mportance of temperature, ventilation, &c. especially to the
tender infant, will be ashamed to derive an important lesson from
the foregoing.

5. LOVE OF DOMESTIC CONCERNS.

Without the knowledge and the love of domestic concerns, even the wife
of a peer, is but a poor affair. It was the fashion, in former times,
for ladies to understand a great deal about these things, and it would
be very hard to make me believe that it did not tend to promote the
interests and honor of their husbands.

The concerns of a great family never can be _well_ managed, if left
_wholly_ to hirelings; and there are many parts of these affairs in
which it would be unseemly for husbands to meddle. Surely, no lady can
be too high in rank to make it proper for her to be well acquainted
with the character and general demeanor of all the female servants. To
receive and give character is too much to be left to a servant, however
good, whose service has been ever so long, or acceptable.

Much of the ease and happiness of the great and rich must depend on the
character of those by whom they are assisted. They live under the same
roof with them; they are frequently the children of their tenants, or
poorer neighbors; the conduct of their whole lives must be influenced
by the examples and precepts which they here imbibe; and when ladies
consider how much more weight there must be in one word from them, than
in ten thousand words from a person who, call her what you like, is
still a _fellow servant_, it does appear strange that they should
forego the performance of this at once important and pleasing part of
their duty.

I am, however, addressing myself, in this work, to persons in the
middle ranks of life; and here a knowledge of domestic affairs is so
necessary in every wife, that the lover ought to have it continually in
his eye. Not only a knowledge of these affairs--not only to know how
things _ought to be done_, but how to _do them_; not only to know what
ingredients ought to be put into a pie or a pudding, but to be able _to
make_ the pie or the pudding.

Young people, when they come together, ought not, unless they have
fortunes, or are to do unusual business, to think about _servants_!
Servants for what! To help them eat, and drink, and sleep? When they
have children, there must be some _help_ in a farmer's or tradesman's
house, but until then, what call is there for a servant in a house, the
master of which has to _earn_ every