“If a slave expose a child unknown to the master and the master swear that he was ignorant of the act, the person who rescues and brings up the child can recover only one fourth of its value; but if the exposure has been with the master’s knowledge, the rescuer can recover the full value of the child.”[401] Those to whom a child had been given away to bring up received an agreed price during the first ten years of the child. After that the law declared that the service of the child was sufficient compensation for its nurture—an interesting sidelight on the time when a child became amenable to the “laws of industry.” In these laws of the Visigoths it is easy to see the influence of _Codex Theodosianus_. [Illustration: EVENING RECREATION CENTRE FOR BOYS, NEW YORK CITY] [Illustration: MEETING OF AN “EVENING CENTRE,” NEW YORK CITY] Among the Anglo-Saxons there was a law (_domas_) of Ina, King of Wessex, which declared that the nourishment for a child exposed and recovered should be fixed at six sous for the first year, twelve sous for the second year, and thirty for the third. Another law of the same peoples, ascribed to Alfred, made it necessary for the person in charge of a foundling at the time of its death, to establish the fact that the death had occurred in a perfectly natural way, a sage precaution and one centuries ahead of the time. Theodoric, or Dietrich as Charles Kingsley called him to the chagrin of Max Müller and others, as King of the Ostrogoths made an interesting ruling on the subject of the freedom of children in the year 500. We learn of this through his secretary, Cassiodorus, for, like other kings, the Ostrogoth was wise enough to have the cleverest literary man of his day to write his letters and leave behind his own approved account of his reign. According to this law, when a father because of poverty was obliged to sell his child, the child did not therefore lose his liberty.[402] Showing how nimble was not only the literary talent but the spirit of Cassiodorus, it is interesting to read in another part of the writings of the same author a rescript sent in the name of King Athalaric, the successor of Theodoric and his grandson, to Severus, the governor of Lucania. As a picture of the times that we are accustomed to think of as dark, as well as an example of the dexterous literary skill of Cassiodorus, the letter is worth printing, for while it takes a most reactionary stand on the matter of the sale of children it suggests the epistle of Trajan to Pliny. “KING ATHALARIC TO SEVERUS, Vir Spectabilis.