In an ideal condition children should be brought up in the country as much as possible rather than in the town. Though adults may live where they like within very wide limits and take no harm, children, even of healthy stock, living in towns, are continually subject to many minor ills, such as chronic catarrh, tonsilitis, bronchitis, and even the far graver pneumonia. Removed to healthier conditions in the country their ailments tend to disappear, and normal physical development supervenes. The residence should be on a well-drained soil, preferably near the sea in the case of a delicate child, on higher ground for those of more robust constitution. The child should be lightly clad in woollen garments all the year round, their thickness being slightly greater in winter than in summer. An abundance of simple well-cooked food in sufficient variety, ample time at table, where an atmosphere of light gaiety should be cultivated, and a period free from restraint both before and after meals, should be considered fundamental essentials. As regards the most suitable kinds of food—milk and fruit should be given in abundance, fresh meat once a day, and fish or eggs once a day. Bread had better be three days old, and baked in the form of small rolls to increase the ratio of crust to crumb. Both butter and sugar are good foods, and should be freely allowed in many forms.
The exercise of the body must be duly attended to. Nowadays this is provided for in the shape of games, some being optional, others prescribed, and such sports as boating, swimming, fencing, &c. But severe exercise should only be allowed under adequate medical control, and should be increased very gradually. In the case of girls, let them run, leap and climb with their brothers for the first twelve years or so of life. But as puberty approaches, with all the change, stress and strain dependent thereon, their lives should be appropriately modified. Rest should be enforced during the menstrual periods of these earlier years, and milder, more graduated exercise taken at other times. In the same way all mental strain should be diminished. Instead of pressure being put on a girl’s intellectual education at about this time, as is too often the case, the time devoted to school and books should be diminished. Education should be on broader, more fundamental lines, and much time should be passed in the open air. With regard to the mental training of both sexes two points must be borne in mind. First, that an ample number of hours should be set on one side for sleep, up to ten years of age not less than eleven, and up to twenty years not less than nine. Secondly, that the time devoted to “bookwork” should be broken up into a number of short periods, very carefully graduated to the individual child.
In every case where there is a family tendency towards any certain disease or weakness, that tendency must determine the whole circumstances of the child’s life. That diathesis which is most serious and usually least regarded, the nervous excitable one, is by far the most important and the most difficult to deal with. Every effort should be made to avoid the conditions in which the hereditary predisposition would be aroused into mischievous action, and to encourage development on simple unexciting lines. The child should be confined to the schoolroom but little and receive most of his training in wood and field. Other diatheses—the tuberculous, rheumatic, &c.—must be dealt with in appropriate ways.
The adolescent is prone to special weaknesses and moral perversions. The emotions are extremely unstable, and any stress put on them may lead to undesirable results. Warm climates, tight-fitting clothes, corsets, rich foods, soft mattresses, or indulgences of any kind, and also mental over-stimulation, are especially to be guarded against. The day should be filled with interests of an objective—in contradistinction to subjective—kind, and the child should retire to bed at night healthily fatigued in mind and body. Let there be confidence between mother and daughter, father and son, and, as the years bring the bodily changes, those in whom the children trust can choose the fitting moments for explaining their meaning and effect, and warning against abuses of the natural functions.
For bibliography see Child.
ADOLPH OF NASSAU (c. 1255–1298), German king, son of Walram, count of Nassau. He appears to have received a good education, and inherited his father’s lands around Wiesbaden in 1276. He won considerable fame as a mercenary in many of the feuds of the time, and on the 5th of May 1292 was chosen German king, in succession to Rudolph I., an election due rather to the political conditions of the time than to his personal qualities. He made large promises to his supporters, and was crowned on the 1st of July at Aix-la-Chapelle. Princes and towns did homage to him, but his position was unstable, and the allegiance of many of the princes, among them Albert I., duke of Austria, son of the late king Rudolph, was merely nominal. Seeking at once to strengthen the royal position, he claimed Meissen as a vacant fief of the Empire, and in 1294 allied himself with Edward I., king of England, against France. Edward granted him a subsidy, but owing to a variety of reasons Adolph did not take the field against France, but turned his arms against Thuringia, which he had purchased from the landgrave Albert II. This bargain was resisted by the sons of Albert, and from 1294 to 1296 Adolph was campaigning in Meissen and Thuringia. Meissen was conquered, but he was not equally successful in Thuringia, and his relations with Albert of Austria were becoming more strained. He had been unable to fulfil the promises made at his election, and the princes began to look with suspicion upon his designs. Wenceslaus II., king of Bohemia, fell away from his allegiance, and his deposition was decided on, and was carried out at Mainz, on the 23rd of May 1298, when Albert of Austria was elected his successor. The forces of the rival kings met at Gollheim on the 2nd of July 1298, where Adolph was killed, it is said by the hand of Albert. He was buried at Rosenthal, and in 1309 his remains were removed to Spires.
See F. W. E. Roth, Geschichte des Römischen Königs Adolf I. von Nassau (Wiesbaden, 1879); V. Domeier, Die Absetzung Adolf von Nassau (Berlin, 1889); L. Ennen, Die Wahl des Königs Adolf von Nassau (Cologne, 1866); L. Schmid, Die Wahl des Grossen Adolf von Nassau zum Römischen König; B. Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, Band i. (Berlin, 1901).
ADOLPHUS, JOHN LEYCESTER (1795–1862), English lawyer and author, was the son of John Adolphus (1768–1845), a well-known London barrister who wrote a History of England to 1783 (1802), a History of France from 1790 (1803) and other works. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and at St. John’s College, Oxford. In 1821 he published Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., in which he discussed the authorship of the then anonymous Waverley novels, and fixed it upon Sir Walter Scott. This conclusion was based on the resemblance of the novels in general style and method to the poems acknowledged by Scott. Scott thought at first that the letters were written by Reginald Heber, afterwards bishop of Calcutta, and the discovery of J. L. Adolphus’s identity led to a warm friendship. Adolphus was called to the bar in 1822, and his Circuiteers, an Eclogue, is a parody of the style of two of his colleagues on the northern circuit. He became judge of the Marylebone County Court in 1852, and was a bencher of the Inner Temple. He was the author of Letters from Spain in 1856 and 1857 (1858), and was completing his father’s History of England at the time of his death on the 24th of December 1862.
ADOLPHUS FREDERICK (1710–1771), king of Sweden, was born at Gottorp on the 14th of May 1710. His father was Christian Augustus (1673–1726), duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, bishop of Lübeck, and administrator, during the war of 1700–1721, of the duchies of Holstein-Gottorp for his nephew Charles Frederick; his mother was Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach. From 1727 to 1750 he was bishop of Lübeck, and administrator of Holstein-Kiel during the minority of Duke Charles Peter Ulrich, afterwards Peter III. of Russia. In 1743 he was elected heir to the throne of Sweden by the “Hat” faction in order that they might obtain better conditions of peace from the empress Elizabeth, whose fondness for the house of Holstein was notorious (see Sweden, History). During his whole reign (1751–1771) Adolphus Frederick was little more than a state decoration, the real power being lodged in the hands of an omnipotent riksdag, distracted by fierce party
