ts for instructing two or three blind children, "by way of
experiment," and from that period the increase of its action and
resources has been constant. Pupils are received for one hundred and
thirty dollars a year, and the State has made provision for the
maintenance at the institution of one hundred and twenty-eight indigent
blind persons, so that it is always nearly full. The system of
instruction includes the common English studies, with philosophy and the
higher mathematics, mechanics, vocal and instrumental music, and, when
desired, such trades as the blind can advantageously practise. The
library contains more than seven hundred volumes in raised letters,
besides a considerable collection printed in ink. The occasional
exhibitions of the pupils have excited much attention, and the
institution may be regarded as altogether one of the most successful of
its kind in the world.

[Illustration: THE INSTITUTION FOR THE BLIND.]

In 1797 the celebrated Isabella Graham founded the Society for the
Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children, and in the spring of 1806,
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, the widow of the great statesman, and Mrs.
Bethune, a daughter of Mrs. Graham and the mother of the Rev. Dr.
Bethune, with several associates, established, as a branch of that
institution, the Orphan Asylum of the City of New-York, which was
incorporated in 1807. Its first edifice was in Bank-street, but the
enlargement of its activity and resources in 1836 led to the purchase of
the ample and beautiful grounds near Eightieth-street, five miles from
the City Hall, from which the edifice described in the engraving looks
down on the Hudson, and forms one of the most picturesque views which
greet the traveller who approaches the city by the river from the north.
The eminent women whom we have mentioned continue, after nearly half a
century, to be active in its management.

[Illustration: THE ORPHAN ASYLUM.]

There is also a Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum in Sixth Avenue, a Roman
Catholic Orphan Asylum, conducted by Sisters of Charity, in Mott-street,
a Roman Catholic Half-Orphan Asylum in Eleventh-street, a very large
Colored Orphan Asylum in Twelfth-street, and several other
establishments of the same description, supported by public or private
charity, in different parts of the city. New-York is second only to
Philadelphia in the liberality of its provision for orphan children: the
college founded by Stephen Girard places the latter c