from all knowledge
of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same
roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal
manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed
through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings,
of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated
more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a
stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor--their
confidential counsellor--the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on
his wishes personified.

This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble
friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in
"Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to
affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let
him be ironical upon _useful_ subjects, leaving _poor slaves_ to eat their
porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think
proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter
Scott:--"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of
attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such,
in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of
personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.

Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to
comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with
the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they
have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the
prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of
the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of
the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired
family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit,
and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes
call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and
endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where
luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from
each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic
Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its
distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and