rate, and a high rate of infant mortality. Then come the causes of decreasing marriage-rate. The answer is, presumably, increasing luxury. Decreasing birth-rate, partly due to increasing luxury, also to decreasing fertility. Infantile mortality-what are its causes? Statistics say diarrhoea, prematurity, wasting, atrophy, and marasmus, with a small proportion due to active disease. And the cause of death from diarrhoea? Improper feeding, due largely to the ignorance of the mother. Wasting, atrophy, and marasmus are all closely allied and due very largely to improper feeding. The most hopeful measures to prevent depopulation are evidently measures which will preserve the children. The question has been put to France, and answered in a manner that must excite our sincerest admiration. The fundamental principles have been laid hold of and turned to marvellous account. The difficulties were enormous; the ground to be covered might have daunted the strongest heart. Fifteen years have sufficed to break up the hardest soil, and have added vast stores to the knowledge of babyhood. The overwhelming importance of a suitable food and hygiene for infants, and the marvellous results obtained when these are supplied, are perhaps the most striking facts which have been brought out-striking because of their very simplicity. The wonder is that it could ever have been otherwise. If suitable food, light, and air are necessary for the child and the adult, how much more must it be so for the frail little infant. This is an obvious truism, and yet how little it is acted upon. A moment's consideration of the surroundings of the baby in an average poor family shows how sadly the infant lacks much that it should have; and the main cause of all is ignorance; the next, neglect-often enforced neglect. The young mothers of this generation are, many of them, profoundly ignorant of all matters connected with babies. They do not know the importance of breast-feeding; they do not know the dangers of stale milk, nor how to obviate them. They are unable to detect the first signs of impending trouble. They want teaching by those who do know. The day has gone by when the sources of enlightenment were the grandmother and the nurse. Regular, systematic supervision by a competent medical man or woman is an essential in the life of any infant, and this must be coupled with careful instruction of the mother. The other important point is the provision of a good milk supply for those children who are old enough to be weaned, or whose mother's milk needs supplementing. This need can be met by a really good milk, which can be boiled and kept safely by the mothers in their own houses, or by the sale of sterilised milk. We have seen the lines upon which the whole matter has been treated in France, and the astounding success of the methods. In England a few pioneers have started work upon somewhat similar lines to those which have proved so successful in France, but, while according them all honour, it must be admitted that only an infinitesimal proportion of the babies are thus reached. There are a few baby consultations' in connexion with dispensaries for the supervision of healthy babies, but no large number is dealt with in any one of them. In the whole of England there are some half-dozen towns which have depots for the sale of sterilised milk. Among these Liverpool heads the list as to numbers of children fed, while that at St. Helen'sis the oldest, having been started in 1899. At Liverpool there are six depots, and the milk is also sold at thirty-three dairies; during 1907, 1595 children were supplied with milk for varying periods. Of these 924 were under one year of age. The next largest depot is at Battersea, where about 250 children are supplied annually. There is no direct medical supervision in connexion with the depots other than that of the Medical Officer of Health; in most cases the babies are weighed by a sanitary inspector or by a trained nurse. The results obtained in the way of reduction of infant mortality are very gratifying. Perhaps the most striking evidence was obtained at Leeds in 19051906; here there is no milk depot, but pure milk was supplied from private funds to the children in the poorest part of the town for one year. The Medical Officer of Health was able to report that there was a saving of life equal to at least 25 per cent. amongst the children using the Association milk, as compared with those living in the same district at the same ages, who were fed in various manners.' There can be very little doubt that the extraordinary results obtained in France are due to the combination of medical supervision of the healthy babies, the increased breast-feeding, and the supply of reliable milk. We in England are always hampered for lack of money, and if it were suggested that Consultations' for babies might with advantage be started in connexion with the large London hospitals, the first response would probably be that there was no money for such a departure. But the cost is really very small. Professor Budin states that three things only are necessary for a • Consultation': a room, a baby-balance, and the devotion of a doctor. It is, of course, a great attraction to the mothers if milk can be supplied, when necessary, by the hospital; but this is not an essential. The supply of pure milk is easier now than it was when Professor Budin first started his great scheme; it would be possible to have shops known to the hospital where really pure fresh milk could be obtained. The mothers could be instructed to boil the milk at home, and could be taught the methods of care of the milk after boiling. It is, however, far better for the boroughs to undertake to supply sterilised milk at suitable depots at a low price. It is not easy to do more than lay down general lines as suggestions upon which action might be taken, because, having no central body like the Assistance Publique,' the details would probably need to be different in each case. A Consultation' in connexion with the out-patient maternity departments of all the large hospitals would not only be an invaluable aid to the mothers, but also would afford opportunities to the students for acquiring information concerning infants which can be obtained in no other way. Thousands of babies are brought into the world every year in London under the auspices of one or other of the large hospitals, either in the out-patient practice or in the in-patient maternity wards. About ten days after birth all medical supervision ceases; the mother has no one to turn to for suitable information. No one knows how many of these babies succumb to wasting diseases and diarrhoea during the following six months, and it seems as if no one cared! We deal with the older children who can come to school, but we do nothing for the babies, although statistics show clearly enough that it is just during the early months that the greatest care is required. Surely such a state of affairs calls for immediate treatment. The time has come to awaken and look after the babies. Our hospitals are staffed by competent men, and the cost is small; it seems that there can be no reason why 'Consultations' should not be started in order to stem the tide of infant mortality. We cannot be, and we are not, indifferent to the waste of infant life; let us hasten, therefore, to prevent it. JANET E. LANE-CLAYPON. 1909 MILTON It is more than seventy years since Macaulay's celebrated essay on Milton rolled back the current of prejudice set running by Johnson's biography in the Lives of the Poets. Both libel and panegyric have since been superseded by a more sober and critical detachment of Milton's political acerbity from his poetical grandeur. The most learned of poets, he was also the most terribly in earnest. But the fervour of his Puritanical faith was accompanied by a width of comprehension which the seventeenth century hardly understood, while his poetry was imbued with a classical spirit which showed his mind to have been steeped in the best literature of Greece and Rome. If Milton's consummate mastery of English sometimes hides the depth of his classical attainments, he never derogates from his own ideal, never falls short of the high standard which in the light of his own scholarship he set up. With Milton there is no paltering after the second best. He is always striving for the mastery, always aiming at an unattainable perfection as the surest means of achievement within the limits of the possible. There is in Milton no trace of doubt or hesitation, no confused struggle for mediocrity. His whole powers are always devoted to the highest purpose that he can imagine or conceive. It is this combination of energy with magnificence, of splendour in purpose with loftiness in thought, which make of our great epic poet an example for all countries and all times. Even Dr. Johnson admitted that Milton was at once manly, pious, and rational in his treatment of unseen things. Milton's thoroughly English love of freedom in the political sphere was combined with a religious humility which excluded independence from the relations between man and his Maker. He was not, like Bunyan, the type of a Puritan. He had a side more in harmony with the Renaissance than with the reign of the saints. He represented rather the union of literary grace and charm with the sterner qualities of faith and endurance which brought the Long Parliament through its conflict with arbitrary power. One side, either side, of Milton is easy enough to understand. The difficulty is to reconcile one with the other, to perceive clearly how the subordination of the material to the spiritual coincided in him with the cultivation of intellectual gifts to a point VOL. LXV-No. 383 65 F which could not have been surpassed by the most enthusiastic and exclusive votary of the Muses. Milton did not see any discrepancy between the religious and the political aspects of man's nature, believing them to be both the expression of the divine in the human, or the human in the divine. When he put the authority of our sage and serious poet Spenser' above that of Scotus or Aquinas, he epitomised his creed in the beautiful as a manifestation of the true. He could not believe that God fulfilled Himself in other ways than the choicest products of the agencies which His omnipotence controlled. When he wrote, he dedicated himself to God's service, and at the same time made the fullest possible use of every mental faculty with which he was endowed. Working as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye, he rejected everything not of the highest order as unworthy of the holy and solemn function which he was consciously discharging. As a controversialist, Milton does not spare the rod, nor abstain from vehement denunciation of opponents. He saw things so intensely with the eye of his soul that he could not describe them in measured or flinching language. His prose and his poetry, different as they are, agree in fervour, in loftiness, and in superiority to common forms of speech. The history of literature may be searched in vain for another example of Miltonic splendour with Miltonic fervour, of the arts which are taught in the schools with the gifts which are personal and innate. Ben Jonson may have been as learned as Milton, Shakespeare may have been more sublime. But Jonson had none of Milton's sublimity, and Shakespeare had none of his learning. Milton left nothing out of account. He shrank from no height of intrepid fancy. He overlooked no petty detail which could be employed in building up the structure on which he was engaged. Except humour, he had all the qualities of genius, besides a variety of gifts and accomplishments to which genius is often a stranger. He had the soaring imagination that overleaps all obstacles, and the teeming fancy which abounds in the smaller beauties of taste or feeling. Neither half of his extraordinary mind impeded the other. The force which drives and the skill which guides are mutually assistant and co-operative. His contemporaries did not altogether see the greatness of the man. If the Cavaliers appreciated his poetry, they could not forget that he was a Roundhead. If the Roundheads appreciated the Areopagitica, they did not regard Comus or L'Allegro as worthy of a serious Christian. We can afford to scrutinise less partially, to judge more fairly, to marvel at the sublimity of the poet without ignoring the services of the statesman, and to remember that Milton's apparent intolerance always stopped short of persecution. It was his privilege to realise and to exhibit the truth that devotion to the highest objects may be blended with appreciation of the loveliest fancies, and that poetry solves the problem of identifying appearance with reality. If Milton had not been a poet, he would have been a bigot. If he had not been a scholar, |
