this is called "perspective," and if you knew how to draw' you would sketch the object as it appears to your eyes, not as it actually is formed.'"

Of course when Dot's artistic genius bursts out, it is discovered that the foundation was laid by drawing curves and gum-bottler. The only difficulty in following this method is that the point of it appears to lie in the execution. If the maternal curves are bad curves, and the maternal perspective of the gum-bottle is not scientific perspective, why it might have been better to wait for some scientific teacher than to ingrain bad habits ; and if, on the other hand, they were good curves and true perspective views of the gam-bottle, why then the mother had an insight into the art given to few mothers of the class. The same remark may be made on Mrs. Warren's music lessons :—

" The music master Ina quite dismayed when we told him we could not play pieces.—' It is extraordinary,' said he. I understand from Mrs. Forbes that your parents desire you to excel in the art, which should always be commenced at a very early age.' And you should have see him, mamma, with what a contemptuous air he said, 'Have tho good- ness to show me how you play.' Mary and Alice stood looking on each. other with dismay, while I produced those six sonatas that you said you had learned.—' I thought you said that you did not play pieces.'—'Not show pieces,' I said. I played them through, and then he asked me to play the scales set in the different keys. He looked at me with aston- ishment.—' And your sisters ?' he asked.—' Oh, they play in the same way.'—` Then, young ladies, I ask pardon. Scarcely any theme will be difficult to you. You seem quite to understand the composer's marks of expression, and you follow them. Any further difficulties you will readily surmount. Only practise steadily. May I ask who taught you to play with such emphasis—such feeling?'—' Mamma told us that every piece of music was a poem either in blank verse or rhyme; that the marks of expression were indicative of the composer's meaning ; and that if we did not at first quite understand it, upon a few times care- fully playing it the meaning would be revealed; so whatever we have to play we like to read it over well first without the piano."

This is a triumph of teaching. There are, however, young ladies who, even when told that "every piece of music is a poem, either in blank verse or rhyme," might feel that the value of the remark lay in its applicatibn, and that first-rate musicians were as needful as ever to teach them the application in each indi- vidual case. Mrs. Warren's defect is that her educational methods appear to produce results which are quite disproportioned to the

CallEed.

Again, as a moral teacher we are not sure that we grasp the force of her method. She was willing, it appears, to impose upon her children by making them believe in a sort of maternal omniscience, in order thereby to obtain a more implicit obedience :—

" I afterwards overboard a conversation between them relating to my wisdom. 'Mamma knows everything,' said Alice. 'She knows when Lam going to tell a story, and I shall never tell her another.'—' How can mamma know everything,' asked sturdy Dick. 'She can't tell what I am doing now.'—' Mamma does know everything that we do,' said Dot, for she asks God, and He tells her.'—Unseen, I took a view of Master Richard's employment ; be was deliberately notching the garden seat with a knife taken from the kitchen. Soon after I came downstairs into the children's room, where they were all assembled. I had some fruit to divide between them. All were served but Richard, who seemed instinctively to feel that something unpleasant was about to happen to him. 'Come here, my child,' said I, as I placed the empty plate on the table. 'Do you think you deserve any fruit?' I asked, as he came to me very pale, and every muscle of his face ready to relax with the tears which were filling his eyes. do not think you have obeyed papa, who told you never to cut the garden seat. Do you not remember that he took away the knife nurse gave you, because you used it mis- chievously? Yet you have taken one out of the kitchen, and you have injured the arm of the seat. Now I cannot reward you for this conduct, and I am very sorry to have to punish you.'—' But, mamma, how did you know it?' he sobbingly asked, his spirit of curiosity getting the better of his vexation and disgrace.—' That, my boy, I shall not tell you. Neither of your brothers or sisters, as you well know, could have told me ; but yet I know it, and be sure that God also sees, hears, and knows of every act, whether good or bad."

The legitimate result of this method of managing her children seems to us to be that when they found out the ruse as to maternal omniscience they would not attach quite so much importance to the obedience which it was intended to enforce.

Mrs. lAnrren is very great and tender, as we should of course expect, on the philosophy of love. There is a respectable chemist and druggist of the name of May, who in the end proves "not only an entertaining, but an intellectual guest," but who, we re- gret to say, is guilty of the sin of flirting with a certain Lillian, one of the foils to the pattern young ladies of this book, though he very properly at the same time falls hopelessly in love with the favourite daughter. Indeed he presses Lillian's hand when she goes into his shop, ostensibly to buy perfumes, really to flirt with him, though "a shade of disgust passes over his fine features" when "my husband thoughtlessly rallied him about Lillian." But though Mrs. Warren, or her matronly equivalent, is so lenient to the druggist as to praise the "disgust in his fine features" excited by the hypothesis that his flirtation was earnest love-making, she is dreadfully severe on Lillian for the like offence, and sees only coarse features in her when she flirts with the druggist. As she wishes to eradicate this shocking tendency, she lays the axe to the very root of the tree :— " I am going to ask you all a question. Do you care much for that which daily lies at your feet—for that which can be had for the asking ? Does not the apple which is at the top of the tree look the fairest ? The cherry at the farthest part of the branch, and where it is the most diffi- cult to obtain, does it not look the ruddiest ? Are you not more desirous to obtain either of these than any that are close to you? So it is with young girls. If they are but seldom seen they are the most highly valued."

—which appears to mean that feminine purity consists in tantalizing a man, like the cherry on the top of the branch. We need scarcely say that Lilliqn Foster eventually runs away with her employer's husband, nor that the lovely Alice, assisted duly by the "raw- 'white of a new-laid egg," pursues the policy of the cherry on the highest branch with the doubly-triumphant effect of partially breaking the intellectual druggist's heart and entirely winning a delightful curate's, whom she marries with all her mother's recipes, fragrant and unfragrant, infusions of castor oil and of roses, boiled

onions for worms, and essence of poem for piano music, as her only dowry.

There is a great business mind in Mrs. Warren. The concep- tion of infusing kitchen ideas with an element of romance is evidently a paying one, and the success of the Posset school of fiction ought to suggest to enterprising publishers the usefulness of extending it. Why should not Mr. Chadwick write a little tale, three parts sewage, one part love and incident, to inculcate the best modes of dealing with sinks and drains? What an effect it would have if the surgeon lover rescued the object of his affec- tions, "pale as the earliest snowdrop," from a premature grave by exposing an unsuspected cesspool and quickly filling it up with deodorizing gypsum. Mrs. Warren herself might write a thrilling biography of a monthly nurse. Probably even by a judicious mixture of pastoral elements,—by a combination, say, between Professor Gamgee and Mrs. Warren, like those combinations between Lee and Cooper in the landscape pictures containing horses or cattle, —we might have a novelette on "Howl managed my calves from infancy to milking," with a tragical episode on the early destination of weakly members of the flock to the form of veal. The existing cattle disease would make such an undertak- ing a very profitable one at the present moment. "One teaspoon- ful of Professor Gamgee to five of Mrs.. Warren, flavour with earliest snowdrops as required," and what a delightful beverage of practical interests and pecuniary romance we should have ! Messrs. Houlston and Wright should set about it at once.