One exception to the rule of non-intercourse is related, where a medical attendant certified that the sanity of one unhappy woman might be affected unless she was allowed to see her child.
Twice or thrice in the year the boys are permitted to take an excursion to Primrose Hill; but at other times (except when sent on errands), and the girls at all times—are kept within the hospital walls. This confinement so affects their growth, that few of either sex attain to the average height of men and women.
It is a curious old place, this hospital for Foundlings, and full of memories. Here are some of Hogarth's best efforts as a portrait painter, and it was for this hospital that Handel wrote his glorious oratorio of the "Messiah." The organ, so magnificent in tone, which is placed in the chapel, was also the gift of Handel.
The high old-fashioned reading desk, from whence the chaplain expounds the scriptures; the side galleries in the style of George I, and the pillars that seem to tell of the days of Addison and Sterne and Swift, and all the rest of that galaxy who made the Augustan age of England—the rows of high backed benches such as are to be met with in all the London churches, built after the architectural period of Wren and Inigo Jones—combined with the low full toned voices of the boys and girls, as they raise the Anthem, seem to make the place a haven of rest and an abode of happiness for the poor world outcasts.
Then there is the girls' dining-room, hung with some fine paintings and works of art. The girls enter and take their stand, each in her proper place, against the long row of tables that extends from end to end of the room, the crowds forming a lane on either side.
A moment's pause, and a sweet voice is heard saying grace: the utterer being that modest looking girl at the centre of the table, who from her superior height and appearance seems chosen as one of the oldest among her companions. Scarcely has she finished before another girl, at the end of the table, dispenses with the ease and rapidity of habit, from the large dishes of baked meat and vegetables before her, the dinners of the expectant children, plate following plate with marvelous rapidity, till all are satisfied.
This room occupies a great portion of one side of the edifice.
In the boys' room the evolutions of the lads preparatory to taking dinner are most interesting. The change at once, and without blunder, hesitation, or want of concert, from a two deep to a three deep line, then they beat time, march, turn and turn again, until the welcome word is given for the final march to the dinner table. Thousands of the citizens of London visit this hospital yearly, and ladies are particularly interested in all that pertains to its welfare.
It has been enriched by innumerable bequests, and has a revenue of over £120,000 a year from rents, stock, and other sources.
The charities of London are incalculable in their extent, and it is my belief that no other city in the world—excepting Paris—possesses so many and such various institutions where the sick, naked, and needy are taken in and cared for. And yet with all this benevolence, there is a pharisaical spirit of ostentation at the bottom of every pound that is given, and the pupils of the beneficed schools, the inmates of the almshouses, the patients in the various hospitals, and the vagrants and lost ones in reformatories, refuges, and model lodging houses are drilled, uniformed, preached at, exhibited to the public, and ventilated in the newspapers, while the donations of those who have established the charities are be-puffed and be-lauded until the stranger is astonished at the mountains of cant which smother the work of so many generously benevolent people.