a young lady if she were his pupil. The history
of the unfortunate Abelard is known by
every one, and he tells us himself that he often
gave the rod to Heloïse, not out of anger, but
because of gentler feelings. How dangerous it is
to beat young children with the rod Rousseau has
argued, but we are told that many French nurses
beat children confided to their care, because they
think this exercise conducive to their right growth.

The ladies of the New World appear to have
been favoured with the power of the whip by
law. Such a law prevailed amongst the Mozcas,
one of the tribes of New Granada, and was seen
exemplified one day by the Spanish general
Quesada. Happening to call on the chief of a
place called Suesca, the general found him
writhing under the discipline of all his nine
wives. He had got drunk one night with some
Spaniards; his affectionate executioners had carried
him to bed that he might sleep himself
sober, and awoke him in the morning to receive
the rigour of the law.

Public schools were everywhere in close
association with the monasteries, or, at least, priests
were directors of them. In many schools in
Austria, particularly in the nunnery schools, the
rod is in its glory. In all schools under the
direction of the Jesuits, corporal punishment
has been thought to be of the greatest importance.
In many German colleges the " blue
man'' was a dread. The pupil in disgrace was
led by the father director to the place of punishment,
where a masked man awaited him, concealing
under a large blue cloak an enormous
birch, which he applied with great severity.
We find a curious tale in Delolme's Memorials
of Human Superstition, about the fathers of St.
Lazare, in Paris. Their establishment was a
kind of banking-house, at which a cheque, payable
in blows, was cashed for the bearer. Many
parents or guardians availed themselves of this
convenience in favour of refractory sons or
pupils. Young people were sometimes clever
enough to delude somebody else into the delivery
of the sealed cheque for a thrashing,
which was always made payable to the bearer,
notwithstanding all his protestations. Even
ladies took revenge on faithless lovers by sending
them with notes to the good fathers of St.
Lazare, and the victims of the jest took care not
to complain of the treatment they received, lest
they should be laughed at by the public. This
seminary became at last a terror of Paris. The
fathers of St. Lazare lent their hands to such
criminal dealings as occurred frequently in private
lunatic asylums in England, and the government
suppressed the institution.

In Protestant schools the same folly prevailed.
One Dr. Maier called the rods and sticks
the school-swords given by the Lord into the
hands of the schoolmasters after the fall of
Adam. He called them also school-sceptres,
before which the children were to bow, and
school-weapons with which the devil was to be
driven out of the hearts of young people. In
the last century a particular feast of the rod
was kept in some Protestant countries. On this
solemn day all pupils made a pilgrimage to a
neighbouring wood in order to gather birch
branches which they tied into rods. They then
returned home, singing half mournful, half
jocular songs, paraded through the streets, and
finally gave their collection to the school-house.

Amongst the Franks and Burgundians the
rod and whip also played an important part in
domestic discipline. In the old German epic,
the Nibelungenlied, the noble Chriemhild, sister
to King Gunthar, was beaten by her adored
husband, the hero Sigfried, for having told a
secret which had been confided to her. Princess
Gudrun, who was kept a prisoner by the wicked
queen whose ugly son she had refused to marry,
was bound to a bedpost and beaten with thorny
rods. Ladies in those times were again more cruel
than men, and we find several decrees of synods
ordering excommunication for those who would
beat their slaves to death.

At the courts, even ladies of honour were
beaten. Catherine de Medicis, Queen of France,
not seldom laid her ladies over her knees, to
punish them with her own hands. At the Russian
court the ladies of honour, down to a very
recent time, suffered the rod for gossiping or
over-freedom. The Semiramis of the North
was very free with this kind of punishment,
and thought, probably, not much of it, for it
is reported that she sometimes got a horse-whipping
herself from her favourite Potemkin.
Paul the First was also very free with
the stick, even upon ladies. The wife of
a rich hotel-keeper, named Remuth, having
neglected to leave her carriage to kneel down
when meeting the emperor in the street, was
carried off to the house of correction, and then
beaten with rods three days consecutively. The
Empress Elisabeth of Russia, jealous of the
beautiful wife of the Chancellor Bestuschen,
ordered the knout to be given her in public:
after which ceremony the poor lady's nose and
ears were slit, and she was sent to Siberia.

The rule in the houses and castles of Europe,
a few centuries ago, was very strict, and the
rod was thought necessary to the orderly management
of servants. In many places it was held
to be a personal offence to the master if any one
dared to beat another person at a less distance
than two hundred yards from the entrance. He
who committed such an offence was dragged to
the kitchen, where every one of the house officers
and servants struck him. Punishment over,
the head-cook, or the kitchen-master, presented
the offender with a slice of bread, and the butler
gave him a goblet of claret or other red wine.
Such an execution, which in most cases was left
to the discretion of the kitchen-people, was
great fun to them, particularly if the offender
was the house-priest or the jester. The pages
of course came into a large inheritance of whipping.
Henry the Third of France at one time
caused six score of pages and lacqueys to be
whipped in the Louvre, for having mimicked,
in the servants' hall, the procession of the penitents,
by hanging handkerchiefs over their faces
with holes in the place of the eyes.