Mrs. Townsend. Here, having now entirely abandoned all mercantile pursuits, he lived as a private gentleman, employed in compiling the history of his travels, and in constant acts of benevolence. The application to sedentary employment, which was so little in unison with the former tenor of his life, and which the exercise of his charity was not sufficient to diversify, very quickly injured his health; so that he was compelled for relaxation to travel once more, though his excursion was confined to France and the Netherlands. About this period the question respecting the expediency of naturalizing the Jews was agitated in most of the countries of Europe; and Hanway, on most other occasions just and philanthropic, yielded in this instance to the force of narrow and inhuman prejudices; and argued in a pamphlet, now very properly condemned to oblivion, in favour of the absurd laws by which this portion of our fellow-creatures have been in so many countries excluded from the enjoyment of the rights of man. His other works were devoted to better purposes; he promoted, as far as was in his power, the paving of the streets of London; he laboured to convince the English people of the futility of the fears they seemed to entertain of a French invasion, than which nothing could be more absurd or impracticable; he founded the Marine Society, intended to encourage the breed of seamen; he endeavoured benevolently, but ridiculously, to discourage the habit of tea-drinking; he laboured to improve the Foundling Hospital institution; was the principal means of founding the Magdalen Hospital, or asylum for repentant public women; advocated the cause of the orphan poor; and, by reasoning and ridicule, exposed the practice of vails giving, as it was termed, by which a man who was invited to the table of the great was made to pay threefold for his dinner. According to Mr. Pugh, he was incited to the exposure of this abuse by Sir Timothy Waldo. "Sir
