make it fubfervient to our own frivolous and private Fancies. It has been my good Fortune, that no Opportunities have fallen in my Way to tempt me, and to divert my Affection from the common and legal Inftitution. I know fome Perfons with whom 'tis Time loft to employ a long Series of good Offices. One Word ill taken oblite rates the Merit of ten Years. Happy is the Man who is prepared to footh their Good-will at this laft Paffage, The Action that was performed laft carries it, and the Operation is performed not by the best and the most fre quent Offices, but by those that are most recent and prefent: These are People that play with their laft Wills and Teftaments, as with Apples and Rods, to gratify or chaftife every Action of thofe who pretend to an Interest in their Regard. 'Tis a Matter of too great Length and Confequence to be thus brought upon the Carpet at every Turn, and what wife Men are fixed in once for all, having a Regard, above all Things, to Reafon and the public Obfervance. We are, in fhort, too fond of these masculine Subftitutions, and ridiculously think to make our Names thereby last to Eternity. We alfo lay too great Stress on the vain Conjectures of what fhall happen hereafter, from the Remarks we make on the Understandings of Children. Peradventure I might have had Injuftice done me in being turned out of my Rank for having been the dulleft Blockhead, and the longest and most unwilling in getting my Leffon, not only of all my Brothers, bur of all the Boys in my native Province, whether it was a Leffon for the Exercife of the Understanding, or of the Body. 'Tis a Folly to make extraordinary Elections by placing any Credit in thefe Divinations, wherein we are fo often deceived. If this Rule of Primogeniture was to be violated, and the Deftinies to be corrected in the Choice they have made of our Heirs, it might be done more plaufibly upon the Obfervation of fome remarkable and enormous Deformity of the Body, a Fault that is constant, and never to be amended, and what we (the French) who are great Admirers of Beauty, think a Prejudice of no fmall Importance.

G 4

.The

Plato's Opi nion, that the Difpofition of Eftates fhould be regulated by

the Laws,

The pleasant Dialogue, betwixt Plato the Legiflator and his Fellow-Citizens, will do Honour to this Paffage. What, faid they, when they •found their End approaching, may we not difpofe of our own to whom we pleafe? Good God, how cruel is this! That it fhall not be lawful for us to give what we pleafe, more or lefs, to thofe about us, according as they have ferved us in Sicknefs, in old Age, and in our Affairs? To which the Legislator makes Answer in this manner, Ye, my Friends, who are now, without Question, very foon to die, it is hard for you, either to know yourfelves, or what is yours, according to the Delphic Infcription. I, who make the Laws, am of Opinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of which you are poffeffed: Both your Goods and you belong to your Families, as well the future as the paft; but yet both your Family and your Goods do much more appertain to the Public Wherefore, for Fear left any Flatterer, in your old Age, and in your Sickness, or any Paffion of your own, fhould unfeafonably follicit you to make an unjuft Will, I will guard you against it: But, having Refpect both to the univerfal Intereft of the City, and that of your Family in particular, I will establish Laws, and make it appear, from Reason, that particular Benefit ought to give Place to the common Be⚫nefit: Go then chearfully where human Neceffity calls you: 'Tis my Province, who have no more Refpect to one Thing than another, and who, as much as in me lies, am mindful of the public Concern, to take Care of what Subftance you leave behind.'

to leave it in the Power of the Widows to

To return to my Subject; I am fully of Opinion, that "Tis dangerous fuch Women are very rarely born, to whom the Prerogative over the Men, except that which is maternal and natural, is in any Sort due, unless it be for the Punishment of thofe who, by fome amorous Paffion, have voluntarily fubmitted themselves to them; but this does not at all concern the old Ladies of whom

pare the Suc ceffion of the Fathers amang

their Children.

De Legibus, lib. xi. p. 969, 970. Edit, Wechel, Ficini.

whom we are now fpeaking. This Confideration it is, which made us frame, and fo willingly fubmit to that Law, never yet seen by any one, which excludes Women from fucceeding to the Crown of France; and there is hardly a Lordship in the World where it is not pleaded, as well as here, by the Probability of the Reason which gives it Authority; though Fortune has given it more Credit in fome Places than in others. 'Tis dangerous to leave the Difpofal of our Inheritance to their Judgment, according to the Preference they give to the Children, which is, every now and then, unjust and capricious : For the fame irregular Appetite, and depraved Tafte, which they have during the Time of their Pregnancy, they always retain in their Mind. We commonly fee them fond of the weakest and moft rickety Children, or of those that are still hanging at their Breasts: For, not having fufficient Strength of Reafon to chufe and embrace that which deferves it, they are the more apt to suffer themselves to be fwayed by the mere Impreffions of Nature; like thofe Animals that know their Young no longer than while they give them fuck.

What Stress may be laid on the natural Affection of Mothers to their

Children.

As to what remains, Experience plainly fhews, that this natural Affection, to which we afcribe fo much Authority, has a very flender Root. For a very fmall Profit, we, every Day, force Children from the Arms of their Mothers, and make them take Charge of ours in their room. We oblige them to turn over their own to fome pitiful Nurfe, to which we difdain to commit our own, or to fome She-Goat; not only forbidding them to give their Children fuck, be they in ever so much Danger, but even to take any manner of Care of them, that their Attendance may be wholly employed upon ourse And we fee, lin moft of them, an adulterate Affection foon kindled by Custom, an Affection that is more vehement than the natural, and greater Care taken for preferving the Nurfe-children than their own.

As for what I was faying of Goats, 'tis common, all about where I live, to fee the Country-women, when they have no Breaft-milk of their own for their Children, to

I

call

The Affection of Goats to

call the Goats to their Affiftance: And I have two Lac-
queys, at this very Inftant, who never fucked
Womans Milk more than a Week after they
Children were born. Thefe Goats are perfectly taught
which they
to come and fuckle the Infants, and, know-
give fuck to.
ing their Voices when they cry, they run to
them: If any other Infant be put to them, they won't let
it fuck, nor will the Infant fuck any other Goat. I faw
one, the other Day, from whom they had taken the Goat
that used to nourish it, by reafon the Father had only
borrowed it of a Neighbour; but the Child would not
touch any other they could bring, and undoubtedly died
of Hunger. The natural Affection of Beasts is as easily
altered and vitiated as ours. I believe there are more
Mistakes than one, in what Herodotus writes of a certain
Place in Libya, where he fays the Women are in common,
but that, when a Child is able to go alone, the firft Steps
of natural Inclination lead him to his real Father, so that
he finds him out in a Croud .

Men as fond of

abeir Loins.

Now, if we confider the Occafion of loving our Chil dren, merely because we begot them, for the Productions which Reafon we call them our Second of the Mind, as Selves, there feems to be another kind of of the Lue of Iffue proceeding from us, which is not lefs worthy of our Affection. For that which is ingendered of the Soul, the Iffue of our Understanding, Courage, and Abilities, is produced by a nobler Part of us than the Corporeal, and is more our own: We are both the Father and Mother together in this Generation, and, if the Product has any Thing Good in it, it costs us much more, and brings us more Honour: For the Value of our other Children is much more their own than ours, the Share that we have in it being very little; but of this Iffue all the Beauty, Grace, and Value is our own; confequently it refembles us, and reprefents us more to the Life than the Iffue of the Body. Plate adds, that this Off-fpring of the Soul is immortal, and both immortalizes and deifies its Parents, as Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos;

Hefiod. lib. iv. p. 320

Now

1

Tricca

Now, Hiftories abounding with Examples of the common Affection of Parents to their Children, Witness the I did not think it foreign to my Purpose to Romance of fingle out one of this other kind. Heliodore, Heliodore, the good Bishop of Tricca, rather chofe to Bishop of lofe the Dignity, Profit, and Devotion of fo venerable a Prelacy than to lofe the Daughter of his Brain, a Lady that, to this Day, makes a genteel Appearance, but, perhaps, too nicely and wantonly dreffed, and of too amorous a Caft for the Iffue of a Clergyman and a Prieft.

There was at Rome one Labienus, a Perfonage of great Merit and Authority, and, amongst other The Writings Qualities, excellent in all kinds of Litera of Labienus. ture, who was, as I take it, the Son of that great Labienus, the chief of Cafar's Captains in the Wars of Gaul, and who, afterwards fiding with Pompey the Great, fo valiantly maintained his Caufe, till Cafar defeated him in Spain. This Labienus, of whom I am speaking, was envied by many for his Valour; and 'tis very probable, that the Courtiers and Minions of the Emperors of his Time were difpleafed with him for his Freedom, and that Spirit of Patriotifm which he ftill retained against Tyranny, and with which, it may be fuppofed, he had tinctured his Books and Writings. His Adverfaries made a Prefentment to the Magiftracy of Rome against feveral of the Works which he had published, and caufed them to be condemned to the Flames; fo that he was made the first Example of that fort of Punishment, which feveral others at Rome afterwards fuffered, by the burning not only of their Writings, but of the Studies wherein they were compofed. There had not been Means and Matter enough

i

of

Tricca, a Town of Upper Theffaly, in Greek Temen. 'Tis called Tricea in Cotton's Tranflation, by the Name being mifpelt in all the Editions of Montaigne before this.

Than to have his Romance condemned, which was intitled the Ethiopian Hiftory. Nicephorus, lib. xii. c. 34.

h M, Annæus Senec. Controv. lib. v, from the Beginning. This fort of Punishment has been very much approved by the Chriftians; and, even at this Day, Books are burnt, by the common Executioner, at Rome, France England, &c. i Idem, ibid,