ness, and be earnest, diligent, peaceful, useful for the rest of her days? Why, but that at present she is but half in earnest, and so will not.

I am like the great Scotch lawyer, Lord Brougham, who when asked to give his opinion on the conflicting merits and demerits of the cousin-queens Mary and Elizabeth—a standing dispute in history, declared glibly,

"I am not for Mary."

"Then you are for Elizabeth;" was the natural rejoinder—triumphant of course on the part of an Elizabethian.

"No, neither am I for Elizabeth;" his lordship discomfited his tormentor, like a second Burleigh.

Or rather I am better than Lord Brougham, if I may be forgiven for saying so, because I am for both Jetty Hoare and Anne Dewes.

But, whatever you do with regard to Anne Dewes, I would not be untrue, unjust, unkind, to Jetty Hoare, for all the Anne Dewes in the world. You may believe me, (though I do not wish to underrate Anne,) were you in tribulation to-morrow, it would be to Jetty that your sick heart would turn; and when you are growing old, it is to her simple, unvarnished, old friendship, and old stories, that you will have recourse for your solace.

But remember, if Jetty is like the moor, or rather

the common, do not ask from her what you would not ask from either-fertility, soft, sylvan scenery, or even bold picturesqueness-only purity, rest, peace, fidelity. You have no call to expect that Jetty should satisfy all the requirements of your womanhood; that she should give you varied intelligence, originality, wealth and power of mind; and I think that you have done wrong in straining your intercourse with her, and accustoming yourself and her to running in and out of each other's houses, every other day, without apology, and bringing forward endless claims on each other's sympathy, which you cannot possibly satisfy. Therefore, I would not confine you to her. But you will be worse than bad-doubly ungrateful and foolishif you forget that Jetty Hoare, knowing you all your life, perfectly familiar with all your defects and shortcomings, probably making the most of them, for Jetty is the reverse of a hero or a heroine worshipper, without any loadstone or glamour of novelty-loves you dearly, even while she smarts at thinking herself slighted, and will not cease to love you and serve you with the best she has to bestow, though she may sometimes speak sharply of you-oftenest to your face, unless you despise and fling away her friendship.

CHAPTER XI.

OLD AND NEW SERVANTS.

Love between Old Servants and their Employers-How to Treat an Aged Servant-Modern Servants-How a Young Lady may Benefit a Young Servant.

OLD

LD servants, like other old things, old customs, old provincial phrases and turns of thought, are fast becoming obsolete. It would now be impossible to find a retainer so incapable of comprehending the possibility of getting or giving in his "leave" that when his much-tried master put the prospect in a mild way before him, and suggested, "I doubt, John, that you and I must part," John could reply with no more than a little easy inquisitiveness, "Eh! master, and where may you be thinking of going?"

Attributes of an old day, with much good and some evil in them, and a world of racy originality and independence, which we could ill afford to waste, but which are lost for ever, old servants for the most part belonged to our grandmothers, at the latest to our mothers. But I do not think it is fair or right to

cast upon masters, mistresses, and servants of the present generation, the reproach of fickleness and infidelty, because they no longer abide with each other "for good and all." The immensely multiplied means of transit, and the opening of the remotest districts to daily intercourse with the busy world, which has changed the very face of the earth, has worked a transformation in this also, that lads and lasses should no longer live and die in the service in which they were born, more like the feudal retainers of the middle ages, or the recent serfs of Russia, than the enterprising, adventurous men and women of the nineteenth century. If there is much lost, there is also much gained, and the loss and the gain should be contemplated together.

At the same time, adverse though the bustle and progress of the modern world may be to such relations, there is something in old service, in loyal adherence from youth to age, through good report and bad report, in the familiar bonds-growing tender, of half a century that will always strike deep down into the human heart. And men have owned its influence who have been too cynical, captious, haughty, stern to own any other. The philosopher of Ferney, grinning and writhing in bootless scorn and rage at the world, submitted like a lamb to be scolded and driven by his old nurse Ba-ba. Michael Angelo

watched for many days and nights by the death-bed of his old man-servant, and the fierce blaze of the painter's eyes under their rugged brows were quenched in womanly tears, when the tie between master and servant was snapped at last. Women, half-crazed with pride, who have stood like St Simeon Stylites isolated for a lifetime to meet the imperious demands of their ruling passion, have relaxed in one quarter-that of their maids, who have come near them for long years, seen them in every mood, and waited on them in moments of weakness which they would betray to no other mortal.

You have one old servant, Mary, Mattie Ashe, who has not so much remained with you, as reverted back to you from other families, once and again, and has at last, now that her cousin, the corporal, has played her false, and she had given up the combined thoughts of matrimony, and of being washer and dresser to the officers in a regiment, come with the declared intention of finishing her term of service with you, which is somewhat of an appeal to your generosity, for Mattie's term of service will only end with her term of life, and infirmities are beginning to show, and will steadily increase upon her, till there will be as much question of serving her, as of being served by her. But your father and mother consult together, and admit kindly that there is an obligation on them. Mattie was their domestic when she could give full work for her