we safely raise our song of triumph, as dynasties and despotisms, which have encumbered and oppressed the world for centuries, crumble and melt away.'

But there are other aspects in which we think the colportage enterprise eminently fitted to meet the emergencies of our country at the present moment. While we would earnestly contend that the religious element should be never lost sight of in this work, we are anxious to see colportage adapt itself to the varying phases of our civilization. It is a great mistake when Christian people refuse to recognize in the progress of the age a mighty power that may, and that should be made subservient to the highest interests of religion. We believe Christian men and women have grievously erred when they have thus acted. How slow have we been to realize the close connexion that exists between the moral and physical condition of our population!-and that the full truth is not yet apprehended, is shown in the indifference exhibited in many towns to sanitary improvement by men who if they were aware of all its bearings upon the religious and moral progress of our country, would be most anxious to promote it. The two greatest obstacles to the religious and social improvement of the people are acknowledged to be their sanitary condition and their habits of intemperance. It falls not within our province here to decide how far the one arises from the other, but this we believe, that sanitary reformers should always include temperance reform as an intrinsic part of their work; and we are assured both will be best promoted if we lead men as intelligent creatures to understand something of the organization of their outward frames, and the danger arising from infringement of the great Creator's laws for the health and happiness of his creatures.

The admirable publications of the Ladies' Sanitary Association, with the excellent temperance literature provided by the Scottish Temperance League, Alexander of Ipswich, and Tweedie of London, cannot be too widely circulated, and should find their place in the pack of every book-hawker and colporteur throughout our land.

Living as we do in a free country, where every great measure that passes into the law of our land must become so through the will of a free people, it is most important to do all in our power towards the creation of an enlightened public opinion, and the first step towards this is to scatter broadcast over the land a literature fitted in every respect to fulfil such an object. The great societies that act as the producers of popular literature have a wide field of usefulness open before them with regard to sanitary and temperance reforms, and we believe their efficiency will be increased a hundredfold if they hasten to occupy it.*

We rejoice to know that the Religious Tract Society is contemplating the issue of a series of sanitary tracts, and we await with impatience the time when a temperance series will also proceed from their press.

Let

Let it be remembered that the spread of education has entirely changed the mental characteristics of the working man of the present day. The age of stolid brute ignorance is past, except where some remains of it still linger in our agricultural districts. The mechanic or artisan, shrewd to discern his own interests, identifies them closely with the progress of the age; and if those who desire to influence him for good go to him with an enlightened perception of the physical evils from which he suffers, and of their remedy, his heart will be softened, and an entrance gained perchance for the gospel message when it would be otherwise rudely rebuffed.

In the Missing Link,' a record of the labours of the Female Mission, the work has owed much of its eminent success to the social improvements which have accompanied every step of its

progress.

We believe that the introduction of the sanitary and temperance elements into all our existing societies and machinery for evangelization would be productive of the happiest results. The testimony of City missionaries is most striking on this point. They can place their hands on the two greatest obstacles to their success, which we have before named, and many of them have expressed to us their desire to add fresh power to their work by such means as we have described.

It will be obvious that there are many existing societies which more or less partake of the aggressive character of colportage, and of these, many, with slight modifications, might form part of a comprehensive scheme of catholic colportage for the whole of Great Britain. But the time is come when such an institution must take its place as the distributor of Christian and healthy literature, and which shall form a point of union for Christians of all denominations. Such an institution has just been started under the patronage of Lord Shaftesbury, chiefly by the munificence of one gentleman.

ART. IV.-1. Domestic Servants as they are and as they ought to be. London: Tweedie.

2. Why do the Servants of the Nineteenth Century dress as they do? London: Wertheim and Macintosh."

3. Industrial Training for Girls in Village Schools. Edinburgh.

N all states of civilized society there has probably been no

subject more prolific of to housekeepers general

than the wrongs inflicted and the troubles sustained by the ill behaviour of domestic servants. For the last fifty years lamentations have been constantly repeated over their degeneracy in character and outward behaviour. Each generation is supposed

to

to surpass its predecessors in the boldness of its offences. In our day the excitement produced by the misdemeanours of the existing race of dependents has reached a pitch of intensity which has rarely, if ever, been equalled. Good cooks are said to be almost extinct; nurses are never to be trusted;' housemaids are notoriously unfit for their position;' whilst all classes of servants show an objection to being improved,' and a 'contempt for political economy,' which is to be accounted for only on the hypothesis of their utter deterioration. Their self-sufficiency and impertinence are attributed by some employers to the insubordination and rank disobedience of the age. By others these faults are said to be a natural consequence of an ultra and elaborate style of education, which has unfitted them for performing their duties. Others, again, find the proximate cause of the supposed degeneracy in their inordinate love for gorgeous dress; and mournfully contrast the neat-handed Phillis" of auld lang syne' with that genus of flaunting female who adorns the streets of our metropolis on a Sunday.

6

On all sides the evil is admitted, and the folly is bewailed. The public is like a spoiled child, which always values what is beyond its reach, and cries for what it cannot get. Our ancestors did not spend their days in congratulating themselves on their great good luck in possessing such incomparable treasures as their Nannies and Sallies.' But pathetic are the tones in which it is reported amongst us that the right-minded and conscientious handmaid of half a century ago has now become a sort of phoenix in town or village.

Without joining in these sweeping accusations, it must be evident to the most superficial observer that a great transition is gradually taking place in the conditions of English society; and that this change is partly to be attributed to the increased facilities for general education, to the growing love of locomotion and variety, and to a widely-diffused desire for superficial equality, it would indeed be useless to deny. English home life is not what it

was a hundred years ago. The old traditions of the domestic sphere of woman's occupations have given way to a cry for emigration and intellectual rights. Mistresses are, in many cases, unable to superintend the machinery of their own households, whilst their inaptitude and neglect creates a spirit of 'uppishness and carelessness amongst servants. Hence the domain of servants is rapidly becoming a separate state,' a kingdom within a kingdom, with its own rules, its own prejudices, fashions, and niceties of etiquette. The levelling process which is imperceptibly going on in all classes of society is partly beneficial, though partly to be deplored. Few of us would wish to revive the ignorant dotage and blind degradation of our working classes a hundred years

ago.

Transition State of Servants.

321

ago. The pauper humility of a model village under the old régime was a feeble compensation for the state of intellectual depression and brutish indifference which debased a large proportion of the serfs. In an age of rapid material advancement, when everything is estimated for its immediate money value, and when the poor are daily brought under new influences, we need not wonder if they adapt themselves somewhat strangely, at first, to the altered circumstances around them. The tendency of mankind is always to exaggerate; and the creature who first attempts to walk without leading-strings (in his effort to assert personal responsibility and free-will) is apt to tend a little to that democracy which M. de Tocqueville prophesies will be characteristic of the western

world.

After all the change is effected by the boasted progress' of our age. A gross materialism valuing things for their outward utility, rather than for their intrinsic worth, is taking more and more the direction of humanity. Thus, in many cases, the social relation between master and servant resolves itself into a hard, calculating bargain, being open to the same opportunities for the exercise of fraud and cunning as any other money transaction. The country is growing richer day by day. The poorest peasants of our day dress as queens did formerly, and the commonest gardens contain the rare exotic. Hence the external and superficial barriers of distinction between superiors and inferiors are now easily broken down. In the upper and middle classes a degrading love for counterfeits and shams is fostering a spirit of extravagance and show. We try to appear what we are not, and our servants ape our manners in return. We forget that man is placed in this earth for ideal and transcendental objects superior to selfish progress and worldly aggrandisement. Our dependents copy us, and push forwards in the race. Their impatience of control is connected with love of change. Australia is the El Dorado where those who are affronted in England may live in clover;' whilst the ambition to rise, which is engendered by a rapid diffusion of knowledge, is calculated to cause dissatisfaction and to undermine the old-fashioned attachment which once existed between the employer and employed.

Under this state of things it is useless (however well intentioned) to endeavour to recall the old patriarchal type of unreasoning simplicity and obedience. Positive compulsion, and determined intolerance of non-essentials on the part of employers, are calculated to foster the evils they are intended to discourage.* Fussy interference about trifles, and undignified attempts to enforce

* One mistress makes an assertion which the history of mankind contradicts, Where no toleration is, there the thing must cease to be It is the toleration that their folly meets with which keeps it up.' Why do the Servants of the Nineteenth Century dress as they do? Wertheim and Macintosh.

VOL. 3.-No. 12.

respect, are certain (if they do not altogether fail) to render the intercourse between master and servant artificial and constrained. Still more likely to increase the estrangement between the two classes is that spirit of careless nonchalance which is content to look upon servants as necessary evils,' or independent social contractors, who affect our happiness no further than as they discharge their special relative duties. The truest wisdom is probably to be found in a medium between these two extremes. The judicious philanthropist tries to catch the spirit of his age. He knows that it will seldom rest with him to give the first impulse to society, but rather to assist, and to guide it in all its strivings after improvement. Every age should have its salient points and its own individuality. We gain nothing when we attempt to revive by artificial means in the present a dead simulacrum' of a real and living past.

The servants of the nineteenth century are probably neither better nor worse than their predecessors. Their deterioration is rather relative than absolute; and the causes of that deterioration originate as much with those who rule as with those who serve. It is equally unfair to speak of servants as intolerable nuisances,' of whom sixty per cent. may be considered as belonging to the criminal class, and who require to be governed by rigid discipline; or to make them figure as injured heroines in popular novels, who are crushed and worked far worse than African slaves.' In fact, they neither appeal to our pity nor arouse our indignation. But amidst the spread of education, and the rapid influx of new ideas, we cannot stifle the germs of individual character, nor prevent new wants from being felt, new thoughts and feelings from arising.

Every age has its peculiar selfishness-its special form of substituting the worship of the creature for that of the Creator. A subtle form of worldliness is the bane of our own. We are apt to sacrifice everything to a deceptive progress. We forget that there is an infinite disproportion between the real value of loving work and its vulgar market price. We allow ourselves to look upon our servants rather as useful machines than as immortal souls. We limit our charity too much to the tangible. If women had a full consciousness of what their 'spiritual agency' might be, they would not forget that the greatest good is accomplished often by insensible means, and the most important influences are those of which no human eye takes cognizance.' Neither of us possesses a life

*About sixty per cent. of the servants, in and out of place, would properly belong to the criminal class if their antecedents as well as their present doings were known. I believe I am understating the figures. Numbers of servants who are going on "swimmingly" in service at this day have previously lost their character, and others are going fast to ruin.'-Domestic Servants: as they are, and as they ought to be. W. Tweedie. Strand.