dded in lieu of her
who had been successsful, were marked for a second chance on the same
day of the following year, when a second prize of the same value would
be presented: thus a new candidate will be added every year, that
every maiden who has been educated in this hospital, and preserved her
character without reproach, may have a chance for the noble donation,
which is also accompanied with the sum of five pounds to defray the
expense of the wedding entertainment. One scarce knows whether most
to admire the plan, or commend the humanity of this excellent
institution.--Of equal and perhaps superior merit was another charitable
establishment, which also took effect about this period. A small number
of humane individuals, chiefly citizens of London, deeply affected with
the situation of common prostitutes, who are certainly the most forlorn
of all human creatures, formed a generous resolution in their favour,
such as even the best men of the kingdom had never before the courage to
avow. They considered that many of these unhappy creatures, so wretched
in themselves, and so productive of mischief to society, had been
seduced to vice in their tender years by the perfidious artifice of the
other sex, or the violence of unruly passion, before they had acquired
experience to guard against the one, or foresight to perceive the
fatal consequences of the other; that the jewel, reputation, being thus
irretrievably lost, perhaps in one unguarded moment, they were covered
with shame and disgrace, abandoned by their families, excluded from all
pity, regard, and assistance; that, stung by self-conviction, insulted
with reproach, denied the privilege of penitence and contrition, cut off
from all hope, impelled by indigence, and maddened by despair, they had
plunged into a life of infamy, in which they were exposed to deplorable
vicissitudes of misery, and the most excruciating pangs of reflection
that any human being could sustain; that whatever remorse they might
feel, howsoever they might detest their own vice, or long for an
opportunity of amendment, they were entirely destitute of all means of
reformation. They were not only deprived of all possibility of profiting
by those precious moments of repentance, and becoming again useful
members of society; but, in order to earn a miserable subsistence,
were obliged to persevere in the paths of prostitution, and act as
the instruments of heaven's vengeance in propagating distemper and