as tenderly as if he had been its father. To be
sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but doubtless would have acted
pretty much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. The child, at
any rate, appeared to be satisfied with his behavior; for when he had held
it a considerable time, and set it down, it still favored him with its
company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we reached the confines
of the place. And on our return through the court-yard, after visiting
another part of the establishment, here again was this same little
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful, and yet dull
recognition about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the
child's mission in reference to our friend was to remind him that he was
responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of the
world in which he lived, and was not entitled to look upon a particle of
its dark calamity as if it were none of his concern: the offspring of a
brother's iniquity being his own blood-relation, and the guilt, likewise,
a burden on him, unless he expiated it by better deeds.

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, and, going up-stairs,
we found more of them in the same or a worse condition than the little
creature just described, with their mothers (or more probably other women,
for the infants were mostly foundlings) in attendance as nurses. The
matron of the ward, a middle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in
aspect, was walking to and fro across the chamber--on that weary journey
in which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually and so far, and
gain never a step of progress--with an unquiet baby in her arms. She
assured us that she enjoyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of
children; and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little people
was a sufficient proof that they could have had no experience of harsh
treatment, though, on the other hand, none of them appeared to be
attracted to one individual more than another. In this point they differed
widely from the poor child below-stairs. They seemed to recognize a
universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be
the mother of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did
Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom.
It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach
of strangers, such as I never noticed in other c