the _Parisheen_, a term which we must explain at further length to our readers. When the Dublin Foundling Hospital was in existence, the poor infants whom an unhappy destiny consigned to that gloomy and withering institution were transmitted to different parts of the country, to be nursed by the wives of the lower classes of the peasantry--such as day-labourers, cottiers, and small farmers, who cultivated from three to six or eight acres of land. These children were generally, indeed almost always, called Parisheens--a word which could be properly applied only to such as, having no known parents, were supported by the parish in which they happened to be born. It was transferred to the Foundlings, however; although, with the exception of the metropolis, which certainly paid a parish tax for their maintenance, they were principally supported by a very moral act of Parliament, which, by the wise provision of a large grant, held out a very liberal bounty to profligacy. At all events, the opprobrious epithet of Parisheen was that usually fixed upon them. Now, of all classes of our fellow-creatures, one might almost naturally suppose that those deserted and forsaken beings would be apt, consigned as they uniformly were to the care of mercenary strangers, to experience neglect, ill-treatment, or even cruelty itself; and yet, honour be to the generous hearts and affectionate feelings of our humble people, it has been proved, by the incontestible authority of a Commission expressly appointed to examine and report on the working of the very hospital in question, that the care, affection, and tenderness with which these ill-fated creatures were treated by the nurses to whom they were given out, was equal, if not superior, to that which was bestowed upon their own children. Even when removed from these nurses to situations of incomparably more comfort--situations in which they were lodged, fed, and clothed, in a far superior manner--they have been known, in innumerable instances, to elope from their masters and mistresses, and return to their old abodes, preferring the indulgence of their affection, with poverty and distress, to any thing else that life could offer.