ly; for
gallant Captain Croker was quite smitten with the girl. Poor child--she
loved, listened, and was lost; a more systematic traitor of affection
never breathed than that fine man; so she left by night her soft
intriguing broken-spirited mother, followed her Lothario from barrack to
barrack, and at last--he flung her away! Who can wonder at the reckless
and dissolute result? Whom had she to care for her--whom had she to
love? She must live thus, or starve. Without credit, character, or hope,
or help, the friendless unprotected wretch was thrown upon the town.
When the last accounts are opened, oblivious General Croker will find an
ell-long score of crimes laid to his charge, whereof he little reckons
in his sear and yellow leaf. The trusting victim of seduction has a
legion of excuses for the wretched one she is.

Again; for another case whereon the better-favoured heart may ruminate
in charity. Miss Julia Manners had a totally different experience but
man can little judge how mainly the iron hand of circumstance confined
that life-long sinner to the ways and works of guilt. In the nervous
language of the Bible--(hear it, men and women, without shrinking from
the words)--that poor girl was "the seed of the adulterer and the
whore:" born in a brothel, amongst outcasts from a better mass of
life--brought up from the very cradle amid sounds and scenes of utter
vice (whereof we dare not think or speak one moment of the many years
she dwelt continuously among them)--educated solely as a profligate, and
ignorant alike of sin, righteousness, and a judgment to come--had she
then a chance of good, or one hopeful thought of being better than she
was? The water of holy baptism never bedewed that brow; the voice of
motherly counsel never touched those ears; her eyes were unskilled to
read the records of wisdom; her feet untutored to follow after holiness;
her heart unconscious of those evils which she never knew condemned; her
soul--she never heard or thought of one! Oh, ye well-born, well-bred, ye
kindly, carefully, prayerfully instructed daughters of innocence and
purity, pause, pause, ere your charity condemns: hate the sin, but love
the sinner: think it out further, for yourselves, in all those details
which I have not time to touch, skill to describe, nor courage to
encounter; think out as kindly as ye may this episode of just
indulgence; there is wisdom in this lesson of benevolence, and
after-sweetness too, though the ea