e, and
was managed through the steward by a contract with the cook, who was
bound to provide a certain number of dishes daily for the fixed meals,
but nothing else--not so much as an egg or a slice of toast beyond
that. This system still prevails in many households, and as it is to be
expected that meals at unusual hours may sometimes be required, an
elaborate system of accounts is kept by the steward and his clerks, and
the smallest things ordered by any of the sons or daughters are charged
against an allowance usually made them, while separate reckonings are
kept for the daughters-in-law, for whom certain regular pin-money is
provided out of their own dowries at the marriage settlement, all of
which goes through the steward's hands. The same settlement, even in
recent years, stipulated for a fixed number of dishes of meat daily,
generally only two, I believe, for a certain number of new gowns and
other clothes, and for a great variety of details, besides the use of a
carriage every day, to be harnessed not more than twice, that is, either
in the morning and afternoon, or once in the daytime and once at night.
Everything,--a cup of tea, a glass of lemonade,--if not mentioned in the
marriage settlement, had to be paid for separately. The justice of such
an arrangement--for it is just--is only equalled by its inconvenience,
for it requires the machinery of a hotel, combined with an honesty not
usual in hotels. Undoubtedly, the whole system is directly descended
from the practice of the ancients, which made every father of a family
the absolute despot of his household, and made it impossible for a son
to hold property or have any individual independence during his
father's life, and it has not been perceptibly much modified since the
Middle Age, until the last few years. Its existence shows in the
strongest light the main difference between the Latin and the
Anglo-Saxon races, in the marked tendency of the one to submit to
despotic government, and of the other to govern itself; of the one to
stay at home under paternal authority, and of the other to leave the
father's house and plunder the world for itself; of the sons of the one
to accept wives given them, and of the other's children to marry as they
please.

Roman family life, from Romulus to the year 1870, was centred in the
head of the house, whose position was altogether unassailable, whose
requirements were necessities, and whose word was law. Next to him in
place