ervant you at heart wish for or "demand." If for nurses you want
Charlotte Winsors, they are to be had for money; but by no means for
money, such as that German girl who, the other day, on her own
scarce-floating fragment of wreck, saved the abandoned child of another
woman, keeping it alive by the moisture from her lips. What kind of
servant do you want? It is a momentous question for you yourself--for
the nation itself. Are we to be a nation of shopkeepers, wanting only
shop-boys: or of manufacturers, wanting only hands: or are there to be
knights among us, who will need squires--captains among us, needing
crews? Will you have clansmen for your candlesticks, or silver plate?
Myrmidons at your tents, ant-born, or only a mob on the Gillies' Hill?
Are you resolved that you will never have any but your inferiors to
serve you, or shall Enid ever lay your trencher with tender little
thumb, and Cinderella sweep your hearth, and be cherished there? It
_might_ come to that in time, and plate and hearth be the brighter; but
if your servants are to be held your inferiors, at least be sure they
_are_ so, and that you are indeed wiser, and better-tempered, and more
useful than they. Determine what their education ought to be, and
organize proper servants' schools, and there give it them. So they will
be fit for their position, and will do honour to it, and stay in it: let
the masters be as sure they do honour to theirs, and are as willing to
stay in that. Remember that every people which gives itself to the
pursuit of riches, invariably, and of necessity, gets the scum uppermost
in time, and is set by the genii, like the ugly bridegroom in the
Arabian Nights, at its own door with its heels in the air, showing its
shoe-soles instead of a Face. And the reversal is a serious matter, if
reversal be even possible, and it comes right end uppermost again,
instead of to conclusive Wrong-end.

ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON
(1850-1894)

The author of _Treasure Island_ (invariably known to his
friends simply as "Louis," the "Robert" being reserved in
the form of "Bob" for his less famous but very admirable
cousin the art-critic) will perhaps offer to some Matthew
Arnold of posterity the opportunity of a paradox like that
of our Matthew on Shelley. For a short time some of these
friends--not perhaps the wisest of them--were inclined to
regard him as, and to urge him to continue to be, a write