a Queen of Portugal (sister to Henry V. of England, and mother of St. Ferdinand) that, being in childbirth, her life was despaired of unless she took a medicine which would accelerate the birth but probably sacrifice the life of the child. She answered that “she would not purchase her temporal life by sacrificing the eternal salvation of her son.”—Bollandists, _Act. Sanctor._, June 5th. 20 Tillemont, _Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire ecclésiastique_ (Paris, 1701), tome x. p. 41. St. Clem. Alexand. says that infants in the womb and exposed infants have guardian angels to watch over them. (_Strom._ v.) 21 There is an extremely large literature devoted to the subject of infanticide, exposition, foundlings, &c. The books I have chiefly followed are Terme et Monfalcon, _Histoire des Enfans trouvés_ (Paris, 1840); Remacle, _Des Hospices d’Enfans trouvés_ (1838); Labourt, _Recherches historiques sur les Enfans trouvés_ (Paris, 1848); Kœnigswarter, _Essai sur la Législation des Peuples anciens et modernes relative aux Enfans nés hors Mariage_ (Paris, 1842). There are also many details on the subject in Godefroy’s Commentary to the laws about children in the Theodosian Code, in Malthus, _On Population_, in Edward’s tract _On the State of Slavery in the Early and Middle Ages of Christianity_, and in most ecclesiastical histories. 22 It must not; however, be inferred from this that infanticide increases in direct proportion to the unchastity of a nation. Probably the condition of civilised society in which it is most common, is where a large amount of actual unchastity coexists with very strong social condemnation of the sinner, and where, in consequence, there is an intense anxiety to conceal the fall. A recent writer on Spain has noticed the almost complete absence of infanticide in that country, and has ascribed it to the great leniency of public opinion towards female frailty. Foundling hospitals, also, greatly influence the history of infanticide; but the mortality in them was long so great that it may be questioned whether they have diminished the number of the deaths, though they have, as I believe, greatly diminished the number of the murders of children. Lord Kames, writing in the last half of the eighteenth century, says: “In Wales, even at present, and in the Highlands of Scotland, it is scarce a disgrace for a young woman to have a bastard. In the country last mentioned, the first instance known of a bastard child being destroyed by its mother through shame is a late one. The virtue of chastity appears to be thus gaining ground, as the only temptation a woman can have to destroy her child is to conceal her frailty.”—_Sketches of the History of Man—On the