ived at the hospital are, if healthy, put out at
once to nurse in the country, and the parentage of the child is
recorded. Unhealthy children are kept under hospital treatment. Nurses
from the country constantly present themselves for employment, and do
not usually receive more than one or two dollars a month for their
trouble. After two years of nursing, the child is returned and
transferred to the department for orphans. There are a little short of
three hundred children in the hospital, and as many as thirteen thousand
constantly out at nurse in the country. The internal arrangements of the
hospital are very ingenious and good. Every convenience which can add to
the comfort of the infants is at hand, and the deserted little beings
are rendered much more comfortable than one would naturally suppose to
be within the range of possibility.

The hospital for orphans is in the same building, and is well arranged.
The orphan department and the foundling hospital, are under the special
care of the sisters of charity.

There is, perhaps, no more strange sight in all Paris, than the
assemblage of babies in the apartments of the Foundling Hospital. To see
them ranged around the walls of the rooms in cradles, attended by the
nurses, will excite a smile, and yet, when we reflect how sad is the lot
of these innocents, the smile will vanish. They are deprived of that to
which, by virtue of existence, every human being is entitled--a home,
and the affectionate care of father and mother. To be entirely shut out
from all these blessings, really makes existence a curse, and it were
better if these thousands had never been born.

On visiting the hospital, I rang a bell and was admitted by a polite
porter, and a female attendant conducted us through the various
apartments. I was at once struck with the exceeding tidiness of
everything. The floors were of polished oak, and the walls of plaster
polished like glass. One of the first rooms we were shown into contained
forty or fifty babies, ranged in rows along the wall. The cradles were
covered with white drapery, and their appearance was very neat. Four
long rows stretched across the apartment, and in the center there was a
fire, round which the nurses were gathered, attending to the wants of
the hungry and complaining babies. But if the sight of the cradles was
pleasant, the noise which greeted my ear was far otherwise. At least
twenty-five of the children were crying all at once, and _