ful care of individuals supplies the place of direct legislation for particular objects of social improvement. There have always been men amongst us (and such still remain the greatest of our national blessings), who have devoted all the energies of a wise benevolence to mitigate the most offensive evils of vice and poverty. Such evils will always arise in a state of society so highly civilized as our own, where there is a perpetual strife of personal interests, raising some into importance, and depressing others into want; and where the vices of our nature are constantly creating a succession of wretched beings, to whom the charities of our faith call us to offer the hand of pity and of succour. The numerous institutions of our nation for the relief of misery and the reformation of delinquency, show how extensively the benevolence of individuals has provided for the mitigation of those calamities which cannot wholly be removed. The records of these institutions at the same time point out how much good may be effected by the labours of one energetic mind, proposing to itself the task of directing the scattered benevolence of the pious and the humane to some great object of permanent utility. Such a mind was that of Jonas Hanway. While the enthusiastic philanthropy of a Howard carried him into every dreary abode of crime and disease—whilst he despised the fatigue of traversing the most distant regions, and braved the dangers of the most injurious climates, absorbed in the glorious duty to which he was devoted -there was a fellow-labourer in the same good work, less enterprising but not less persevering, less heroic in his self-devotion, but not less generous in his consistent exertion. The magnanimity of the one will be more admired than imitated;-the patient labour in well-doing of the other may be emulated in some degree by all. Jonas Hanway was born at Portsmouth in 1712. He was educated as a merchant; and dedicated himself to that honourable profession with great zeal. His mercantile objects led him to traverse Persia, a country at that time little known. On his return to England in 1750, he applied himself to write his travels, which he published in 1753. Having acquired a small independent fortune, he settled in London as a private gentleman; and for the remainder of his life was occupied in those benevolent objects which he so successfully and honourably accomplished. The establishment of the Marine Society was the first great work in which Mr. Hanway engaged. It was the object of this Society to take unemployed landsmen and vagrant boys from their habits of idleness and reprobation, and fit them out, properly clothed, to serve in the Royal Navy. This institution was established by a most liberal public subscription; but Mr. Hanway had the great merit of proposing, methodizing, and recommending the plan; and his assiduity in carrying the design into execution was unwearied. The formation of one of the most interesting charities in London, the Magdalen Hospital, next engaged his attention. The public benevolence had previously been called to this subject by the forcible pen of the great moralist, Dr. Johnson. The following remarks by this most improving writer will still be read with advantage: "It cannot be doubted but that numbers follow this dreadful course of life with shame, horror, and regret; but where can they hope for refuge? The world is not their friend, nor the world's law. Their sighs, and tears, and groans, are criminal in the eye of their tyrants, the bully and the bawd, who fatten on their misery, and threaten them with want or a gaol, if they show the least design of escaping from their bondage. "How frequently have the gay and thoughtless, in their evening frolics, seen a band of these miserable females, covered with rags, shivering with cold, and pining with hunger; and without either pitying their calamities, or reflecting upon the cruelty of those, who perhaps first seduced them by caresses of fondness, or magnificence of promises, go on to reduce others to the same wretchedness by the same means! "To stop the increase of this deplorable multitude is undoubtedly the first and most pressing consideration. To prevent evil is the great end of government; the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed. But surely those whom passion or interest have already depraved, have some claim to compassion from beings equally frail and fallible with themselves; nor will they long groan in their present afflictions, if none were to refuse them relief but those that owe their exemption from the same distress only to their wisdom and their virtue." To afford the means of reformation to these unhappy beings to restore the penitent victim of passion to the decencies of society-to proclaim that the world would not wholly reject those misguided sufferers, when they were disposed to turn away from their misery and their degradation ;-these were the objects which called Mr. Hanway to the establishment of a house for the reception of repentant prostitutes. The proposal was too obviously humane not to meet with the most adequate encouragement. When we look at the present accumulation of similar vice throughout the country, and in the metropolis in particular, we cannot but deplore how inefficient must be any such plan for opposing the progress of crime. But if the political economist may be allowed to reason thus from the aggregate appearances of society, the Christian will look upon such institutions with a kindlier reverence; and if he hear of a single instance of one lost child restored to the embrace of a weeping parent -if he see one blighted flower that lay like a weed upon the earth, planted again in a genial and refreshing soil, and again blossoming in joy and gratitudehe will bless the benevolence which has afforded the erring the opportunity of escape from their selfinflicted miseries, and he will refer the origin of such an institution to the Almighty goodness, which "desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live." Mr. Hanway was amongst the first who saw how greatly religious knowledge might be advanced by the establishment of Sunday Schools. He advised and aided in the completion of these truly useful institutions, wherever he possessed any influence; from that conviction, which almost every pious and every liberal man has since felt, that there can be no perils in knowledge half so dangerous as the brutalities of ignorance, and that the only way to apply the rudiments of learning to their safe and proper end, is to make the sole object of such learning the knowledge of Christian duties and obligations. A most persecuted and degraded portion of our fellow-creatures-chimney-sweepers are under the greatest obligations to the active humanity of Mr. Hanway. He was the foremost to point out their helpless condition, to enforce a better treatment from their avaricious masters, and to shield them from individual tyranny by legislative protection. The condition of these children was, through his exertions, greatly ameliorated; and succeeding exertions afford the hope, that if the necessity for the use of human beings in such a dangerous and unhealthy employ be not wholly removed, they will be so secured in the blessings of cleanliness and relaxation, that they may not continue to be shut out as it were from society, but take their station amongst other classes of their fellow-labourers. It would be impossible to detail the various tasks in which Mr. Hanway was uniformly engaged, for the advantage of his countrymen. His public spirit and his disinterestedness were so much the theme of general admiration, that a body of the merchants of London solicited from the minister of the day, that he would confer on Mr. Hanway some office of honour and profit, as a mark of the national esteem, and as some compensation for his unlimited devotion of his own private fortune to the relief of the wretched. He was accordingly made a Commissioner of the Navy; a situation which he filled with exemplary fidelity for twenty years, and of which the pecuniary advantages afforded him the means of more extensively benefiting his fellow-creatures. Mr. Hanway died in 1786. So universally was he respected, that a sum of many hundred pounds was subscribed to erect a monument to his memory. A conviction of the obligations of Christianity was the moving spring of Mr. Hanway's unwearied ex ertions in the cause of charity. During his life he I believe that my Redeemer liveth, JONAS HANWAY, Esq. who, trusting in that good Providence the persuasive laws contained in the and the consciousness of his own depravity, of the various wants of his inquire no further; The Lord have mercy on his soul and thine! Apprehensive of the too partial regard of his friends; and esteeming plain truth above the proudest trophies of monumental flattery, at the age of fifty-one he caused this plate and inscription to be made. K. CAPTAIN соок. CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, the account of whose voyages forms one of the most interesting books in the language, and is read with equal avidity by those whose warm imaginations delight in adventurous undertakings and romantic occurrences, and the more calm investigator of the various modes in which the human mind developes itself,-was a native of Marton, in Cleveland, a village about four miles from Great Ayton, in the county of York, where he was |