"And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter,
and he became her son. And she called his name Moses."--EXODUS
II. 10.
[Illustration: MOSES BEFORE PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER.]
Among the many benevolent institutions which do honour to this
nation, the hospital for maintaining exposed and deserted infants may
be ranked as one of the most humane and political. Let the austere
enthusiast censure it as an encouragement to vice, and the rigid
moralist declaim against giving sanction to profligacy, it is still
an useful and a benevolent foundation.
To protect the helpless, give refuge to the innocent, and render that
unoffending being a useful member of society whose parents may be too
indigent to give it proper sustenance, or wicked enough to destroy
it, is fulfilling one great precept of religion, and must afford a
pure and exalted gratification to every philanthropic mind.[53]
That it is found necessary to restrict the plan, and confine the
charity in such narrow limits, is much to be lamented. Compassion and
policy demand that the doors should be open to every proper object.
To this asylum for deserted infancy Mr. Hogarth was one of the
earliest benefactors,[54] and to their institution presented the
picture from which this print is engraved; there is not perhaps in
holy writ another story so exactly suitable to the avowed purpose
of the foundation.
The history of Moses being deserted by his mother, exposed among the
bulrushes, and discovered and protected by the daughter of Pharaoh,
is known to every one who has read the Bible: those who have not,
may find it there recorded, with many other things well worthy their
attention. At the point of time here taken, the child's mother,
whom the Princess considers as merely its nurse, has brought him to
his patroness, and is receiving from the treasurer the wages of her
services. The little foundling naturally clings to his nurse, though
invited to leave her by the daughter of a monarch. The eyes of an
attendant, and a whispering Ethiopian, convey an oblique suspicion
that the child has a nearer affinity to their mistress than she
chooses to acknowledge.[55]
Considered as a whole, this picture has a more historic air than we
often find in the works of Hogarth. The royal Egyptian is graceful,
and in some degree elevated.[56] The treasurer is marked with austere
dignity, and the Jewess and child with nature. The scene is superb,
and the distant prospect of pyramids, etc. highly picturesque and
appropriate to the country. To exhibit this scene, the artist has
placed the groups at such a distance as crowd the corners and leave
the centre unoccupied. As the Greeks are said to have received the
rudiments of art from Egypt, the line of beauty on the base of a
pillar is properly introduced. A crocodile creeping from under the
stately chair may be intended to mark the neighbourhood of the Nile,
but is a poor and forced conceit.
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