"And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses."—Exodus ii. 10.
MOSES BEFORE PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER.
Among the many benevolent institutions which do honour to this nation, the hospital for maintaining exposed and deserted infants may be ranked as one of the most humane and political. Let the austere enthusiast censure it as an encouragement to vice, and the rigid moralist declaim against giving sanction to profligacy, it is still an useful and a benevolent foundation.
To protect the helpless, give refuge to the innocent, and render that unoffending being a useful member of society whose parents may be too indigent to give it proper sustenance, or wicked enough to destroy it, is fulfilling one great precept of religion, and must afford a pure and exalted gratification to every philanthropic mind.[53]
That it is found necessary to restrict the plan, and confine the charity in such narrow limits, is much to be lamented. Compassion and policy demand that the doors should be open to every proper object.
To this asylum for deserted infancy Mr. Hogarth was one of the earliest benefactors,[54] and to their institution presented the picture from which this print is engraved; there is not perhaps in holy writ another story so exactly suitable to the avowed purpose of the foundation.
The history of Moses being deserted by his mother, exposed among the bulrushes, and discovered and protected by the daughter of Pharaoh, is known to every one who has read the Bible: those who have not, may find it there recorded, with many other things well worthy their attention. At the point of time here taken, the child's mother, whom the Princess considers as merely its nurse, has brought him to his patroness, and is receiving from the treasurer the wages of her services. The little foundling naturally clings to his nurse, though invited to leave her by the daughter of a monarch. The eyes of an attendant, and a whispering Ethiopian, convey an oblique suspicion that the child has a nearer affinity to their mistress than she chooses to acknowledge.[55]