THE

HERE is evil enough here in NewYork, and suffering enough too, to appal Beelzebub himself-the commixture of all nations nearly, so many thousands of people constantly in transitu, the great ingress of criminals and paupers, the very débris of European populations, and not a little suffering from the usual misfortunes of life among our own people, make of this vast community a strange, phantasmagoric picture of life. Over the huge aggregate of evil, however, play many benign, relieving lights. No city in this country -and that is equivalent to saying no city in the world-provides more abundantly, in proportion to its magnitude, for the claims of the poor. We mean literally what we say. The pauper appropriations of the city are unparalleled; a gigantic system of voluntary charity, with agents in every ward, and almost every street, provides for the worthy poor during the worst of the winter; nearly every Church has its charitable provisions; and the name of nearly every nation of Europe is borne by some humane organization, founded by its children who reside among us.

Besides these beneficent provisions, our metropolis is adorned by numerous charitable edifices, the monuments of a noble liberality, and the refuge of much suffering. We design to give, from time to time, engravings of some of these structures, with brief accounts of them.

H*

Our present cut represents the Orphan Asylum. It looks down very picturesquely upon the Hudson, from a commanding site, between seventy-third and seventyfourth streets, at the distance of about five miles from the City Hall. The grounds reach from the Bloomingdale-road to the river, and comprise about fifteen acres. The structure is Gothic, one hundred and twenty feet in length and fifty feet in breadth, and its beauty cannot fail to attract the attention of travelers on the boats from the North.

This institution is one of the oldest, most noted, and most useful in the series of our city charities. Distinguished names are associated with it. It sprung from the "Society for the Relief of poor Widows with small Children," which was founded in 1797, by the generous labors of Isabella Graham. In 1806, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, and the daughter of Mrs. Graham, (Joanna Bethune, the wife of Dr. Bethune,) with others, organized, in connection with that society, the "Orphan Asylum;" it was incorporated some time in the next year. During a number of years its building was on Bank-street. In 1836 it was enabled to enlarge its operations, and erect its present spacious "Asylum."

The Orphan Asylum is sustained by subscription and bequests. These have thus far been generous, and most providently

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHNSON.

IF

F the accession of ten guineas to Johnson's purse, by his " London," and the attainment of a reputation above that of a "bookseller's hack" might seem to offer him inducements to persevere in his endeavors to reach a comfortable independence in the metropolis, they also, by affording the means of removing, and by promising a more eligible provision elsewhere, seemed to indicate this as the fittest time to attempt such an improvement in his fortunes. The offer of a school at Appleby in Leicestershire, which promised him a moderate competence, notwithstanding his dislike of the business, induced him to accept it. A single condition stood in the way of an immediate consummation of the arrangement; the statutes of the school required that the master should be of the degree of Master of Arts. Accordingly Dr. Adams, then master of Pembroke College, was applied to by a common friend, as to the possibility of procuring that degree from Oxford, but it was esteemed too great a favor to be asked. Next, interest was made for him by Mr. Pope, with Lord Gower, who kindly wrote to Dean Swift, through a mutual friend, earnestly asking, as a special favor, that the University of Dublin would relieve the difficulty by admitting Johnson to the requisite degree. Why the application was unsuccessful is not ascertained; that it failed is known, however, and the anticipated escape of the heart-sick prisoner of the hated town, resulted only in disappointment. It is well known that Johnson always seemed to entertain some untold dislike to Swift, and also in a mitigated degree to Lord Gower, and by some this affair has been thought to have been not remotely connected with these antipathies; though, perhaps the hopes that were then disappointed were more confident than were justified by circumstances.

Disappointed in one attempt to escape from the ill-paid drudgery of authorship, he presently turned to another expedient for relief. He now wrote to Dr. Adams, to ascertain through him whether a person might be permitted to practice as an advocate, without the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, confessing at the same time that he was "a total stranger to these studies," but adding with a modest con

fidence that "a profession that maintains numbers must be within the reach of common abilities, and some degree of industry." If great intellectual force, and the power to defend a cause with even consummate abilities were alone sufficient to render one a successful professional advocate, there can be no question that Johnson would have been eminently successful as a lawyer. But when it is recollected that a pertinacious application to whatever is taken in hand, and a patient wading through the dullest details, as well as an habitual observance of order and arrangement, and especially a rigid punctuality in everything, are essential to the professional success of an advocate, it may well be doubted whether he was capable of succeeding in that profession. But the experiment was not made. The answer was again unfavorable, and so the want of a degree effectually hindered his emancipation. Defeated at every point in his attempts to better his condition, Johnson now found himself thrown back upon his present condition and course of duties. He continued to write for Mr. Cave, and to aid him in the management of the Magazine, and also undertake the translation of Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent, already referred to, which Cave now undertook to bring out. But this enterprise was likewise destined to fail, through a rather curious set of coincidences. At the same time that Cave proposed to issue a new translation of that celebrated history, from the pen of Samuel Johnson, the same thing was proposed by Dr. Zachary Pearce, afterward Bishop of Rochester-his also to be translated by Samuel Johnson, who was curate of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Both editions had advanced somewhat before the coincidence was discovered, when, after some skirmishing between the two interests, both were given up, and the work never appeared. The loss in this case fell upon Cave, who paid Johnson for the work he did in small sums amounting in all to nearly fifty pounds.

Though compelled to occupy for the time the humble place of a "bookseller's hack," Johnson did not for a moment surrender his independence of thought and action. On more than one occasion the political sentiments that found expression in his "London," were afterwards more fully presented in his prose writings.

Two inconsiderable political pamphlets were written by him in the course of the year 1739. One of these, entitled "Marmor Norfolciense," was an essay on a pretended prophetical inscription, in Monkish rhyme, feigned to have been found at Lynn, in Norfolk-the county of Sir Robert Walpole, the obnoxious Whig Prime Minister-inveighing against the Brunswick succession and the measures of the administration, the commentary of the essayist making each pretended prophetic expression apply to the present public affairs. The other was an ironical defense of the licensers of the stage against the attacks of one whose production they had suppressed. A tragedy written by a Mr. Brooke, entitled "Gustavus Vasa," and intended to bear against the administration and the Hanoverian dynasty, had been somewhat extensively circulated in manuscript before its publication, and so coming to the knowledge of the ministry, the license for its presentation on the stage was refused. This interference viewed by the author, and all the Jacobite party, who now by a strange mutation had become the special advocates of the largest liberty, as an invasion of the natural rights of man. The tragedy was soon after printed, having been called for in that form by nearly a thousand subscribers before it went to the press. On the occasion of its publication, Johnson was applied to to write in its defense, which he did by making this feigned "vindication," in which he presents the usual political slang of the opposition party of that time, with the usual amount of the demagogue's zeal for liberty and the rights of man. Neither of those productions added anything valuable to their author's reputation.

was

Two motives conspired to induce Johnson to write these two pamphlets. In the first place writing was his calling, by which he obtained his subsistence, and, so far as consistent with other considerations, he was ready to work for any who would pay. But he was not indifferent as to what he wrote, nor could any price have induced him to propagate falsehood, and to defend what in his conscience he believed to be the wrong. To oppose Walpole's administration was a work quite to his taste; and he only uttered what was with him more than an opinion, when he intimated that the succession to the crown had been illegally interrupted, and that the

As an illustration of the steadiness as well as the intensity of Johnson's political opinions, the following anecdote, though relating to a transaction that occurred several years later, may be properly introduced in this place. He had then become a frequent visitor at the house of Richardson, the novelist. While there one day, Hogarth, between whom and Johnson there was then no acquaintance, called and engaged in conversation with Richardson, while Johnson was occupied in another part of the room. The conversation turned on the then recent execution of Dr. Cameron-brother of the renowned Lochiel-for having taken arms in the cause of the Pretender, some eight or nine years before; and as Hogarth was a warm partisan of George II., he insisted that there must have been some very unfavorable circumstances in that case, not generally known, as the cause of this unusual severity, which otherwise would seem like a murder in cold blood, and altogether unlike his majesty's usual clemency. While engaged in the conversation, his attention was attracted by the

strange figure and motion of Johnson, who was standing at the window. Hogarth concluded that he must be some idiot or insane person, who had been intrusted to the care of Richardson. But to his surprise, at the height of their conversation, this supposed idiot came forward and taking up the subject, launched out in an invective against the king, as habitually vindictive and unrelenting, citing numerous examples to prove his assertion, which at once silenced and confounded his unknown antagonist. Hogarth declared that for the moment he fancied that the idiot was seized with a momentary inspiration. Strange to tell, after this abrupt interview these two distinguished strangers parted without an introduction.

During the years 1740-41, Johnson continued his labors for Cave on the Magazine. Beside a great amount of merely editorial labor, of which no account can be made, and a number of merely fugitive contributions, he wrote for the Magazine the Lives of Admiral Blake, of Sir Francis Drake, and of Philip Barretier. The Life of Boerhaave was printed in 1739. But the work that most fully taxed his powers, during these years, and probably did most to develop the masculine energies of his mind, was the Parliamentary Debates. At that time, the debates of the two Houses were not spread before the public as at present. In the absence of authentic reports,

the public curiosity was gratified with certain fictitious or surreptitious debates in the Gentleman's Magazine, under the title of the "Senate of Lilliput," in which the real debates of the Parliament were caricatured with just enough of truth to cause them to be readily recognized, and the names of the speakers so given in anagrams, and other fanciful disguises, as to be easily interpreted. For some years this work was performed by Mr. Guthrie, author of a History of England; but after the accession of Johnson to a share in the editorship of the Magazine, much of the care of the debates fell upon him. Guthrie had been accustomed to gain admission to the Houses for himself and others, and then write out from memory what had been heard; but Johnson relied less on reports, and often knew nothing more of the real addresses of which he gave his fancied reproductions, than the names of the several speakers, and the part each had taken in the debate. This, of course, left him much more at liberty to exercise his powers of invention, and to arrange the parts of the discussion in the more perfect order, and though the speeches may have been, in their details, less true than they would have been made by relying upon reports, the whole was probably not only better in style, but also more truthful in their general character.

"In the perusal of these Debates," re