by it is occupied; but often with children who would have learned more of domestic affection and family virtue, and thus have made better heads of families in their turn, had they remained at their father's hearth, where they might, out of his honest earnings, have been educated in the parish school, and grown stout and hearty on his homely fare.

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In America the order of progress is reversed. pressing want is felt—a man or woman with energy, and a Christian heart to guide it, falls in with two or three orphans. What is to be done with them? Some compassionate friends are consulted. They join purses, hire a room, and engage a nurse. sently another and another claimant on their humanity appears. They must hire a larger house. They must interest a wider circle, and by that means find access to their purses. Before another year passes over them, you shall find them under legislative protection, making their laws, receiving legacies, purchasing lots, and at last erecting a handsome and substantial edifice. By the time the building is finished, the inmates rejoice to enter on its more roomy and airy premises.

I believe I am correct in giving this as the history of the Orphan, the Half Orphan, and the Coloured Orphan Asylums, the Home for the Friendless, and the Coloured Home. It is not first a gorgeous palace, and then the inmates. It is first the cry of the widow and fatherless, then the heart stirred with compassion, and after that the house of shelter.

Edinburgh has many institutions the result of spontaneous benevolence. But it is a contradictory state of things, that, while we have magnificent asylums which are not much required, the really important places, such as the Refuge, the Night Refuge, the Maternity Hospital, the Shelter, the Delinquents' Refuges, and the Ragged Schools, can barely find funds to sustain them. One circumstance which depresses our charities is, that in our thronged population, if once one becomes a claimant for external help, he is likely always to be a burden. There is no room to plant him, no hope of being rid of him. In America thousands get a lift when under casual pressure, and pass on. Newlylanded and newly-born emigrants are aided in their extremity, but soon find place and means of support, and are heard of no more. In a year or two they are thriving "down east," or "out west," adding to the resources of the country instead of burdening them.

In examining the reports with which, without waiting for solicitation on my part, I was in every place bountifully furnished, I find evidence that necessity is invariably first proved, and then it operates as the mainspring of action. Thus the applications for a night's shelter, made at the Rosine House, Philadelphia, by women who had not the melancholy claim of its poor wanderer inmates, led to the formation of the " Temporary Home Association," for the benefit of friendless

women and children, somewhat on the plan of our House of Industry, or our Servants' and Sailors' Homes houses which not only alleviate present necessities, but act as preventives against surrounding dangers.

Were it not for fear of prolixity, it would be an enjoyment to myself to describe minutely what is to be seen in many of these charitable retreats from the world's hardships. I might mention the contented expression of countenance of many a dusky woman approaching to her eightieth year, and her expressions, not of complaint in the midst of infirmities, but of gratitude that God had afforded her a comfortable bed and room, with only other three in it, to wait so quietly in, till He calls her home. I might describe the sick-ward in the Coloured Home, and the tender pity of the ladies, flitting from couch to couch, reading with one, giving a tract to another, and speaking kindly to a third. I might tell of my deep interest in the coloured orphans in another house-their lively recital of lessons, their almost lightning-look, questioning of each other in turntheir skill in the geography of the United States— their sweet and cheerful songs, so well adapted to the country and to themselves. I might tell of little ones there, under strong spiritual influence, taking charge of putting some younger than themselves to bed, and being overheard, evening after evening, exhorting, imploring, and praying with them. I might mention their essays laid in the committee

room for inspection, quite equal to any productions of white children, whose ages and opportunities are equal.

We might go to Philadelphia and spend hours with the indigent widows and single women, in their airy house-learn their histories from themselves, and admire the plants they cherish, the wool they knit, the silken patchwork they make, and the tranquillity they enjoy. Or, with the ladies of the Nurse Society, we might inquire into the events in the district of each during the month, and learn how many lives have been saved by proper supplies of necessaries and kind attentions in the hours of nature's sorrow; or admire the economy of a charity that can succour so many at so cheap a rate. Many poor emigrants, with families of little children, have touched our country just in time to make a native of their youngest born, without the means of providing for themselves or little ones, and Providence, who clothes the lilies of the field, has mercifully afforded relief through the patrons of the Moyamensing district of the Nurse Society."*

A pile of reports, a foot deep, interest without tiring one who has the buildings, the ladies, and the objects of their charity, placed by them, afresh before her eyes, but they cannot interest others in the same way.

It is enough to say, that the footsteps of Mrs Graham-whose name is familiar and honoured in

* Eleventh Report of the Nurse Society of Philadelphia.

Scotland-and of her friend Mrs Hoffman, have been followed steadily by her successors. The judgment, the economy, the healthful regulations, and the Christian influences, which she was so happy as to introduce into the Orphan Asylum, her Widows' Society, and her Sabbath-schools, forty-five years since, are still the pattern of her state and city. Happy she to have fallen on a time which opened the way for the exercise of all her Christian piety and skill! Happy time, in its necessities, that had an Isabella Graham for a guide in the outset of philanthropic effort!

It is now more than thirty years since Dr Mason saw, for the first time, an English edition of that good woman's life on our table. He was glad to see it, and told us of her family; so that to meet her now venerable daughter, Mrs Bethune, still, at the end of forty-five years, acting as first Directress of that same Orphan Asylum which her mother founded, was like finding a link which bound the past and the departed to the present and the useful.

How few live to see a good work advance in its useful cause without once being turned aside, for nearly half a century! How pleasant was it to stand in the noble mansion at Bloomingdale, the monument of the States' benevolence, and hear of the small beginning of the asylum, and look on the portraits of benefactors now in heaven! How pleasant to hear large and accurately taught bands of orphans examined, to look on their thriving countenances, to