Aspasia.  We  are  told  by  Herodotus  that  a  boy  in
Persia  is  kept  in  the  apartments  of  the  women,  and  pro-
hibited from  seeing  his  father,  until  the  fifth  year.  The
reason  is,  he  informs  us,  that  if  he  dies  before  this  age,
his  loss  may  give  the  parent  no  uneasiness.  And  such
a  custom  he  thinks  commendable.  Herodotus  has  no
child,  Cleone  !  If  he  had,  far  other  would  be  his  feelings
and  his  judgment.  Before  that  age,  how  many  seeds  are
sown,  which  future  years,  and  distant  ones,  mature
successively  !  How  much  fondness,  how  much  gener-
osity, what  hosts  of  other  virtues,  courage,  constancy,
patriotism,  spring  into  the  father's  heart  from  the  cradle
of  his  child  !  And  does  never  the  fear  come  over  him,
that  what  is  most  precious  to  him  upon  earth  is  left  in
careless  or  perfidious,  in  unsafe  or  unworthy  hands?
Does  it  never  occur  to  him  that  he  loses  a  son  in  every
one  of  these  five  years  ?  What  is  there  so  affecting  to
the  brave  and  virtuous  man,  as  that  which  perpetually
wants  his  help  and  cannot  call  for  it  ?  What  is  so  differ-
ent as  the  speaking  and  the  mute  ?  And  hardly  less  so
are  inarticulate  sounds,  and  sounds  which  he  receives
half- formed,  and  which  he  delights  to  modulate,  and
which  he  lays  with  infinite  care  and  patience,  not  only  on
the  tender  attentive  ear,  but  on  the  half-open  lips,  and  on
the  eyes,  and  on  the  cheeks  ;  as  if  they  all  were  listeners.
