efore my eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still
suffering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can by no means
express how horrible this infant was, neither ought I to attempt it. And
yet I must add one final touch. Young as the poor little creature was, its
pain and misery had endowed it with a premature intelligence, insomuch
that its eyes seemed to stare at the by-standers out of their sunken
sockets knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and all to
witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least, I so interpreted its
look, when it positively met and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze,
and therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on whom
God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and body till this dark
and dreadful wrong be righted.

Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were underneath the chapel. The
pupils, like the children whom we had just seen, were, in large
proportion, foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked sickly, with
marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish faces, and a general tendency
to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be
uneasy within their skins, and screwed themselves about on the benches in
a disagreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the evil habits of
their parents as an innermost garment of the same texture and material as
the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long
as they lived. I saw only a single child that looked healthy; and on my
pointing him out, the governor informed me that this little boy, the sole
exception to the miserable aspect of his school-fellows, was not a
foundling, nor properly a workhouse child, being born of respectable
parentage, and his father one of the officers of the institution. As for
the remainder,--the hundred pale abortions to be counted against one
rosy-cheeked boy,--what shall we say or do? Depressed by the sight of so
much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the evils that force
themselves on my perception, I can do little more than recur to the idea
already hinted at in the early part of this article, regarding the speedy
necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any
rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute
to enervate and corrupt,--a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no
patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose