ordinary household relations, are both
excellent and of permanent interest. There is the full breath of a new
humaneness in them. They were the right way of attacking the
decrepitude of feudal luxury and insolence, and its imitation among
the great farmers-general. This criticism of the conditions of
domestic service marks a beginning of true democracy, as distinguished
from the mere pulverisation of aristocracy. It rests on the claim of
the common people to an equal consideration, as equally useful and
equally capable of virtue and vice; and it implies the essential
priority of social over political reform.

The story abounds in sumptuary detail. The table partakes of the
general plenty, but this plenty is not ruinous. The senses are
gratified without daintiness. The food is common, but excellent of its
kind. The service is simple, yet exquisite. All that is mere show, all
that depends on vulgar opinion, all fine and elaborate dishes whose
value comes of their rarity, and whose names you must know before
finding any goodness in them, are banished without recall. Even in
such delicacies as they permit themselves, our friends abstain every
day from certain things which are reserved for feasts on special
occasions, and which are thus made more delightful without being more
costly. What do you suppose these delicacies are? Rare game, or fish
from the sea, or dainties from abroad? Better than all that; some
delicious vegetable of the district, one of the savoury things that
grow in our garden, some fish from the lake dressed in a peculiar way,
some cheese from our mountains. The service is modest and rustic, but
clean and smiling. Neither gold-laced liveries in sight of which you
die of hunger, nor tall crystals laden with flowers for your only
dessert, here take the place of honest dishes. Here people have not
the art of nourishing the stomach through the eyes, but they know how
to add grace to good cheer, to eat heartily without inconvenience, to
drink merrily without losing reason, to sit long at table without
weariness, and always to rise from it without disgust.[63]

One singularity in this ideal household was the avoidance of those
middle exchanges between production and consumption, which enrich the
shopkeeper but impoverish his customers. Not one of these exchanges is
made without loss, and the multiplication of these losses would weaken
even a man of fortune. Wolmar seeks those real exchanges in which the
conven