No city in the world is more justly entitled to consideration for active, judicious, and liberal benevolence, than New-York, though it must be confessed that in some respects others may make a more splendid display of the machinery of philanthropy, and even seem in the subscriptions made every year to particular charities to be more liberal. This is easily explained, by the fact that, while the people of New-York are behind none in thrift and virtue, the great commercial capital has nevertheless more than twice as much pauperism and crime, from emigration and importation, as any other city in the world. Foreigners who come here of their own will, foreigners who pay their own passages to our country, are always welcome; but those who are banished from their native places for crime, or deported for idleness, imbecility, or any cause that renders them a burthen to the public, should be shut out from our ports by some more efficient means than have yet been devised for the purpose. This class alone demands of the organized and individual benevolence of New-York a larger amount of money every year than is paid for the relief of human wretchedness in any other city. The benevolent institutions of New-York are remarkable for their number, so that in no department does an establishment indicate the attention given to the particular necessities to which it is devoted; and not only do the Quakers and the Jews, as in other places, take care of their own poor, but almost every church, no matter of what denomination, is here a well organized society for the relief of the unfortunate among its members, and to a degree, within the sphere of its influence. Where wealth has been acquired by its possessor, there is apt to be a generous consideration for the less fortunate, and no city had ever so many of the philanthropic merchants, of whom the late Samuel Ward was a type, who are as judicious as they are liberal in shielding the oppressed, strengthening the weak, and guiding the unwary, in pointing out ways and furnishing means to the young who seem born to the inheritance of degradation, and in saving others from sufferings caused by improvidence or inevitable misfortune. We propose no account of the humane societies of New-York, but only a brief mention of some few of those whose edifices are most likely to arrest the attention of strangers, as from several directions they approach the city.