sity of demons to spill each other's blood; while they are enjoying peace and all its concomitant blessings! How many weeping children stand around the dying beds of their tender, but, alas! expiring parents. Like monumental grief, they stand to take a long and last farewell, while their parents' solicitude for their welfare continues to the last. A blessing is all their patrimonial inheritance; and with it they are thrown defenceless and forlorn on an unfriendly and unfeeling world! Here I must cease. My palpitating, tremulous heart almost weeps blood at anticipating the nameless and latent woes that await the unconscious innocents. Fain would I relinquish the painful prospective, but it recurs with redoubled force to my wounded mind. And you, my dear children, my earthly riches, and my all, who are now wrapped in the arms of peaceful slumber, unconscious of your future fate, and dead to future woe, perhaps, these scenes of toil, these incessant struggles with human depravity, degradation and poverty; these sad vicissitudes which render life one scene of suffering and woe, will be your portion, when your earthly parents are mouldering to their native dust, the sport of worms and the victims of corruption. What tongue can tell, what imagination can conceive the miseries peculiar to the defenceless orphan, especially if a female; perhaps led into the devious paths of folly by the votaries of seduction, those murderers of the human soul, those traitors to the human race, who like the prowling wolf in the woodlands, or the voracious shark in the briny deep, go about seeking whom they may destroy and ruin. Torture of mind, agony of heart, depravity of morals, a torpid insensibility to all moral obligations, are the result of their ravages on the person of the ruined female orphan. How How much more merciful would it be for the seducers and traducers of defenceless female innocence, to assassinate the unconscious victims of their brutal lust, and send them guiltless to a world of spirits, before they lay the foundation of accumulated crimes and complicated degradation. I had almost said, that murder was no crime when compared to seduction; because the former may free the soul from terrestrial infelicity, and land it in eternal glory; while the latter produces supreme wretchedness here, and unutterable torment hereafter; for, if I have no intention to commit a crime, but am solicited and persuaded by another to perpetrate it, that person is the efficient, the virtual cause of whatever sufferings I endure for the perpetration of that crime. great, how enormously great, must the guilt of such characters be, who take a peculiar delight to undermine the foundation of civil society, by committing such sable crimes, as cry to Heaven for more plagues than vengeance has in store; for there is a train of evils too horrid to mention connected with this crime more than any other: for instance, in the case of murder, one person is only injured in drunkenness, the delinquent is generally the greatest sufferer: in envy, the culprit is always the most tormented: and the thief who robs me of my purse, robs me of trash which may easily be replaced with industry and economy: but the villain who robs the innocent defenceless virgin of her virtue, bereaves society of a gem that might become its brightest ornament, and its boast, namely, the virtuous mother of a respectable family; and lets loose, sends forth, constitutes and qualifies a pest, a curse, a disgrace to society, who will in future live to ensnare and enslave others, trample upon her own character, expose her constitution, murder her soul, and at last die the victim of a fearful and fatal disorder, and a tortured mind, cursing with her last breath the murderer of her body and soul. This is no theatrical exhibition, no speculative reasoning: the misfortune is, these observations are too true. To particularize the real number of prostitutes who crowd our city, (some of them not more than twelve or fourteen years old) would make even a hoary headed debauchee shrink appalled, and shock the most unprincipled libertine. And the reason these shocking sights are viewed with indifference by the professors of religion, as well as the profane, is, because they are so common and numerous that the heart of charity is not warmed by viewing them. The social tear of benevolence forgets to flow unbidden, and the wide wish of philanthropy to dilate for them. As we inadvertently suggested a few spontaneous thoughts to those who call themselves the rich and the great, we will take the liberty to resume the subject by the following desultory remarks. The rich, as well as the poor, are particularly interested in the subject of our investigation. Indeed, the prosperity, nay, the very existence of society, is connected with it. The children of rich parents are, by no means, out of the reach of disaster; and, however they may feed their vanity and nurture their pride, they are, in common with others, obnoxious to diversified vicissitudes, misfortunes and temptations. With sympathetic pity, I view the futile, vain, and absurd pursuits of the personages who compose what are called the higher circles, though many of them are not only the children of poor parents, but were oris nally poor themselves; but either by industry or economy, by fraud or force, have accumulated riches, and of course, popularity; when lo! they forget their origin, and look down with sovereign contempt upon their poor brethren. When the rich are so peculiarly favored by Providence above millions of their fellow creatures, how great must their ingratitude be, if they neglect to return their thankful acknowledgments to the Author of all their mercies; and with their lives, as well as their lips, celebrate the great Creator's praise. Let us inquire for what purpose does the Deity bestow riches upon a part of the human race. Is it to spend in vanity and superfluity? Surely not: but to be appropriated to the most benevolent purposes, to wit, the support of God's poor; for he sends the poor and needy to the rich man's door, to try his heart; and the same pity which he shows to them, will God show to him at a future day. And every rich man should pray for power to say and feel the force of these lines: Teach me to feel another's woe, The mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me." There are three grand objects that the rich have in view whilst accumulating this world's goods. First, a false notion they entertain of the power and respectability of riches; a desire of making a magnificent appearance in the world; and, above all, a resolution to leave their children independent fortunes. These are the phantoms which too many live and die in the pursuit of, who spend their short probationary state, in providing with great economy and industry, for their children, that which proves their ruin and disgrace. Riches cannot produce a moment of real happiness, though all in the world were at our disposal. Nay, riches have the direct tendency to destroy all real felicity by drawing mart from the pursuit of religious duties; and are of ten the source of burdensome cares and perplexing disquietudes. How preposterous and absurd it is for people to spend their time in hoarding up riches, for the splendid accommodation of their children, when they are in their graves; and yet, forsooth, neglect to inculcate the precepts of moral rectitude and virtue on their juvenile minds. The thought never occurs to them, that wealth can only make them appear externally happy and respectable, but that virtue alone can make them appear externally and feel internally happy, amidst all the vicissitudes incident to our mortal state. They will not learn wisdom from experience. We see the extravagant children of parsimonious parents, spend in vanity and dissipation the immense fortunes accumulated by their progenitors: and when that is gone, having been brought up in idleness, and unaccustomed to industry, the spendthrift, makes use of unlawful means to replenish his purse; and he is consequently brought to a premature and ignominious end. Thus are they, by the impolicy of their injudicious parents, incapacitated for performing their duty to society, and to their Almighty Creator. Finally, when a man accumulates riches for the purpose of offering a sacrifice at the shrine of vanity and ambition, he falls into sundry temptations, and pierces himself and his progeny with many sorrows. He opens the floodgates of temptation upon them ter |