INTRODUCTION.

IX

of an unfortunate being sinking before them under the accumulatedweight of indigence and infirmities !

The most enlightened part of mankind, in those distant ages,was almost equally divided into two sects of philosophers. Butwhat efforts of humanity could be expected, either from the Stoics, •who, taught to despise pain and misery in their own persons,were naturally insensible to the sufferings of others, or from thefollowers of Epicurus, whose happiness consisted in the successiveenjoyment of sensual pleasures, which the spectacle of an unfortu-nate fellow-creature would have only served to interrupt ?

Neither do the boasted religion and government of China orIndia, offer any asylum to either master or slave, reduced to povertyor suffering from sickness. Those, indeed, who believed in themetempsychosis, erected hospitals for animals, into which even themost impure were received: man alone was forgotten.

It was, then, reserved for Christianity to shed its benigninfluence around, and bestow this new blessing on a suffering world.

To the honour of the female sex let it be said, that a woman wasthe first founder of such a pious institution in the capital of theworld.

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