Part 5

See also Macaulay, _History of England_, vol. iv.; R. Grant, _Sketch of the History of the East India Company_ (1813); D. Macpherson, _Annals of Commerce_ (1805); B. Willson, _Ledger and Sword_ (1903). (T. A. I.)

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA (1802-1880), American author, was born at Medford, Massachusetts, on the 11th of February 1802. She was educated at an academy in her native town and by her brother Convers Francis (1795-1863), a Unitarian minister and from 1842 to 1863 Parkman professor in the Harvard Divinity School. Her first stories, _Hobomok_ (1824) and _The Rebels_ (1825), were popular successes. She was a schoolmistress until 1828, when she married David Lee Child (1794-1874), a brilliant but erratic Boston lawyer and journalist. From 1826 to 1834 she edited _The Juvenile Miscellany_, the first children's monthly periodical in the United States. About 1831 both she and her husband began to identify themselves with the anti-slavery cause, and in 1833 she published _An Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans_, a stirring portrayal of the evils of slavery, and an argument for immediate abolition, which had a powerful influence in winning recruits to the anti-slavery cause. Henceforth her time was largely devoted to the anti-slavery cause. From 1840 to 1844, assisted by her husband, she edited the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ in New York City. After the Civil War she wrote much in behalf of the freedmen and of Indian rights. She died at Wayland, Massachusetts, on the 20th of October 1880. In addition to the books above mentioned, she wrote many pamphlets and short stories and _The (American) Frugal Housewife_ (1829), one of the earliest American books on domestic economy, _The Mother's Book_ (1831), a pioneer cook-book republished in England and Germany, _The Girls' Own Book_ (1831), _History of Women_ (2 vols., 1832), _Good Wives_ (1833), _The Anti-Slavery Catechism_ (1836), _Philothea_ (1836), a romance of the age of Pericles, perhaps her best book, _Letters from New York_ (2 vols., 1843-1845), _Fact and Fiction_ (1847), _The Power of Kindness_ (1851), _Isaac T. Hopper: a True Life_ (1853), _The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages_ (3 vols., 1855), _Autumnal Leaves_ (1857), _Looking Toward Sunset_ (1864), _The Freedman's Book_ (1865), _A Romance of the Republic_ (1867), and _Aspirations of the World_ (1878).

See _The Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a Biographical Introduction by J.G. Whittier_ (Boston, 1883); and a chapter in T.W. Higginson's _Contemporaries_ (Boston, 1899).

CHILD, the common term for the offspring of human beings, generally below the age of puberty; the term is the correlative of "parent," and applies to either sex, though some early dialectical uses point to a certain restriction to a girl. The word is derived from the A.S. _cild_, an old Teutonic word found in English only, in other Teutonic languages _kind_ and its variants being used, usually derived from the Indo-European root _ken_, seen in Gr. [greek: genos], Lat. _genus_, and Eng. "kin"; _cild_ has been held to be a modification of the same root, but the true root is _kilth_, seen in Goth. _kilthei_, womb, an origin which appears in the expressions "child-birth," "to be with child," and the like; the plural in A.S. was _cild_, and later _cildru_, which in northern M.E. became _childre or childer_, a form dialectically extant, and in southern English _childeren_ or _children_ (with the plural termination -en, as in "brethren"). There are several particular uses of "child" in the English version of the Bible, as of a young man in the "Song of the three holy children," of descendants or members of a race, as in "children of Abraham," and also to express origin, giving a description of character, as "children of darkness." During the 13th and 14th centuries "child" was used, in a sense almost amounting to a title of dignity, of a young man of noble birth, probably preparing for knighthood. In the _York Mysteries_ of about 1440 (quoted in the _New English Dictionary_) occurs "be he churl or child," obviously referring to gentle birth, cf. William Bellenden's translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) "than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius." The spelling "childe" is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar instances are in the line of an old ballad quoted in _King Lear_, "childe Roland to the dark tower came," and in Byron's _Childe Harold_. With this use may be compared the Spanish and Portuguese _Infante_ and _Infanta_, and the early French use of _Valet_ (q.v.).

_Child-study._--The physical, psychological and educational development of children, from birth till adulthood, has provided material in recent years for what has come to be regarded as almost a distinct part of comparative anthropological or sociological science, and the literature of adolescence (q.v.) and of "child-study" in its various aspects has attained considerable proportions. In England the British Child Study Association was founded in 1894, its official organ being the _Paidologist_, while similar work is done by the Childhood Society, and, to a certain extent, by the Parents' National Educational Union (which issues the _Parents' Review_). In America, where specially valuable work has been done, several universities have encouraged the study (notably Chicago, while under the auspices of Professor John Dewey); and Professor G. Stanley Hall's initiative has led to elaborate inquiries, the principal periodical for the movement being the _Pedagogical Seminary_. The impetus to this study of the child's mind and capacities was given by the classic work of educationists like J.A. Comenius, J.H. Pestalozzi, and F.W.A. Froebel, but more recent writers have carried it much further, notably W.T. Preyer (_The Mind of the Child_, 1881), whose psychological studies stamp him as one of the chief pioneers in new methods of investigation. Other authorities of first-rate importance (their chief works only being given here) are J. Sully (_Studies of Childhood_, 1896), Earl Barnes (_Studies in Education_, 1896, 1902), J.M. Baldwin (_Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, 1895), Sigismund (_Kind und Welt_, 1897), A.F. Chamberlain (_The Child_, 1900), G. Stanley Hall (_Adolescence_, 1904; he had from 1882 been the leader in America of such investigations), H. Holman and R. Langdon Down (_Practical Child Study_, 1899), E.A. Kirkpatrick (_Fundamentals of Child-study_, 1903), and Prof. Tracy of Toronto (_Psychology of Childhood_, 5th ed., 1901); while among a number of contributions worth particular attention may be mentioned W.B. Drummond's excellent summary, _Introduction to Child Study_ (1907), which deals succinctly with methods and results; Irving King's _Psychology of Child Development_ (1906, useful for its bibliography); Prof. David R. Major's _First Steps in Mental Growth_ (1906); and Miss M. Shinn's _Notes an the Development of a Child_ (1893) and Mrs Louise E. Hogan's _Study of a Child_ (1898), which are noteworthy among individual and methodical accounts of what children will do. In such books as those cited a great deal of important material has been collected and analysed, and a number of conclusions suggested which bear both on psychology and the science of education; but it must be borne in mind, as regards a great deal of the voluminous literature of the subject, that it is often more pertinent to general psychology and hygiene than to any special conclusions as to the essential nature of a child--whatever "_a_ child" generically may be as the special object of a special science. The child, after all, is in a transition stage to an adult, and there is often a tendency in modern "child students" to interpret the phenomena exhibited by a particular child with a _parti pris_, or to exaggerate child-study--which is really interesting as providing the knowledge of growth towards full human equipment--as though it involved the discovery of some distinct form of animal, of separate value on its own account.

_Growth._--Into the psychical characteristics and development of the child and all the interesting educational problems involved it is impossible to enter here, and reference must be made to the works cited above. But a knowledge of the more important features of normal physical development has a constant importance. Some of these, as matters of comparative physiology or pathology, are dealt with in other articles in this work. One of these chief matters of interest is weight and height, and this is naturally affected by race, nutrition and environment. But while the standard in different countries somewhat differs, the British average for healthy children may here be followed. At birth the average weight of a baby is a little over 7 lb and the length about 20 in. The following are the averages for weight and height, taking the age in years of the child at the last birthday:--

+--------+----------+---------+----------+---------+ | Age. | Height, in inches. | Weight, in pounds. | +--------+----------+---------+----------+---------+ | | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | | | | | | | | 1 | 28.7 | 29 | 19.8 | 20.5 | | 2 | 32.5 | 32.5 | 25.5 | 26.5 | | 3 | 35 | 35 | 30 | 31.2 | | 4 | 38 | 38 | 34 | 35 | | 5 | 40.5 | 41 | 39.2 | 41.2 | | 6 | 42.8 | 44 | 41.7 | 44.4 | | 7 | 44.5 | 46 | 47.5 | 49.7 | | 8 | 46.6 | 47 | 52.1 | 54.9 | | 9 | 48.7 | 49 | 55.5 | 60.4 | | 10 | 51 | 51.8 | 62 | 67.5 | | 11 | 53.1 | 53.5 | 68 | 72 | | 12 | 55.6 | 55 | 76.4 | 76.7 | | 13 | 57.7 | 57 | 87.2 | 82.6 | | 14 | 59.8 | 59.3 | 96.7 | 92 | | 15 | 60.9 | 62 | 102.7 | 106 | +--------+----------+---------+----------+---------+

See also CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO; CHILDREN'S COURTS; CHILDREN'S GAMES; INFANT; &c.

CHILDEBERT, the name of three Frankish kings.

CHILDEBERT I. (d. 558) was one of the four sons of Clovis. In the partition of his father's realm in 511 he received as his share the town of Paris, and the country to the north as far as the river Somme, and to the west as far as the English Channel, with the Armorican peninsula. In 524, after the murder of Chlodomer's children, Childebert annexed the cities of Chartres and Orleans. He took part in the various expeditions against the kingdom of Burgundy, and in 534 received as his share of the spoils of that kingdom the towns of Mâcon, Geneva and Lyons. When Vitiges, the king of the Ostrogoths, ceded Provence to the Franks in 535, the possession of Arles and Marseilles was guaranteed to Childebert by his brothers. Childebert also made a series of expeditions against the Visigoths of Spain; in 542 he took possession of Pampeluna with the help of his brother Clotaire I., and besieged Saragossa, but was forced to retreat. From this expedition he brought back to Paris a precious relic, the tunic of St Vincent, in honour of which he built at the gates of Paris the famous monastery of St Vincent, known later as St Germain-des-Prés. He died without issue in 558, and was buried in the abbey he had founded, where his tomb has been discovered.

See "Nouveaux documents sur le tombeau de Childebert à Saint-Germain-des-Prés," in the _Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires_ (1887).

CHILDEBERT II. (570-595), king of Austrasia, was a son of Sigebert. When his father was assassinated in 575, Childebert was taken from Paris by Gundobald, one of his faithful _leudes_, to Metz, where he was recognized as sovereign. He was then only five years old, and during his long minority the power was disputed between his mother Brunhilda and the nobles. Chilperic, king at Paris, and King Gontran of Burgundy, sought alliance with Childebert, who was adopted by both in turn. But after the assassination of Chilperic in 584, and the dangers occasioned to the Frankish monarchy by the expedition of Gundobald in 585, Childebert threw himself unreservedly into the arms of Gontran. By the pact of Andelot in 587 Childebert was recognized as Gontran's heir, and with his uncle's help he quelled the revolts of the nobles and succeeded in seizing the castle of Woëwre. Many attempts were made on his life by Fredegond, who was anxious to secure Gontran's inheritance for her son Clotaire II. On the death of Gontran in 592 Childebert annexed the kingdom of Burgundy, and even contemplated seizing Clotaire's estates and becoming sole king of the Franks. He died, however, in 595. Childebert II. had had relations with the Byzantine empire, and fought in 585 in the name of the emperor Maurice against the Lombards in Italy.

CHILDEBERT III. was one of the last and feeblest of the Merovingians. A son of King Theuderich III., he succeeded his brother Clovis III. in 695, and reigned until 711.

See B. Krusch, "Zur Chronologie der merowingischen Könige," in _Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte_, xxii. 451-490. (C. PF.)

CHILDERIC, the name of three Frankish kings.

CHILDERIC I. (c. 437-481), king of the Salian Franks, succeeded his father Merwich (Merwing) as king about. 457. With his tribe he was established around the town of Tournai, on lands which he had received as a _foederatus_ of the Romans, and for some time he kept the peace with his allies. About 463, in conjunction with the Roman general Egidius, he fought against the Visigoths, who hoped to extend their dominion along the banks of the Loire; after the death of Egidius he assisted Count Paul in attempting to check an invasion of the Saxons. Paul having perished in the struggle, Childeric delivered Angers from some Saxons, followed them to the islands at the mouth of the Loire, and massacred them there. He also stopped a band of the Alamanni who wished to invade Italy. These are all the facts known about him. The stories of his expulsion by the Franks; of his stay of eight years in Thuringia with King Basin and his wife Basine; of his return when a faithful servant advised him that he could safely do so by sending to him half of a piece of gold which he had broken with him; and of the arrival at Tournai of Queen Basine, whom he married, are entirely legendary. After the fall of the Western Empire in 476 there is no doubt that Childeric regarded himself as freed from his engagements towards Rome. He died in 481 and was buried at Tournai, leaving a son Clovis (q.v.), afterwards king of the Franks. His tomb was discovered in 1653, when numerous precious objects, arms, jewels, coins and a ring with a figure of the king, were found.

CHILDERIC II. (c. 653-673), king of Austrasia, was a son of the Frankish king Clovis II., and in 660, although a child, was proclaimed king of Austrasia, while his brother, Clotaire III., ruled over the rest of the dominions of Clovis. After the death of Clotaire in 670 he became ruler of the three Frankish kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, but soon quarrelled with some supporters in Neustria, and was assassinated whilst hunting. He was buried at St Germain near Paris.

CHILDERIC III. (d. c. 751), king of the Franks, was the last king of the Merovingian dynasty. The throne had been vacant for seven years when the mayors of the palace, Carloman and Pippin the Short, decided in 743 to recognize Childeric as king. We cannot say whose son he was, or what bonds bound him to the Merovingian family. He took no part in public business, which was directed, as before, by the mayors of the palace. When in 747 Carloman retired into a monastery, Pippin resolved to take the royal crown for himself; taking the decisive step in 751 after having received the celebrated answer of Pope Zacharias that it were better to name king him who possessed the power than him who possessed it not. Childeric was dethroned and placed in the monastery of St Omer; his son, Theuderich, was imprisoned at Saint-Wandrille.

See W. Junghans, _Die Geschichte der fränkischen Könige Childerich und Clodovech_ (Göttingen, 1857); J.J. Chiflet, _Anastasis Childerici I. Francorum regis_ (Antwerp, 1655); J.B.D. Cochet, _Le Tombeau de Childeric I, roi des Francs_ (Paris, 1859); and E. Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, tome ii. (Paris, 1903).

CHILDERS, HUGH CULLING EARDLEY (1827-1896), British statesman, was born in London on the 25th of June 1827. On leaving Cambridge he went out to Australia (1850), and became a member of the government of Victoria, but in 1857 returned to England as agent-general of the colony. Entering parliament in 1860 as Liberal member for Pontefract (a seat that he continued to hold till 1885), he became civil lord of the admiralty in 1864, and in 1865 financial secretary to the treasury. Childers occupied a succession of prominent posts in the various Gladstone ministries. He was first lord of the admiralty from 1868 to 1871, and as such inaugurated a policy of retrenchment. Ill-health compelled his resignation of office in 1871, but next year he returned to the ministry as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. From 1880 to 1882 he was secretary for war, a post he accepted somewhat unwillingly; and in that position he had to bear the responsibility for the reforms which were introduced into the war office under the parsimonious conditions which were then part of the Liberal creed. During his term of office the Egyptian War occurred, in which Childers acted with creditable energy; and also the Boer War, in which he and his colleagues showed to less advantage. From 1882 to 1885 he was chancellor of the exchequer, and the beer and spirit duty in his budget of the latter year was the occasion of the government's fall. Defeated at the general election at Pontefract, he was returned as a Home Ruler (one of the few Liberals who adopted this policy before Mr Gladstone's conversion) in 1886 for South Edinburgh, and was home secretary in the ministry of 1886. When the first Home Rule bill was introduced he demurred privately to its financial clauses, and their withdrawal was largely due to his threat of resignation. He retired from parliament in 1892, and died on the 29th of January 1896, his last piece of work being the drafting of a report for the royal commission on Irish financial relations, of which he was chairman. Childers was a capable and industrious administrator of the old Liberal school, and he did his best, in the political conditions then prevailing, to improve the naval and military administration while he was at the admiralty and war office. His own bent was towards finance, but no striking reform is associated with his name. His most ambitious effort was his attempt to effect a conversion of consols in 1884, but the scheme proved a failure, though it paved the way for the subsequent conversion in 1888.

The _Life_ (1901) of Mr Childers, by his son, throws some interesting side-lights on the inner history of more than one Gladstonian cabinet.

CHILDERS, ROBERT CAESAR (1838-1876), English Oriental scholar, son of the Rev. Charles Childers, English chaplain at Nice, was born in 1838. In 1860 he received an appointment in the civil service of Ceylon, which he retained until 1864, when he was compelled to return to England owing to ill-health. He had studied P[=a]li during his residence in Ceylon, under Yátrámullé Unnánsé, a learned Buddhist for whom he cherished a life-long respect, and he had gained an insight into the Sinhalese character and ways of thought. In 1869 he published the first P[=a]li text ever printed in England, and began to prepare a P[=a]li dictionary, the first volume of which was published in 1872, and the second and concluding volume in 1875. In the following year it was awarded the Volney prize by the Institute of France, as being the most important philological work of the year. He was a frequent contributor to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which he published the _Mah[=a]-parinibb[=a]na Sutta_, the P[=a]li text giving the account of the last days of Buddha's life. In 1872 he was appointed sub-librarian at the India Office, and in the following year he became the first professor of P[=a]li and Buddhist literature at University College, London. He died in London on the 25th of July 1876.

CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO. English law has always in theory given to children the same remedies as to adults for ill-usage, whether by their parents or by others, and has never recognized the _patria potestas_ as known to the earlier Roman law; and while powers of discipline and chastisement have been regarded as necessarily incident to paternal authority, the father is civilly liable to his children for wrongs done to them. The only points in which infancy created a defect in civil status were that infants were subject to the restraints on complete freedom of action involved in their being in the legal custody of the father, and that it was and is lawful for parents, guardians, employers and teachers to inflict corporal punishment proportioned in amount and severity to the nature of the fault committed and the age and mental capacity of the child punished. But the court of chancery, in delegated exercise of the authority of the sovereign as _parens patriae_, always asserted the right to take from parents, and if necessary itself to assume the wardship of children where parental rights were abused or serious cruelty was inflicted, the power being vested in the High Court of Justice. Abuse of the power of correction was regarded as giving a cause of action or prosecution for assault; and if attended by fatal results rendered the parent liable to indictment for murder or manslaughter.

The conception of what constitutes cruelty to children undoubtedly changed considerably with the relaxation of the accepted standard of severity in domestic or scholastic discipline and with the growth of new ideas as to the duties of parents to children, which in their latest developments tend enormously to enlarge the parental duties without any corresponding increase of filial obligations.

Starting from the earlier conception, which limited ill-treatment legally punishable to actual threats or blows, the common law came to recognize criminal liability in cases where persons, bound under duty or contract to supply necessaries to a child, unable by reason of its tender years to provide for itself, wilfully neglected to supply them, and thereby caused the death of the child or injury to its health, although no actual assault had been committed. Questions have from time to time arisen as to what could be regarded as necessary within this rule; and quite apart from legislation, popular opinion has influenced courts of justice in requiring more from parents and employers than used to be required. But parliament has also intervened to punish abandonment or exposure of infants of under two years, whereby their lives are endangered, or their health has been or is likely to be permanently injured (Offences against the Person Act of 1861, s. 27), and the neglect or ill-treatment of apprentices or servants (same act, s. 26, and Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875, s. 6). By the Poor Law Amendment Act 1868, parents were rendered _summarily_ punishable who wilfully neglected to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid or lodging for their children under fourteen years of age in their custody, whereby the health of the child was or was likely to be seriously injured. This enactment (now superseded by later legislation) made no express exception in favour of parents who had not sufficient means to do their duty without resort to the poor law, and was construed as imposing criminal liability on parents whose peculiar religious tenets caused them advisedly to refrain from calling in a doctor to a sick child.