is a debt of strict justice; and therefore ought to be preferred. Nevertheless the description of the case to which the query is subjoined, is so general, that it is easy to figure a case according to that description in which the person ought to prefer his parents. This obligation to provide for his children may have been dissolved by monstrous ingratitude, such as their plotting against his life; or he may have given them proper education, and ample provisions, which they have riotously squandered away: in either of which cases it is thought he is undoubtedly discharged from his obligation. But if they have lost their portion purely by misfortunes, without their fault, it is thought his obligation to assist them is not wholly extinguished; and in that case their claim to his assistance, or that of his parents, is preferable." "I find (says the author of the last answer) that all your correspondents agree, that the life of the parents is to be preserved. It is very certain, that the relation between me and my child is exactly equal to that which is between me and my parent; and therefore relation cannot decide in favour of the one or the other: I must then be determined by a different consideration; and I know of none more weighty than the following: If I preserve the life of my child, I am instrumental in giving life to all his descendants, which may, perhaps, be very numerous; but if I preserve the life of my parent, I preserve a single life only, and that a short one. I therefore say, relieve the child. But it is thought that the voice of nature will applaud the person who preserves the parent: if so, nature must applaud a rule which she herself does not observe: it is natural for old men to die before young ones. Besides, the command, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, may be opposed to the fifth commandment." Still, however, it is doubtless difficult to determine in such cases when they occur, as there are no fixed rules whereby to decide. With respect to the power of parents and the duty of children, much may be said. There are, however, scarcely any instances where both are oftener abused than with respect to marriage. This, as it is the most important event in the civil life either of a man or woman, so it is often rendered peculiarly unfortunate, by precipitate folly and want of duty in children; and as often through the unreasonable severity of parents. As a child is bound not to give unreasonable offence to a parent in the choice of a partner; so neither ought the parent to impose any improper or arbitrary restraint upon the child.

The power of a parent in China is very great; for a father, while living, has the power of an absolute despotic tyrant, and after his death is worshipped as a god. Let a son become ever so rich, and a father ever so poor, there is no submission, no point of obedience, that the latter cannot command, or that the former can refuse. The father is absolute master, not only of his son's estate, but also of his concubines and children, who, wherever they displease him, he may sell to strangers. If a father accuses his son before a mandarin, there needs no proof of his guilt; for they cannot believe that any father can be so unnatural as to bring a false accusation against his own son. But should a son be so insolent as to mock his father, or arrive at such a pitch of wickedness as to strike him, all the province where this shameful act of violence is committed is alarmed; it even becomes the concern of Parent the whole empire; the emperor himself judges the criminal. All the mandarins near the place are turned out of their posts, especially those of the town where he lived, for having been so negligent in their instructions; and all the neighbours are reprimanded for neglecting, by former punishments, to put a stop to the wickedness of the criminal before it arrived at such flagrancy. As to the unhappy wretch himself, they cut him into a thousand pieces, burn his bones, level his house to the ground, and even those houses that stand near it, and set up monuments and memorials of the horrid deed.

The emperor of China, who is one of the most powerful and despotic monarchs upon earth, pays the greatest attention to his mother. An instance of this Pere Amyot relates as having happened at Pekin, A.D. 1752; when the emperor's mother entered her 60th year, which, among the Chinese, is accounted a very remarkable period. Grosier likewise particularly describes the homage the emperor pays his mother every new-year's day in the palace, at which ceremony all the great officers of his court assist. See Children, Filial Piety, Parental Affection, &c.

Parent, Anthony, a mathematician, was born at Paris in 1666. He showed an early propensity to mathematics. He accustomed himself to write remarks upon the margins of the books which he read; and he had filled a variety of books with a kind of commentary at the early age of thirteen. At fourteen he was put under a master, who taught rhetoric at Chartres. It was here that he happened to see a dodecahedron, upon every face of which was delineated a sun dial, except the lowest wherein it stood. Struck as it were instantaneously with the curiosity of these dials, he attempted drawing one himself; but having a book which only showed the practical part without the theory, it was not till after his master came to explain the doctrine of the sphere to him that he began to understand how the projection of the circles of the sphere formed sun dials. He then undertook to write a Treatise upon Gnomonics. The piece was indeed rude and unpolished; but it was entirely his own, and not borrowed. About the same time he wrote a book of Geometry, in the same taste, at Beauvais. His friends then sent for him to Paris to study the law; and, in obedience to them, he studied a course in that faculty; which was no sooner finished, than, urged by his passion for mathematics, he shut himself up in the college of Dormans, that no avocation might take him from his beloved study; and, with an allowance of less than 200 livres a-year, he lived content in this retreat, from which he never stirred but to the Royal College, in order to hear the lectures of M. de la Hire or M. Sauveur. When he found himself capable of teaching others, he took pupils: and fortification being a branch of mathematics which the war had brought into particular notice, he turned his attention to it; but after some time began to entertain scruples about teaching what he had never seen, and knew only by the force of imagination. He imparted this scruple to M. Sauveur, who recommended him to the marquis d'Aligre, who luckily at that time wanted to have a mathematician with him. Parent made two campaigns with the marquis, by which he instructed himself sufficiently in viewing fortified places; of which he drew a number of plans, though he had never learned the art of drawing. From this period he spent his time in a continual application to the study of natural philosophy, and mathematics in all its branches, both speculative and practical; to which he joined anatomy, botany, and chemistry. His genius managed every thing, and yet he was incessant and indefatigable in his application. M. de Billettes, who was admitted into the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1699, with the title of their mechanician, nominated for his disciple Parent, who excelled chiefly in this branch. It was soon discovered in this society, that he engaged in all the various subjects which were brought before them; and indeed that he had a hand in every thing. But this extent of knowledge, joined to a natural impetuosity of temper, raised in him a spirit of contradiction, which he indulged on all occasions; sometimes to a degree of precipitancy highly culpable, and often with but little regard to decency. Indeed the same behaviour was shown to him, and the papers which he brought to the academy were often treated with much severity. He was charged with obscurity in his productions; and he was indeed so notorious for this fault, that he perceived it himself, and could not avoid correcting it. The king had, by a regulation in 1716, suppressed the class of scholars of the academy, which seemed to put too great an inequality betwixt the members. Parent was made a joint or assistant member for geometry; but he enjoyed this promotion but a short time; for he was taken off by the small-pox the same year, at the age of 50. He was author of a great many pieces, chiefly on mechanics and geometry.