Moravians, perhaps, would have so parted for ever. Scotch lovers agree to come together after so many years spent in providing the "plenishing." Irish lovers conclude the business, in case of difficulty, by appearing before the priest the next morning. There is recourse to a balcony and rope-ladder in one country; a steam-boat and back-settlement in another; trust and patience in a third; and intermediate flirtations, to pass the time, in a fourth. He must note the degree of worldly ambition which attends marriages, and which may therefore be supposed to stimulate them,--how much space the house with two rooms in humble life, and the country-seat and carriages in higher life, occupy in the mind of bride or bridegroom.--He must observe whether conjugal infidelity excites horror and rage, or whether it is so much a matter of course as that no jealousy interferes to mar the arrangements of mutual convenience.--He must mark whether women are made absolutely the property of their husbands, in mind and in estate; or whether the wife is treated more or less professedly as an equal party in the agreement.--He must observe whether there is an excluded class, victims to their own superstition or to a false social obligation, wandering about to disturb by their jealousy or licentiousness those whose lot is happier.--He must observe whether there are domestic arrangements for home enjoyments, or whether all is planned on the supposition of pleasure lying abroad; whether the reliance is on books, gardens, and play with children, or on the opera, parties, the ale-house, or dances on the green.--He must mark whether the ladies are occupied with their household cares in the morning, and the society of their husbands in the evening, or with embroidery and looking out of balconies; with receiving company all day, or gadding abroad; with the library or the nursery; with lovers or with children.--In each country, called civilized, he will meet with almost all these varieties: but in each there is such a prevailing character in the aspect of domestic life, that intelligent observation will enable him to decide, without much danger of mistake, as to whether marriage is merely an arrangement of convenience, in accordance with low morals, or a sacred institution, commanding the reverence and affection of a virtuous people. No high degree of this sanctity can be looked for till that moderation is attained which, during the prevalence of asceticism and its opposite, is reached only by a few. That it yet exists nowhere as the characteristic of any society,--that all the blessings of domestic life are not yet open to all, so as to preclude the danger of any one encroaching on his neighbour,--is but too evident to the travelled observer. He can only mark the degree of approximation to this state of high morals wherever he goes.
The traveller everywhere finds woman treated as the inferior party in a compact in which both parties have an equal interest. Any agreement thus formed is imperfect, and is liable to disturbance; and the danger is great in proportion to the degradation of the supposed weaker party. The degree of the degradation of woman is as good a test as the moralist can adopt for ascertaining the state of domestic morals in any country.
The Indian squaw carries the household burdens, trudging in the dust, while her husband on horseback paces before her, unencumbered but by his own gay trappings. She carries the wallet with food, the matting for the lodge, the merchandize (if they possess any), and her infant. There is no exemption from labour for the squaw of the most vaunted chief. In other countries the wife may be found drawing the plough, hewing wood and carrying water; the men of the family standing idle to witness her toils. Here the observer may feel pretty sure of his case. From a condition of slavery like this, women are found rising to the highest condition in which they are at present seen, in France, England, and the United States,--where they are less than half-educated, precluded from earning a subsistence, except in a very few ill-paid employments, and prohibited from giving or withholding their assent to laws which they are yet bound by penalties to obey. In France, owing to the great destruction of men in the wars of Napoleon, women are engaged, and successfully engaged, in a variety of occupations which have been elsewhere supposed unsuitable to the sex. Yet there remains so large a number who cannot, by the most strenuous labour in feminine employments, command the necessaries of life, while its luxuries may be earned by infamy, that the morals of the society are naturally bad. Great attention has of late been given to this subject in France: the social condition of women is matter of thought and discussion to a degree which promises some considerable amelioration. Already, women can do more in France than anywhere else; they can attempt more without ridicule or arbitrary hinderance: and the women of France are probably destined to lead the way in the advance which the sex must hereafter make. At present, society is undergoing a transition from a feudal state to one of mutual government; and women, gaining in some ways, suffer in others during the process. They have, happily for themselves, lost much of the peculiar kind of observance which was the most remarkable feature of the chivalrous age; and it has been impossible to prevent their sharing in the benefits of the improvement and diffusion of knowledge. All cultivation of their powers has secured to them the use of new power; so that their condition is far superior to what it was in any former age.
But new difficulties about securing a maintenance have arisen. Marriage is less general; and the husbands of the greater number of women are not secure of a maintenance from the lords of the soil, any more than women are from being married. The charge of their own maintenance is thrown upon large numbers of women, without the requisite variety of employments having been opened to them, or the needful education imparted. A natural consequence of this is, that women are educated to consider marriage the one object in life, and therefore to be extremely impatient to secure it. The unfavourable influence of these results upon the happiness of domestic life may be seen at a glance.
This may be considered the sum and substance of female education in England; and the case is scarcely better in France, though the independence and practical efficiency of women there are greater than in any other country. The women in the United States are in a lower condition than either, though there is less striving after marriage, from its greater frequency, and little restriction is imposed upon the book-learning which women may obtain. But the old feudal notions about the sex flourish there, while they are going out in the more advanced countries of Europe; and these notions, in reality, regulate the condition of women. American women generally are treated in no degree as equals, but with a kind of superstitious outward observance, which, as they have done nothing to earn it, is false and hurtful. Coexisting with this, there is an extreme difficulty in a woman's obtaining a maintenance, except by the exercise of some rare powers. In a country where women are brought up to be indulged wives, there is no hope, help, or prospect for such as have not money and are not married.
In America, women can earn a maintenance only by teaching, sewing, employment in factories, keeping boarding-houses, and domestic service.
Some governesses are tolerably well paid,--comparing their earnings with those of men. Employment in factories, and domestic service, are well paid. Sewing is so wretched an occupation everywhere, that it is to be hoped that machinery will soon supersede the use of human fingers in a labour so unprofitable. In Boston, Massachusetts, a woman is paid ninepence (sixpence English) for making a shirt.--In England, besides these occupations, others are opening; and, what is of yet greater consequence, the public mind is awakening to the necessity of enlarging the sphere of female industry. Some of the inferior branches of the fine arts have lately offered profitable employment to many women. The commercial adversity to which the country has been exposed from time to time, has been of service to the sex, by throwing hundreds and thousands of them upon their own resources, and thus impelling them to urge claims and show powers which are more respected every day.--In France this is yet more conspicuously the case. There, women are shopkeepers, merchants, professional accountants, editors of newspapers, and employed in many other ways, unexampled elsewhere, but natural and respectable enough on the spot.
Domestic morals are affected in two principal respects by these differences. Where feminine occupations of a profitable nature are few, and therefore overstocked, and therefore yielding a scanty maintenance with difficulty, there is the strongest temptation to prefer luxury with infamy to hardship with unrecognized honour. Hence arises much of the corruption of cities,--less in the United States than in Europe, from the prevalence of marriage,--but awful in extent everywhere. Where vice is made to appear the interest of large classes of women, the observer may be quite sure that domestic morals will be found impure. If he can meet with any society where the objects of life are as various and as freely open to women as to men, there he may be sure of finding the greatest amount of domestic purity and peace; for, if women were not helpless, men would find it far less easy to be vicious.
The other way in which domestic morals are affected by the scope which is allowed to the powers of women, is through the views of marriage which are induced. Marriage is debased by being considered the one worldly object in life,--that on which maintenance, consequence, and power depend. Where the husband marries for connexion, fortune, or an heir to his estate, and the wife for an establishment, for consequence, or influence, there is no foundation for high domestic morals and lasting peace; and in a country where marriage is made the single aim of all women, there is no security against the influence of some of these motives even in the simplest and purest cases of attachment. The sordidness is infused from the earliest years; the taint is in the mind before the attachment begins, before the objects meet; and the evil effects upon the marriage state are incalculable.
All this--the sentiment of society with regard to Woman and to Marriage, the social condition of Woman, and the consequent tendency and aim of her education,--the traveller must carefully observe. Each civilized society claims for itself the superiority in its treatment of woman. In one, she is indulged with religious shows, and with masquerades, or Punch, as an occasional variety. In another, she is left in honourable and undisputed possession of the housekeeping department. In a third, she is allowed to meddle, behind the scenes, with the business which is confided to her husband's management. In a fourth, she is satisfied in being the cherished domestic companion, unaware of the injury of being doomed to the narrowness of mind which is the portion of those who are always confined to the domestic circle. In a fifth, she is flattered at being guarded and indulged as a being requiring incessant fostering, and too feeble to take care of herself. In a sixth society, there may be found expanding means of independent occupation, of responsible employment for women; and here, other circumstances being equal, is the best promise of domestic fidelity and enjoyment.
It is a matter of course that women who are furnished with but one object,--marriage,--must be as unfit for anything when their aim is accomplished as if they had never had any object at all. They are no more equal to the task of education than to that of governing the state; and, if any unexpected turn of adversity befals them, they have no resource but a convent, or some other charitable provision. Where, on the other hand, women are brought up capable of maintaining an independent existence, other objects remain when the grand one is accomplished. Their independence of mind places them beyond the reach of the spoiler; and their cultivated faculty of reason renders them worthy guardians of the rational beings whose weal or woe is lodged in their hands. There is yet, as may be seen by a mere glance over society, only a very imperfect provision made anywhere for doing justice to the next generation by qualifying their mothers; but the observer of morals may profit by marking the degrees in which this imperfection approaches to barbarism. Where he finds that girls are committed to convents for education, and have no alternative in life but marriage, in which their will has no share, and a return to their convent, he may safely conclude that there a plurality of lovers is a matter of course, and domestic enjoyments of the highest kind undesired and unknown. He may conclude that as are the parents, so will be the children; and that, for one more generation at least, there will be little or no improvement. But where he finds a variety of occupations open to women; where he perceives them not only pursuing the lighter mechanic arts, dispensing charity and organizing schools for the poor, but occupied in education, and in the study of science and the practice of the fine arts, he may conclude that here resides the highest domestic enjoyment which has yet been attained, and the strongest hope of a further advance.
* * * * * Children in all countries are, as Mrs. Grant of Laggan says, first vegetables, and then they are animals, and then they come to be people; but their way of growing out of one stage into another is as different, in different societies, as their states of mind when they are grown up.
They all have limbs, senses, and intellects; but their growth of heart and mind depends incalculably upon the spirit of the society amidst which they are reared. The traveller must study them wherever he meets them. In one country, multitudes of them lie about in the streets, basking in the sun, and killing vermin; while the children of the very poorest persons of another country are decently clothed, and either busily occupied with such domestic employments as they are capable of, or at school, or playing among the rocks, or climbing trees, or crawling about the wooden bridges, without fear or danger. From this one symptom, the observer might learn the poverty and idleness of the lower classes of Spain, and the comfort and industry of those of the United States. As to the children of the richer classes, there is the widest difference in the world between those who are the idols of their mothers, (as in societies where the heart's love is lavished on the children which has not been engaged by the husband,) and those who are early steeped in corruption, (as in slave countries,) and those who are reared philosophers and saints, and those to whom home is a sunny paradise hedged round with love and care, and those who are little men and women of the world from the time they can walk alone. All these kinds of children exist,--sure breathings of the moral atmosphere of their homes.
The traveller must watch them, talk with them, and learn from their bearing towards their parents, and the bent of their affections, what is the spirit of the families of the land.
From observation on these classes of facts,--the Occupation of the people, the respective Characters of the occupied classes, the Health of the population, the state of Marriage and of Women, and the character of Childhood,--the moralist may learn more of the private life of a community than from the conversation of any number of the individuals who compose it.
CHAPTER IV.
IDEA OF LIBERTY.
"He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever Can be between the cradle and the grave, Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour, If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor!
What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, And cries, Give me, thy child, dominion Over all height and depth? If Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan Rend of thy gifts and her's a thousandfold for one."
_Shelley._ The same rule--of observing Things in preference to relying upon the Discourse of persons--holds good in the task of ascertaining the Idea of Liberty entertained and realized by any society. The Things to be observed for this purpose are those which follow.
The most obvious consideration of all is the amount of feudal arrangements which remain,--so obvious as to require only a bare mention. If people are satisfied to obey the will of a lord of the soil, to go out to hunt or to fight at his bidding, to require his consent to marriages among his dependants, and to hold whatever they have at his permission, their case is clear. They are destitute of any idea of liberty, and can be considered at best only half-civilized.--It matters little whether all this subservience is yielded to the owner of an estate, or the sovereign of the country, represented by his police or soldiery. Blind, ignorant obedience to any ruling power which the subjects had no hand in constituting, on the one part, and the enforcement of that obedience on the other, is the feudal temper.
A sleek Austrian of the middle ranks stood, of late, smoking at his door. A practical joker, who had a mind to see how far the man's deference for the police would carry him, drew towards him, and whispered in his ear, "You must dance." The Austrian stared. "Dance, I say!" repeated the stranger, with an air of authority. "Why must I dance?" asked the Austrian, when he had removed the pipe from his mouth.
"Because I, an agent of the police, insist upon it." The Austrian instantly began capering, and continued his exercise till desired to stand still, assured that he had satisfied the police.--In the United States, the contrast is amusing. On occasions of public assembly, the appeal is made to the democratic sentiment of the people to preserve order. If an orator is to hold forth on an anniversary, the soldiers (most citizen-like militia) may be seen putting their arms round the necks of newly arrived listeners, in supplication that they will leave seats vacant for the band. If a piece of plate is to be presented to a statesman, and twice as many people throng to the theatre as the building will hold, harangues may be heard from the neighbouring balconies,--appeals to the gallantry and kindliness of the crowd,--which are found quite as effectual in controlling the movements of the assemblage as any number of bayonets or constables' staves could be.
This leads to the mention of the Police of a country as a sure sign of the idea of liberty existing within it. Where the soldiery are the guards of social order, it makes all the difference whether they are royal troops,--a destructive machinery organized against the people,--or a National Guard, springing up when needed from among the people, for the people's sake,--or a militia, like the American, mentioned above,--virtually stewards of the meeting, and nothing more. Whatever may be thought of the comparative ease of proceeding, on any given occasion, between a police like that of Paris, and a constabulary like that of the American cities, (a mockery to European rulers,) it is a striking fact that order has been generally preserved for half a century, in a country where public meetings are a hundred times as numerous as in any kingdom in Europe, by means which would in Europe be no means at all. It is clear that the idea of liberty must be elevated, and the love of social order intelligent and strong, where the peace has been kept through unanimity of will. With the exception of outrages growing out of the institution of slavery, (which require a deeper treatment than any species of constabulary can practise,) the United States, with opportunities of disturbance which have been as a hundred to one, have exhibited fewer instances of a breach of public order than any other country in the same space of time; and this order has been preserved by the popular will, in the full knowledge on all hands that no power existed to control this will. This is a fact which speaks volumes in favour of the principles, if not the policy, of the American people.
In the United States, the traveller may proceed a thousand miles in any direction, or live ten years in one place, without the idea of control, beyond that of social convenience, being once presented to his mind.
Paul Louis Courier gives us the experience of an acquaintance of his.
"Un homme que j'ai vu arrive d'Amérique. Il y est resté trois ans sans entendre parler de ce que nous appelons ici l'autorité. Il a vécu trois ans sans être gouverné, s'ennuyant à périr."--In France, he cannot go in search of the site of the Bastille without finding himself surrounded by watchers before he has stood five minutes.--In Italy, his trunks are opened to examine the books he carries, and compare them with the list of proscribed works.--In Spain, he can say nothing in public that is not likely to be known to the authorities before the day is out; or in private that is not in possession of some priest after the next period of confession.--In Switzerland, he finds that he is free to do any thing but make inquiries about the condition of the country. If he asks, as the Emperor Joseph did before him, "Quels sont les revenues de votre république?" he may receive the same answer, "Ils excedent nos dépenses."--In Germany, his case is like that of the inhabitants of the cities;--his course is open and agreeable as long as he pursues inferior objects, but it is made extremely inconvenient to him to gratify his interest in politics.--In Poland, evidences of authority will meet his observation in every direction, while he will rarely hear the name of its head.--In Russia, he will find the people speaking of their despot as their father, and will perceive that it is more offensive to allude to the mortality of emperors than to talk lightly to children of the death of their parents. A gentleman in the suite of an English ambassador inquired, after having been conducted over the imperial palace at St. Petersburgh, which of the rooms he had seen was that in which the Emperor Paul was killed. No answer was returned to his question, nor to his repetition of it. He imprudently persisted till some reply was necessary. His guide whispered, with white lips, "Paul was not killed. Emperors do not die; they transpire out of life."
Such are some of the relations of the people to authority which will strike the observation of the traveller in the most civilized of foreign countries. These will be further illustrated by the smallest circumstances which meet his eye that can in any way indicate what are the functions of the police, and where it has most or least authority.
The Emperor Paul issued an ukase about shoestrings, which it was highly penal to disobey. His son has lately ordained the precise measurement of whiskers, and cut of the hair behind, to be observed by the officers of the army. In some regions, all men go armed: in others, it is penal to wear arms: in others, people may do as they please. In some countries, there are costumes of classes enforced by law: in others, by opinion: while fashion is the only dictator in a third. In some societies citizens must obtain leave from the authorities to move from place to place: in others, strangers alone are plagued with passports: in others, there is perfect freedom of locomotion for all.--In his observation of the workings of authority, as embodied in a police, his own experience of restraint or liberty will afford him ample material for thought, and ground of inference.
Such restraint as exists derives its character chiefly from its origin.
It makes a wide difference whether the police are the creatures of a despotic sovereign who treats his subjects as property; or whether they are the agents of a representative government, appointed by responsible rulers for the public good; or whether they are the servants of a self-governing people, chosen by those among whom their work lies. It makes a wide difference whether they are in the secret pay of an irresponsible individual, or appointed by command of a parliament, or elected by a concourse of citizens. In any case, their existence and their function testify to the absence or presence of a general idea of liberty among the people; and to its nature, if present.
* * * * * It is taken for granted that the traveller is informed, before he sets out, respecting the form of Government and general course of Legislation of the nation he studies. He will watch both, attending upon the administration as well as the formation of laws,--visiting, where it is allowed, the courts of justice as well as the halls of parliament. But he must remember that neither the composition of the government, nor the body of the laws, nor the administration of them, is an evidence of what the idea of liberty at present is among the people, except in a democratic republic, where the acts of the government are the result of the last expression of the national will. Every other representative system is too partial for its legislative acts to be more than the expression of the will of a party; and the great body of laws is everywhere, except in America, the work of preceding ages. Though, therefore, the observer will allow no great legislative and administrative acts to pass without his notice, he will apply himself to other sets of circumstances to ascertain what is the existing idea of liberty prevalent among the people. He will observe, from certain facts of their position, what this idea must be; and, from certain classes of their own deeds, what it actually is.
One of the most important circumstances is, whether the population is thinly sprinkled over the face of the country, or whether it is collected into neighbourly societies. This all-important condition has been alluded to so often already that it is only necessary to remind the observer never to lose sight of it. "Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche," says Rousseau, "moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts."
It is obvious enough that the Idea of Liberty, which can originate only in the intercourse of many minds, as the liberty itself can be wrought out only by the labours of many united hands, is not to be looked for where the people live apart, and are destitute of any knowledge of the interests and desires of the community at large.
* * * * * Whether the society is divided into Two Classes, or whether there is a Gradation, is another important consideration. Where there are only two, proprietors and labourers, the Idea of Liberty is deficient or absent.
The proprietory class can have no other desires on the subject than to repress the encroachments of the sovereign above them, or of the servile class below them: and in the servile class the conception of liberty is yet unformed. Only in barbarous countries, in countries where slavery subsists, and in some few strongholds of feudalism, is this decided division of society into two classes now to be found. Everywhere else there is more or less gradation; and in the most advanced countries the classes are least distinguishable. Below those members who, in European societies, are distinguished by birth, there is class beneath class of capitalists, though it is usual to comprehend them all, for convenience of speech, under the name of the middle class. Thus society in Great Britain, France, and Germany is commonly spoken of as consisting of three classes; while the divisions of the middle class are, in fact, very numerous. The small shopkeeper is not of the same class with the landowner, or wealthy banker, or professional man; while their views of life, their political principles, and their social aspirations, are as different as those of the peer and the mechanic.
There are two pledges of the advancement of the idea of liberty in a community:--the one is the mingling of the functions of proprietor and labourer throughout the whole of a society ruled by a representative government; the other is the graduation of ranks by some other principle than hereditary succession.
In ancient times most men were proprietors and labourers too; but under despotic rule. Societies which have once come under the representative principle are not likely to retrograde to this state; while there are influences ever at work to exalt the function of labour, and to extend that of proprietorship. Wherever this mixture of functions has gone the furthest,--wherever the mechanic classes are becoming capitalists, and proprietors are liable to sink down from their ancient honour, unless they can secure respect by personal qualifications, the idea of liberty is, to a considerable degree, confirmed and elevated. In such a case, it is clear that both the power and the desire of encroachment on the part of the upper class must be lessened, and that of resistance on the part of the lower increased.--The other improvement follows upon this.
Proprietorship, with its feudal influences, having lost caste (though it has gained in true dignity), some other ground of distinction must succeed. If we may judge by what is before our eyes in the Western world, talent is likely to be the next successor. It is to be hoped that talent will, in its turn, give way to moral worth,--the higher degrees of which imply, however, superiority of mental power. The preference of personal qualifications to those of external endowment has already begun in the world, and is fast making its way. Such distinction of ranks as there is in America originates in mental qualifications. Statesmen, who rise by their own power, rank highest; and then authors. The wealthiest capitalist gives place, in the estimation of all, to a popular orator, a successful author, or an eminent clergyman.--In France, the honours of the peerage and the offices of the state are given to men of science, philosophy, and literature. The same is the case in some parts of Germany: and, even in aristocratic England, the younger members of her Upper House are unsatisfied with being merely peers, and are anxious to push their way in literature, as well as in politics.--The traveller must give earnest heed to symptoms like these, knowing that as the barriers of ranks are thrown down, and personal obtain the ascendant over hereditary qualifications, social coercion must be relaxed, and the sentiment of liberty exalted.
* * * * * In close connexion with this, he must observe the condition of Servants.
The treatment and conduct of domestics depend on causes which lie far deeper than the principles and tempers of particular servants and masters, as may be seen by a glance at domestic service in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England, the old Saxon and Norman feud smoulders, (however unconscious the parties may be of the fact,) in the relation of master and servant. Domestics who never heard of either Norman or Saxon entertain a deep-rooted conviction of their masters' interests and their own being directly opposed, and are subject to a strong sense of injury. Masters who never bestow a thought on the transactions of the twelfth century, complain of a doggedness, selfishness, and case-hardened indifference in the class of domestics, which kindness cannot penetrate, or penetrates only to pervert. The relation is therefore a painful one in England. There is little satisfaction to be obtained between the extremes of servility and defiance, by which the conduct of servants is almost as distinctly marked now as when the nation was younger by seven centuries. The English housewives complain that confidence only makes their maid servants conceited, and that indulgence spoils them.--In Ireland, the case is of the same nature, but much aggravated. The injury of having an aristocracy of foreigners forced on the country, to whom the natives are to render service, is more recent, and the impression more consciously retained. The servants are ill-treated, and they yield bad service in return. It is mournful to see the arrangement of Dublin houses. The drawing-rooms are palace-like, while the servants' apartments are dark and damp dungeons. It is wearisome to hear the complaints of the dirt, falsehood, and faithlessness of Irish servants,--complaints which their mistresses have ever ready for the ear of the stranger; and it is disgusting to witness the effects in the household. It is equally sad and ludicrous to see the mistress of some families enter the breakfast room, with a loaf of bread under her arm, the butter-plate in one hand, and a bunch of keys in the other;--to see her cut from the loaf the number of slices required, and send them down to be toasted,--explaining that she is obliged to lock up the very bread from the thievery of her servants, and informing against them as if she expected them to be worthy of trust, while she daily insults them with the refusal of all trust,--even to the care of the bread-pan. In Scotland, the case is widely different. Servitude and clanship are there connected, instead of servitude and conquest. The service is willing in proportion; and the faults of domestics are not those common to the oppressed, but rather those proceeding from pride and self-will. The Scotch domestic has still the pride in the chief of the name which cherishes the self-respect of every member of a clan; and in the service of the chief there is scarcely any exertion which the humblest of his name would not make. The results are obvious. There is a better understanding between the two classes than in the other divisions of the kingdom: and Scotch masters and mistresses obtain a satisfaction from their domestics which no