previous communication with any officer of
the Hospital must have been held by the
mother: the child must have been the
firstborn, and preference is given to cases in
which some promise of marriage has been
made to the mother, or some other deception
practised upon her. She must never have
lived with the father. The object of these
restrictions (careful personal inquiry being
made into all such points) is as much to effect
the restoration of the mother to society, as to
provide for her child.

The conditions having been favourably
reported on, the two mothers had brought
their children, and had received, filled up,
the form we quoted at the commencement of
this paper.

"Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of
Exposed and Deserted Young Children. The blank
day of blank, received a blank child. Blank, Secretary.
Note—Let this be carefully kept, that it may
be produced whenever an inquiry is made after the
health of the child (which maybe done on Mondays
between the hours of ten and four), and also in case
the child should be claimed."

Then they departed, and we saw the
children.

One was a boy; the other, a girl. A parchment
ticket inscribed with the figures 20,563
was sewn upon the shoulder-strap of the
male infant, and a similar ticket was attached
to the female infant, denoting that she was
20,564—so numerous were the babies who
had been there before them. To meet these
present babies, a couple of wholesome-looking
wetnurses had been summoned from one of
the nursing districts in Kent, by whom they
were immediately borne into the chapel to
be baptised. Here, at the altar, we found
awaiting them, the steward, the matron, the
schoolmaster, and the head nurse fit
representatives of the provision made for their
various wants—who were to be their sponsors.
The rite of baptism impressively performed
by the chaplain, gave the children the
additional identity of names.

These names have been a fruitful source of
minor difficulty. At the baptism of the first
twenty, there was present at the ceremony, a
contemporary record states, "a fine appearance
of persons of quality: His Grace the Duke of
Bedford, their Graces the Duke and Duchess
of Richmond, the Countess of Pembroke, and
several others, honouring the children with
their names, and being their sponsors."
Persons of quality not being free from a
certain tendency to play at follow my leader,
which is found to run in vulgar blood, the
early registers of the Hospital swarm with
the most aristocratic names in the land.
When the peerage was exhausted, the names
of historical celebrities were adopted; it therefore
behoves a Mark Anthony Lowell, or an
Editor of Notes and Queries, to take this
circumstance into account in "making a note
of" the pedigree of a modern Wickliffe,
Latimer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon,
Cromwell, Hampden, Hogarth, or Michael
Angelo. Celebrated real names having, in
process of time, been exhausted, the authorities
had recourse to novels, and sent into the world,
as serving-maids, innumerable Sophia
Westerns, Clarissa Harlowes, and Flora MacIvors;
innumerable hard-handed artisans as
Tom Jones, Edward Waverley, Charles
Grandison, and Humphrey Clinker. Then,
the governors were reduced to their own
names, which they distributed with the
greatest liberality, until some of their name-
sakes on growing up, occasioned inconvenience
(and possibly scandal) by claiming kith and
kin with them. The present practice is for
the treasurer to issue lists of names for
adoption; in which responsible duty he, no
doubt, derives considerable comfort from the
Post Office London Directory.

The two babies were then borne off into
Kent by their respective nurses (each of
whom gave a receipt for a deserted young
child) with little packets of clothes, a few
sensible admonitions from the matron, and
the following document:

"The Child blank, No. blank, is placed under
your care by the Governors of the FOUNDLING
HOSPITAL, and it is expected that you will pay such
attention to the said Child as will be satisfactory to
the Inspector. You will receive for the maintenance
of the said Child Sixpence per day, which will be
paid on the first day of each month according to the
number of days in the month preceding.

"Should you rear the said Child to the end of the
first year, and pay such attention to it as shall be
satisfactory to the Inspector, you will receive a
gratuity of Twenty-five Shillings at that period.

"For clothing the said Child (after the first year)
you will receive allowances as follows, viz.:

"For your trouble and expenses in coming to
London for a Child you will receive Two Shillings
from the Inspector, your coach-hire being paid by
the Governors of the Hospital.

"You are to be particularly careful in preserving
this parchment, which you must return with the
Child whenever it shall be sent up to the Hospital,
or removed from you, and it is especially required
that you keep the number of the Child always affixed
to its person. If you neglect this, the Child will be
taken from you."

When they should be old enough to walk,
these two children would be returned to the
hospital, and placed in its juvenile department.
Proceeding to visit the infant school,
which was their future destination, we found
perhaps a hundred tiny boys and girls seated
in hollow squares on the floor, like flower
borders in a garden; their teachers walking
to and fro in the paths between, sowing little
seeds of alphabet and multiplication table
broadcast among them. The sudden appearance
of the secretary and matron whom we