Page:The life and times of King Edward VII by Whates, Harry Richard 1.djvu/35

17 EARLY ENVIRONMENT attainable in the world. Contrast those conditions with those of the child born in town or village slum, too often of parents physically and morally debased and degraded, certainly of parents whose economic circumstances perforce deprive their offspring of a sufficiency of light and air, of suitable food and clothing in the varying seasons, of skilled attention. To imagine such a case and there are millions of such cases in our deplorably faulty social organisation is to imagine a life exposed to physical peril at every hour, and to moral and temperamental malformation from the outset. But this vein of thought need not be pursued. A brief exposure of it will have sufficed to enable the reader to realise how near to perfection were the hereditary and environ- ing circumstances of the infancy of King Edward the Seventh, and the potency of its influence on his reign. ROYAL WINDSOR.