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 philosophers of our times extol so much, and practise so little. We may trace in every direction the trophies of the piety of our ancestors. Hospitals, colleges, churches, asylums for orphans, 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 historians who have written so copiously on Peru, have not bestowed on this subject 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 humanity, 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 object which has a greater tendency to interest the affections 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 college 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 stimulus from the virtue of his wife. Donna Francisca Velez Michael.
