lasting effect-if your admonitions had then been employed, they might have been employed in vain.

However this discourse may have exceeded the usual limits, I cannot close it without marking two circumstances in the situation of these children which press strongly upon my mind; and which therefore I shall take the liberty of pointing out, not for your information but for your encouragement. Now our compassion, it is well known, acquires new tenderness and new activity from the consideration of their sex, which, indeed, has in all civilized countries been thought entitled to an extraordinary degree of protection, and which is not generally treated with cruelty and rudeness, except in periods of the coarsest ignorance and most brutal barbarism. So strong indeed were the impressions which female weakness and female innocence formerly made upon the Roman legislators, that upon the death of their parents proper persons were provided by the laws to guard that weakness, and to watch over that innocence. Similar, in spirit at least, is the care you take for the education of these little ones, and scarcely inferior in kind or degree are the advantages they derive from that care. In our country many seminaries are established for the instruction of boys; but for reasons which at present need not be enumerated, fewer provisions are made for the other sex. I must however in candour hope, that their want of importance in society will not be urged as a plea for that neglect, which it is vain to dissemble. In the higher walks of life they sweeten the charming

hours of domestic privacy-they provide repose for men whose tempers have been ruffled, and whose passions are agitated in the tumultuous struggles of ambition. They soften the native ruggedness and ferocity of our own masculine character-they cultivate many elegant arts with brilliant success; and they have given rise not only to the polish of exterior manners, but to that inward delicacy of sentiment which sometimes supplies the place of benevolence, and sometimes sheds a new lustre upon its noblest exertions. In the more humble stations, they contribute largely to the improvement of the community, and to the general stock of happiness, which social life in all its various forms can afford. Unfit as they may be for rougher employments, they have their share in some departments of the most laborious and most lucrative arts. Even in their menial capacities they produce many of those comforts and conveniences which bind us by the fondest attachments to our private families; they have habits of cleanliness, of sobriety, and obedience which often are not to be found among men of the same condition. They may also set up a very peculiar claim to our constant and even affectionate regard, if we consider, that through the successive stages of our existence, from the cradle to the grave, we experience the effects of their softer sensibilities and their minuter cares. Were we not cherished by them while, in a state of helpless infancy, we as yet were hanging upon our mothers' breasts? When we are drooping with faintness, or tossed with anguish on the bed of sickness, do not

their unremitted watchings, their anxious attentions, their little nameless, but most soothing and most endearing offices compose our troubled spirits, and refresh our wearied limbs? Even in our last aweful moments, when every other resource has failed us, the terrors of impending death are in some degree assuaged by their tender assiduities and their sympathetic tears. Such are the services which even these humblest objects of your charity may hereafter be called upon to perform-to yourselves it may be, or to your children; and their ability to perform them well must be much increased if, through your liberality and under your directions, they are trained up in diligence, in honesty, and in the fear of the Lord.

The last circumstance I shall mention is to be found in their age. At the time when they enter into the lowest class of your school they are susceptible of many good impressions-they are beginning to draw off their blind and vagrant curiosity from mere trifles-their reason is sufficiently ripened to comprehend such plain instructions as you have provided for them. If from the unfeeling negligence or the vicious examples of their parents they have contracted any moral contagion, there is time surely to apply every proper and efficacious remedy. If they come with any wrong propensities of their own, such I mean as are generally ascribed to our natural disposition, but are really the produce of habits very early begun and insensibly increased, they will find in your school more effectual checks than their own families

would have supplied. The dread of punishment, a sense of shame, the good instructions which they hear, the good examples which they see-all these are at hand to subdue the fierceness of their tem

pers, and to correct the obliquity of their principles. Should they be fortunate enough to bring with them a better turn of mind, or a greater portion of talents, they will here meet with many opportunities for strengthening the one and for improving the other. Their good behaviour will not pass altogether unnoticed; and to behave well many of them will be solicitous, as they are often summoned, to stand in the presence of superiors whom it may be their pride to please, and of benefactors whom it is their duty to obey. These advantages extend through all the intermediate stages of education, and they act with yet greater force in the close of it, when they are called up to more difficult employments, which are happily recommended to them, not only from their intrinsic utility, but because the permission to engage in them is a sort of distinction and favour conferred upon them for their former conduct. At this period they are qualified, I understand, more immediately for domestic stations; and if they make a right use of your institution, they will be prepared to act a better part in society, whether they be employed as servants, or engaged in some of the labours connected with trade, or rise, in consequence of their probity and industry, to the more honourable and useful offices which belong to mistresses of families. Their time of life, God knows, is then most critical indeed;

for they are beset by numberless temptations and numberless dangers-by temptations which the young and the unwary often do not resist; and by dangers which they cannot always foresee or avert. But the task you allot them calls them aside, for a season at least, from the solicitations of the seducer; and the instructions you give them may hereafter fortify their minds against the violence of their own passions. He indeed that, with a truly philosophical or a truly religious spirit, reflects upon the perils or the disasters to which young women are exposed-upon the snares which surround their innocence-upon the disgrace which pursues their indiscretion-upon the poverty, the distresses, and the diseases which overtake them in the short career of their vices-such a man in the first moment of reflection upon such a subject, will find himself either oppressed with the deepest melancholy, or racked with the keenest anguish. But the sorrows of his heart will find some relief in the tendency of your wise and good Institution. When he considers the advantages of it to these friendless females, he will adore the goodness of God in permitting them to receive. But when he looks back upon himself as the appointed instrument of preventing such alarming offences and such complicated miseries, he will exult with honest joy in this exercise of charity-he will assent with unshaken confidence to the words of the Lord Jesus-he will experimentally feel and acknowledge that it is most blessed to give.