Miss Ada Leigh, of whose remarkable work in Paris we
gave some account in our issue of December 23rd last, writes to yesterday's Times to record the terrible fact that infant suicide in France has actually destroyed twice as many children's lives in four years as her orphanage contrived to save in eight years,—that is, that the energy thrown into infant suicide has been more than four times as productive of result as that of the charity of which she disposes. One hundred and ninety-eight boys and forty girls under the age of fifteen, she tells us, destroyed themselves in four years; and of these, 200 were over twelve years of age, twenty-one between twelve and ten, four over ten years, six below nine, and one was only seven. Surely, in no other country except France does not merely despair, but that impatient intolerance of misery which cuts its way out of life rather than await the end, invade the minds of such babies as these. French children must be premature, as well as most miserable, when they have recourse to suicide; they must have learned to believe that death is a remedy, and. that they cannot or may not depend on the kindness of the living, before the age at which most English children have been made acquainted. with either belief.
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