bstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to
the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful
zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and
the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.

When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to
his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had
nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that
she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for
its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would
have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters
to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy
of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples.
The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the
east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone
bears this inscription:--

To the memory of
MARY BEACH,
who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.
ALEXANDER POPE,
whom she nursed in his infancy,
and constantly attended for thirty-eight years,
Erected this stone
In gratitude to a faithful Servant.

[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and
exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]

The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his
servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the
following dedication:--"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by
her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her
native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.--W.S."
We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such
masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be
familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts"
inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic
GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant,
fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.

The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most
sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a
letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend
Vasar