178 



BENEVOLENT ESTABLISHMENTS. 



whom they were accompanied, were earnest to display a spirit 

 of christian charity and compassion. However unjustly they 

 may have been treated by foreign pens, inimical to the Spanish 

 name, it must be acknowledged that many of them were as 

 renowned for their valour and constancy, as for the sentiments 

 of that fraternal and generous tenderness, which the philoso- 

 phers of our times extol so much, and practise so little. We 

 may trace in every dire6lion the trophies of the piety of oiir 

 ancestors. Hospitals, colleges, churches, asylums for or- 

 phans, endowments for young indigent females, &c. are the 

 first monuments which present themselves to the view of the 

 observer, when he investigates philosophically the principles 

 of the Peruvian population. It is to be lamented that the his- 

 torians who have written so copiously on Peru, have not be- 

 stowed on this subje<Sl all the attention it merits. 



A receptacle for orphans, established in a capital such as 

 Lima, not only supposes in its inhabitants a great fund of hu- 

 manity, but likewise affords a reasonable ground of belief that 

 the true application of alms was known to them at an early 

 date. In reality, there is not any obje<St which has a greater 

 tendency to interest the afFedlions of a sensible heart, than the 

 poor orphan, the offspring of frailty and love, who has no 

 other parents beside the compassion and benevolence of the 

 public. 



The college for female orphans, properly named the col- 

 lege of Santa Cruz for female foundlings, in the house of Our 

 Lady of Atocha, was founded by Mateo Pastor De Velasco, 

 by birth a Spaniard, an apothecary by profession, and agent 

 of the Inquisition. His pious intention received a new stimu- 

 lus from the virtue of his wife, Donna Francisca Velez Michael. 



Being 



