bless our neighbour. The human soul can perceive this, and yet the beauty of the earth is everywhere defaced with jails and gibbets! Angelic natures can never deride, else were there loud laughter in heaven at the discord between man's perceptions and his practice.

At Long Island Farms I found six hundred children, supported by the public. It gives them wholesome food, comfortable clothing, and the common rudiments of education. For this it deserves praise. But the aliment which the spirit craves, the public has not to give. The young heart asks for love, yearns for love-but its own echo returns to it through empty halls, instead of answer.

The institution is much lauded by visiters, and not without reason; for everything looks clean and comfortable, and the children appear happy. The drawbacks are such as inevitably belong to their situation, as children of the public. The oppressive feeling is, that there are no mothers there. Everything moves by machinery, as it always must with masses of children, never subdivided into families. In one place, I saw a stack of small wooden guns, and was informed that the boys were daily drilled to military exercises, as a useful means of forming habits of order, as well as fitting them for the future service of the state. Their infant school evolutions partook of the same drill character; and as for their religion, I was informed that it was beautiful to see them pray; for at the first tip of the whistle, they all dropped on their knees.' Alas, poor childhood, thus doth 'church and state' provide for thee! The state arms thee with wooden guns, to play the future murderer, and the church teaches thee to pray in platoons, 'at the first tip of the whistle.' Luckily they cannot drive the angels from thee, or most assuredly they would do it, pro bono publico.

The sleeping-rooms were clean as a Shaker's

apron. When I saw the long rows of nice little beds, ranged side by side, I inquired whether there was not a merry buzz in the morning. They are not permitted to speak at all in the sleeping apartments,' replied the superintendent. The answer sent a chill through my heart. I acknowledged that in such large establishments the most exact method was necessary, and I knew that the children had abundant opportunity for fun and frolic in the sunshine and the open fields, in the after part of the day; but it is so natural for all young things to crow and sing when they open their eyes to the morning light, that I could not bear to have the cheerful instinct perpetually repressed.

The hospital for these children is on the neighbouring island of Blackwell. This establishment, though clean and well supplied with outward comforts, was the most painful sight I ever witnessed. About one hundred and fifty children were there, mostly orphans, inheriting every variety of disease from vicious and sickly parents. In beds all of a row, or rolling by dozens over clean matting on the floor, the poor little pale, shrivelled, and blinded creatures were waiting for death to come and release them. Here the absence of a mother's love was most agonizing; not even the patience and gentleness of a saint could supply its place; and saints are rarely hired by the public. There was a sort of resignation expressed in the countenances of some of the little ones, which would have been beautiful in maturer years, but in childhood it spoke mournfully of a withered soul. It was pleasant to think that a large proportion of them would soon be received by the angels, who will doubtless let them sing in the morning.

That the law of Love may cheer and bless even public establishments, has been proved by the example of the Society of Friends. They formerly had an establishment for their own poor, in the city of

Philadelphia, on a plan so simple and so beautiful, that one cannot but mourn to think it has given place to more common and less brotherly modes of relief. A nest of small households enclosed, on three sides, an open space devoted to gardens, in which each had a share. Here each poor family lived in separate rooms, and were assisted by the Society according to its needs. Sometimes a widow could support herself, with the exception of rent; and in that case, merely rooms were furnished gratis. An aged couple could perhaps subsist very comfortably, if supplied with house and fuel; and the friendly assistance was according to their wants. Some needed entire support; and to such it was ungrudgingly given. These paupers were oftentimes ministers and elders, took the highest seats in the meeting-house, and had as much influence as any in the affairs of the Society. Everything conspired to make them retain undiminished self-respect. The manner in which they evinced this would be considered impudence in the tenets of our modern alms-houses. One old lady being supplied with a load of wood at her free lodgings, refused to take it, saying, that it did not suit her; she wanted dry, small wood. 'But,' remonstrated the man, 'I was ordered to bring it here.' 'I can't help that. Tell 'em the best wood is the best economy. I do not want such wood as that.' Her orders were obeyed, and the old lady's wishes were gratified. Another, who took great pride and pleasure in the neatness of her little garden, employed a carpenter to make a trellis for her vines. Some objection was made to paying this bill, it being considered a mere superfluity. But the old lady maintained that it was necessary for her comfort; and at meetings and all public places, she never failed to rebuke the elders. O you profess to do unto others as you would be done by, and you have never paid that carpenter his bill.' Worn out by her perseverance, they paid the bill, and she kept her trellis of vines. It probably

was more necessary to her comfort than many things they would have considered as not superfluous.

The poor of this establishment did not feel like dependents, and were never regarded as a burden. They considered themselves as members of a family, receiving from brethren the assistance they would have gladly bestowed under a reverse of circumstances. This approaches the gospel standard. Since the dawn of Christianity, no class of people have furnished an example so replete with a most wise tenderness, as the Society of Friends, in the days of its purity. Thank God, nothing good or true ever dies. The lifeless form falls from it, and it lives elsewhere.

LETTER XXX.

November 13, 1842.

Oh, who that has not been shut up in the great prison cell of a city, and made to drink of its brackish springs, can estimate the blessings of the Croton Aqueduct? clean, sweet, abundant water! Well might they bring it thirty miles under-ground, and usher it into the city with roaring cannon, sonorous bells, waving flags, floral canopies, and a loud chorus of song!

I shall never forget my sensations when I first looked upon the Fountains. My soul jumped, and clapped its hands, rejoicing in exceeding beauty. I am a novice, and easily made wild by the play of graceful forms; but those, accustomed to the splendid displays of France and Italy, say the world offers nothing to equal the magnificence of the NewYork jets. There is such a head of water, that it throws the column sixty feet into the air, and drops it into the basin in a shower of diamonds. The one in the Park, opposite the Astor house, consists of a large central pipe, with eighteen subordinate jets in a basin a hundred feet broad. By shifting the plate

of the conduit pipe, these fountains can be made to assume various shapes: The Maid of the Mist, the Croton Plume, the Vase, the Dome, the Bouquet, the Sheaf of Wheat, and the Weeping-willow. As the sun shone on the sparkling drops, through mist and feathery foam, rainbows glimmered at the sides, as if they came to celebrate a marriage between Spirits of Light and Water Nymphs.

The fountain in Union Park is smaller, but scarcely less beautiful. It is a weeping willow of crystal drops; but one can see that it weeps for joy. Now it leaps and sports as gracefully as Undine in her wildest moods, and then sinks into the vase under a veil of woven pearl, like the undulating farewell courtesy of her fluid relations. On the evening of the great Croton celebration, they illuminated this Fountain with coloured fireworks, kindling the cloud of mist with many coloured gems; as if the Water Spirits had had another wedding with Fairies of the Diamond Mines.

I went out to Harlaem, the other day, to see the great jet of water, which there rises a hundred and eighteen feet into the air, and falls through a belt of rainbows. Water will rise to its level, as surely as the morality of a nation, or a sect, rises to its idea of God. They to whom God is the Almighty, rather than the Heavenly Father, do not understand that the highest ideal of Justice is perfect and universal Love. They cannot perceive this: for both spiritually and naturally water never rises above the level of its source. But how sublimely it rushes upward to find its level! As I gazed in loving wonder on that beautiful column, it seemed to me a fitting type of those pure, free spirits, who, at the smallest opening, spring upward to the highest, revealing to all mankind the true level of the religious idea of their age. But, alas, here is the stern old conflict between Necessity and Free-will. The column, by the law of its being, would rise quite to the level of its source; but as the