an uncommon thing in private families for a domestic to be permitted to go out only on a Sunday, and then sometimes not beyond her church; and in hotels and other places of public resort several weeks elapse without some of the dependents seeing grass or trees.* Overwork is as injurious as unhealthy work. On strict grounds of moral, if not of religious, justice a seventh part of a man's time should be looked upon as legally his own. A cold dinner and quietness on a Sunday should be considered as imperatively necessary. Regular hours are for employers as well as for the employed. The mistress who lies in bed to breakfast, and overtaxes the failing strength of a sickly servant, is guilty of the grossest inhumanity. It is impossible to ignore the well-established facts of physiology. Ill health must certainly ensue when the laws of the body are violated. Disease sets in and sometimes fever (it is a significant fact that this complaint is common amongst servants), and an unfortunate girl is sometimes discharged sick and alone in a vast city, or left to charity for support. Well may Mrs. Browning exclaim 'I think it frets the saints in heaven to see 2. The moral and mental improvement of servants is to be effected by raising them above mere animal tastes and enjoyments, and supplying them with healthy recreation. Employers should endeavour to give beauty as well as strength to their government, to throw life into method, and to ease the uniformity of a servant's existence. Apparent trifles may often exercise an important influence over the happiness of others. Ce peu de chose est ce que, pour sa part, Goodness admits of no excess but error.' The employer who from a mistaken idea of generosity wounds his own conscience by withholding the truth in giving a character is guilty of a betrayal of trust. But to economize by pinching inferiors, to be unpunctual in the payment of wages, or to give a hasty dismissal from irritability of temper, is to commit a criminal injustice. Then the exclusively culinary character of the downstairs department might be modified and enlivened by the establishment of a kitchen library, consisting of a judicious selection of books, or by the introduction of a weekly newspaper or popular periodical. No reasonable mistress should grudge the time thus spared from toil. The physical and moral condition of servants in many of the large hotels is often most deplorable. They are rarely allowed to go out, in many cases never enter a church, and have insufficient time for cleanliness and sleep. The The wheels of labour would revolve with more ease and less creaking if oiled with the harmless pleasantness of story, proverb, or fable. It is a positive duty to impart to others a little of the information we ourselves possess. Our heads should not be graves but treasuries' of knowledge. Servants should be treated also with genuine sincerity, and such a degree of confidence as is distinct from that careless indifference which places temptations in the way of the weak. Tradesmen's books and weekly accounts should be openly and regularly inspected by the mistress as a guarantee of good faith; without multiplying those incessant inquiries, and without yielding to that coarse mistrust which wounds the feelings and demoralizes the characters of dependents. Perchance the most Utopian of reformers can never hope to recall the merrie' days when King Alfred left gold bracelets on the broad highway; but it is better to err on the side of trust than of defiance. The pupils of Dr. Arnold were ashamed to tell him a lie. There is an old Italian proverb to the effect that suspicion releases faith.' Once have recourse to cunning policy, and many are the crooked ways in which we may be outwitted by adepts in the game. Far better is it, even for the sake of our own souls, to deal so plainly with every fellow-creature that he shall feel himself constrained into truth. Much is said now of the terrible and wide-spread depravity amongst domestics. But let employers remember that goodness is rather positive than negative, and that evil is best overcome by the opposition of a counteracting force. You suspect Betty of creeping out to balls at public-houses, and of meeting her young man' round the corner. Give her a little quiet recreation at home (even an occasional servants' party, under your own superintendence, can do no harm), and let her future husband be invited to tea about once a fortnight. You live in terror lest your cook should have a fearful propensity to frequent 'marine stores,' and lest your maid should make 'white rags' of all your under garments. Let a proper arrangement be made when a new servant is engaged. Give the dripping and kitchen waste to the destitute poor, and clothe the naked with your left-off raiment; whilst in consequence of the deficiency of perquisites both cook and lady's-maid should receive a little extra pay. It is too often forgotten that the voluntary compact between master and servant can only justify a reasonable use of authority. Some persons must be always governing. They multiply rules and invent supplementary decalogues, till the servant, driven backwards and forwards, is bewildered and confused. Much needless pain is often given by noticing defects in dress and conduct in a harsh and dictatorial way. We should treat the source of the disease rather than its symptoms. When the evil itself has abated, the outward signs of it will disappear. Many a servant has been edT encouraged + * encouraged in temperance by the weekly present of the worth of her beer in money who could never have been forced to take the pledge. Many a spendthrift has been made provident by being taught that the old must be supported by foregone labour, and that his future happiness depends on the prudent consumption of his wages, who would have been jealous of any attempt to interfere with the just product of his industry. Perhaps many a young girl has first learnt to connect the the idea of shame with an honest love through the indiscriminate application of the rule, followers forbidden. We seldom endanger morality more seriously than when we raise false standards of propriety and right. It often happens that the foolish kitchen-maid admires and loves the mistress whose tawdry finery she imitates by making herself a bedecked rag-fair; but this is many degrees better than engendering envious hatred by making crinoline a badge of caste. 3. A few concluding lines may suffice to remind the reader that the judicious moral treatment of domestics implies a corresponding attention to their eternal interests. This is a matter which must be left to each individual conscience.. Few of us have so narrow an idea of charity as to limit it to the tangible, for we all know that there are infirmities not only of the body but of the soul, which require the merciful hand of our abilities.' Religion in the Christian family should be like a life-element,' which does not imply much talk or outward show, but is the all-pervading atmosphere of the quiet home. It requires rare tact to edify without preaching, to influence without inspiring a feeling of inferiority, to be solemn without gloom, and enthusiastic without fanaticism. But in sacred things feeling is a means and not an end. Every act of ours has a 'moral complexion,' and many an ignorant servant will accept the life of his inconsistent employer as a translation of that Christianity which may be to him as an unknown tongue. Good men are often singularly unwise when they intend to do their best. 'Some,' says an American writer, carry religion as churches do bells, high up in the belfry, to ring only on sacred occasions ;' others keep it for a particular day, and when religion gets out of Sundays it is hunted and pelted with stones, like a wolf escaped from a menagerie;' and others would make it a badge of respectability, and while they are ashamed to lift up their eyes unto heaven, they yet manage to look down on their fellow-men. These are not the ways in which to influence our dependents. Neither should we attempt to impose a dogmatic faith upon others, for belief must be the fruit of conviction, and that can be worth nothing which is accepted as an official yoke emanating from an exterior authority. Neither should we show a spirit of partisanship, *The drunkenness of farm-servants might be abated by the establishment of cafés or of reading-rooms for working men. and Lord Brougham and Temperance Legislation. 331 and influence our servants to act against their consciences. He who does so may secure another name for his particular sect, but runs the risk of injuring a brother's soul.' All this requires the wisdom from above. It is very easy to talk in biblical phraseology, or to adopt an insipid sentimentality, but these are the counterfeits for the true thing.' ART. V.-1. Hansard's Debates. 1839. 2. Address of Lord Brougham at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held at Bradford. 1859. 3. The same at Glasgow. 1860. No O living man has filled so large a space in the public eye as Lord Brougham. Others almost as far advanced in life as he still excite the admiration and wonder of their countrymen by the clearness of their faculties and the daring of their eloquence. Lyndhurst, a yet older man, still occasionally rises among the peers; and Palmerston, with the weight of nearly fourscore years upon his head, leads the House of Commons with too much spirit and jocosity. But there is none whose career has displayed so brilliant a success-personal, professional, political-as that of Brougham. Ever since the year 1810, when Henry Brougham entered the British House of Commons as member for Camelford on the nomination of the Earl of Darlington, until now, a period of half a century, his name has been a household word, and his well-known form the foremost in the line upon which the watchful attention of the country has been fixed. It is not often that professional and parliamentary success are united in the same individual. The most successful advocates at the bar, it is very commonly said, fail in impressing the House of Commons, and rarely are heard except upon legal topics. This is not to be wondered at. The absorbing nature of a successful professional life is unfavourable to the close study of general politics; while the habits of thought and research engendered by constant ex-parte advocacy, and by an unusual enhancement of technical and narrow detail, seldom permit the expansion of sympathy and zeal necessary for the parliamentary debater. But Brougham, in the midst of his enormous business as counsel, was the most popular and effective leader in St. Stephen's. The restless activity of his mind could not be trammelled; and he plunged into the conflicts of party and the agitation of great questions with a heat almost amounting to fierceness. But the most remarkable characteristic of Brougham's life has been been the fidelity with which his convictions have clung to questions of social rather than political progress. His full share of purely party debate was no doubt assumed; but it will be mainly with the history of social freedom that his name will be associated. Slavery found in him its most withering denouncer-education and legal reform their warmest friend; and it is as an appropriate culmination of a long career, and not as the result of a restless search after public occupation and applause, that we find him the controlling and impelling spirit of the old movement with a new name, Social Science.' We have nothing to add to the sum of popular knowledge of Lord Brougham's biography. It must suffice to remind our readers of the principal facts in connection with his long and useful life. The De Broughams, it is said, were possessed of the manor of De Brougham, where Brougham Hall now stands, as early as the days of Edward the Confessor. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one of the family married a 'fair Miss Slee, daughter of Mr. Slee, of Carlisle, a jovial gentleman of three hundred a year,' and thus associated the name with that of another old family. In 1777 the then representative of the family, Henry Brougham, married Eleanor Syme, a niece of Dr. Robertson, the historian; and of this marriage, in 1779, was born Henry Brougham, afterwards Lord Brougham and Vaux and Lord High Chancellor of England. His motto, discovered by the heralds to be the ancient one of his house, is Pro rege, lege, grege,' and his crest, a hand and arm in armour holding a luce, argent; on the elbow a rose gules. Educated at first in the High School of Edinburgh, in which city he was born, he entered the University at fifteen, and at the age of little more than sixteen was busily engaged in a Latin correspondence with philosophers of European reputation upon some scientific questions he had raised in influential quarters. After a short foreign tour he was called to the Scottish bar, but soon found that his abilities had but little scope, and at once decided on settling in England-entered at Lincoln's Inn, and assumed the position of an English barrister. The establishment of the Edinburgh Review' prior to his departure from Scotland afforded further opportunity for his speculative pen, and associated him with other ardent and intellectual confederates. At first, fears were entertained of his 'indiscretion and rashness,' but after the third number Brougham did more work than anybody for the Review.' In 1810, Mr. Brougham was heard at the bar of the House of Lords for two consecutive days as counsel for certain London, Liverpool, and Manchester merchants against the celebrated Orders |