FOUNDLING hospitals have been common in many countries of Europe for several centuries. The first is believed to have been established at Milan, in the year 787. In the seventeenth century they were placed on a common footing with other hospitals in France, and in the following century they were established in England. More than one hundred and forty are said to exist in France at this time, two in Holland, seventeen in Belgium, many in Prussia, one of which covers an area of twenty-eight acres. The Child's Hospital of New York has received many of these stray waifs of humanity for several years past, yet an Institution devoted exclusively to this class, founded and managed on the most open and liberal scale, has been considered necessary by many, and has finally been established.

The New York Foundling Asylum was incorporated October 9, 1869, and a hired brick edifice, No. 17 East Twelfth street, was opened two days later, by the Sisters of Charity connected with the convent of Mount Saint Vincent, near Yonkers. Sister Mary Irene was placed at the head of the Institution, and has since been assisted by ten other members of the order. The first child was left at the Institution on the 22d of October, 1869, and up to the 25th of April, 1871, nineteen hundred and sixty had been received, sixty-two per cent. of whom had died. The Institution was at length removed to No. 3 North Washington square, into a large building containing twenty-eight fine rooms, where it will remain until the Hospital is erected. A cradle is placed in the vestibule where the little stranger is silently deposited, and a ring of the bell announces its presence. They are brought in by physicians, nurses, midwives, and mothers, at all hours of day and night. The children are numbered according to their admission; their names and those of their parents, if known, are entered in a large book kept for that purpose, but if nothing is known of them they are named by the Sisters. Sometimes a letter accompanies a child, the contents of which are entered with the number and name of the infant. Sometimes a ring, a ribbon, or some other little valuable by which it may hereafter be identidied accompanies it; these are all numbered and preserved. Infants are taken without charge or fee, without regard to color, nationality, or parentage. No questions are asked unless there is a disposition to communicate, and statements made are not disclosed. The cradles are long, with a babe at each end, and an attendant to every three children or a little less; some of whom are on duty in every room at all hours of day and night. The author looked through the several apartments at the half-a-hundred little creatures scattered in cribs, on the floor, in the arms of the nurses, some laughing, some crying, some asleep in blissful ignorance of the clouds that darken their infant horizon, and concluded there were as many handsome babies among them as could be selected from an equal number in any community. Children are given out to healthy women to nurse, who are remunerated at the rate of ten dollars per month. These nurses are required to bring the children to the Institution twice each month for inspection, and are frequently visited at their homes by the Sisters. The Sisters refuse to adopt them even in the best families, which we pronounce a decided mistake. Certainly, if charity to the children only influenced the movement, nothing better could be hoped for than to see them adopted into respectable families.

During the last year a part of the children have been housed at West Farms, the house in the city serving as a place of reception. More than four hundred different women have been employed as nurses, and the superioress reports the expenditures of the Institution as exceeding $6,000 per month.The city authorities last year leased the Asylum, for ninety-nine years, for the annual rental of one dollar, a plot of ground two hundred by four hundred feet, lying between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets, and fronting on Lexington avenue. The tax levy of 1870 also contained a clause granting the managers one hundred thousand dollars toward the erection of buildings as soon as a similar sum should be collected by private subscription.

A grand metropolitan fair was accordingly planned and held in the Twenty-second Regiment Armory hall during November, 1870 the proceeds of which amounted to over $71,000. Mrs. R. B. Connolly also collected $20,575, which, with some other subscriptions, brought the sum to the required figure, so that the legislative appropriation became available. This Foundling Hospital is now rapidly rising to completion.

The Sisters are very enthusiastic about their enterprise. Precisely what effect the, establishment of this Institution will have upon the dissolute portion of society is yet to be seen; but that the crime of infanticide has been already greatly lessened appears from the police statistics. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty dead infants per month were before the opening of this Institution found in barrels and vacant lots, in various parts of the city, whereas not more than one-tenth of that number are now reported. That it will greatly increase the social crime, we hardly believe. This has existed in all ages, unawed by shame, law, and other consequences, and will only decrease as the principles of a pure religion are more generally and more thoroughly imbibed.