268

FOUNDLING HOSPITALS.

itself. It is indeed difficult, or rather impossible, for manto proportion punishment to delinquency, or the just degreeof guilt. But, if legislators have tried in vain to checkthe accidents of humanity, to curb the cruel designs of thevoluptuous, and to prevent the impulse of nature, it is invain to look for a radical benefit, except from the resultof a wise legislature, whose views are directed by benevo-lence.

However, to render this crime less frequent, to ease thedreadful apprehensions of compunctuous conscience, the prac-tice of exposing infants in some public place was adopted, inthe hope that some humane being might find the little helplessstrangers, and would take care they should be educatedand maintained. Parents thought, that since they werecompelled to make the choice of one of the two evils, ex-position to chance was less barbarous than positive murder.Hence, in all nations possessing natural feelings, this ex-pedient has been universally adopted. With this view,choice has been made of market-places, temples, walls, theangle where two ways crossed each other, places resortedunto for bathing; even sometimes children were placed inthe very water, but deposited in some little vessel or other,where they might be kept warm and at the same time dry.Such was the case of Moses ; at the time the Egyptianmonarch’s cruel decree compelled the destruction of theHebrew male children. The action of drawing up from thewater is presumed to come from the imperative mood of theHebrew verb niggash, i. e. njfiWin tenuggashnah,

Ye women draw it out diligently. “ And the child grew, andshe brought him unto Pharaoh 's daughter, and he became herson, and she called his name Moses : and said, because Idrew him out of the water." Exod. ii. 10.

At Athens, children were commonly exposed in thatplace called Cynosarges, which was one of the gymnasia.Such was the fate of the infant whom Cerusa bore to Apollo,as we are informed by Euripides .

■— - £lf <3 5aSe Xp° yc '>

TexSet If otxotf , Scvr,viytti (SgtQof

Elf TStvToy aFTpoF, «9r££ fj vnao’Qv} Seal,

K^itfcra* xaHTiSytri f wf SaFtyiEForKoiXw? If «ft wrriyof lvTpo%u xvxhu,

IIpoyoFUF fo/xof trwlpc-a, t3 t« yny if3{

EpipgSoFia.

“ The time she’d counted being expir’d,

“ A boy, the produce of the stol’n embrace,