able and
transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the
mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey.
It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the
menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of
domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To
be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent
master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The
slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal
attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him
whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and
wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of
state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall,
or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic
ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of
sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are
recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he
is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight,
and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and
curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets
to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and
little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper
follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants
familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the
occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A
cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of
servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the
modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the
health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that
he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of
the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would
rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it
extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the
good-tempered into insolence.

South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval,
the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote