Day of the month and year, November the thirtieth, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five.  London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, ten at night.  All the lesser¹ London churches strain their metallic² throats.  Some, flippantly begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; some, tardily³ begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently⁴ near accord, to leave a resonance⁵ in the air, as if the winged father who devours⁶ his children, had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe⁷ in flying over the city.

What is this clock lower than most of the rest, and nearer to the ear, that lags so far behind to-night as to strike into the vibration⁸ alone?  This is the clock of the Hospital for Foundling Children.  Time was, when the Foundlings were received without question in a cradle at the gate.  Time is, when inquiries⁹ are made respecting them, and they are taken as by favour from the mothers who relinquish¹⁰ all natural knowledge of them and claim to them for evermore.

The moon is at the full, and the night is fair with light clouds.  The day has been otherwise than fair, for slush and mud, thickened with the droppings of heavy fog, lie black in the streets.  The veiled lady who flutters up and down near the postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling Children has need to be well shod to-night.

She flutters to and fro, avoiding the stand of hackney-coaches, and often pausing in the shadow of the western end of the great quadrangle wall, with her face turned towards the gate.  As above her there is the purity of the moonlit sky, and below her there are the defilements of the pavement, so may she, haply, be divided in her mind between two

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