was a young and rising American merchant; by which I mean, that he was an Englishman who exported to the United States. He had married about three years previously a pretty and amiable young woman – well educated, and endowed with singular compass of intellect. But the distinguishing feature in this household was the spirit of love which, under the benign superintendence of the mistress, diffused itself through all its members.

 

The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, amongst many novel ideas, which found no welcome even with his friends, insisted earnestly and often upon this – viz., that a great danger was threatening our social system in Great Britain, from the austere separation existing between our educated and our working classes; and that a more conciliatory style of intercourse between these two bisections of our social body must be established, or else – a tremendous revolution. This is not the place to discuss so large a question; and I shall content myself with making two remarks. The first is this – that, although a change of the sort contemplated by Dr. Arnold might, if considered as an operative cause, point forward to some advantages, on the other hand, if considered as an effect, it points backward to a less noble constitution of society by much than we already enjoy. Those nations whose upper classes speak paternally and caressingly to the working classes, and to servants in particular, do so because they speak from the lofty stations of persons having civil rights to those who have none. Two centuries back, when a military chieftain addressed his soldiers as ›my children,‹ he did so because he was an irresponsible despot exercising uncontrolled powers of life and death. From the moment when legal rights have been won for the poorest classes, inevitable respect on the part of the higher classes extinguishes for ever the affectionate style which belongs naturally to the state of pupilage or infantine bondage.

That is my first remark: my second is this – that the change advocated by Dr. Arnold, whether promising or not, is practically impossible; or possible, I should say, through one sole channel – viz., that of domestic servitude. There only do the two classes concerned come hourly into contact. On that stage only they meet without intrusion upon each other. There only is an opening for change. And a wise mistress, who possesses tact enough to combine a gracious affability with a self-respect that never slumbers nor permits her to descend into gossip, will secure the attachment of all young and impressible women. Such a mistress was Mrs. K––. She had won the gratitude of her servants from the first, by making the amplest provision for their comfort; their confidence, by listening with patience, and counselling with prudence; and their respect, by refusing to intermeddle with gossiping personalities always tending to slander. To this extent, perhaps, most mistresses might follow her example. But the happiness which reigned in Mrs. K––'s house at this time depended very much upon special causes. All the eight persons had the advantage of youth; and the three young female servants were under the spell of fascination, such as could rarely be counted on, from a spectacle held up hourly before their eyes, that spectacle which of all others is the most touching to womanly sensibilities, and which any one of these servants might hope, without presumption, to realise for herself – the spectacle, I mean, of a happy marriage union between two persons, who lived in harmony so absolute with each other, as to be independent of the world outside. How tender and self-sufficing such a union might be, they saw with their own eyes. The season was then mid-winter, which of itself draws closer all household ties. Their own labours, as generally in respectable English services, were finished for the most part by two o'clock; and as the hours of evening drew nearer, when the master's return might be looked for without fail, beautiful was the smile of anticipation upon the gentle features of the mistress: even more beautiful the reflex of that smile, half-unconscious, and half-repressed, upon the features of the sympathising handmaidens. One child, a little girl of two years old, had then crowned the happiness of the K––s. She naturally lent her person at all times, and apparently in all places at once, to the improvement of the family groups. My brother and myself, who had been trained from infancy to the courteous treatment of servants, filled up a vacancy in the graduated scale of ascending ages, and felt in varying degrees the depths of a peace which we could not adequately understand or appreciate. Bad tempers there were none amongst us; nor any opening for personal jealousies; nor, through the privilege of our common youth, either angry recollections breathing from the past, or fretting anxieties gathering from the future. The spirit of hope and the spirit of peace (so it seemed to me, when looking back upon this profound calm) had, for their own enjoyment, united in a sisterly league to blow a solitary bubble of visionary happiness – and to sequester from the unresting hurricanes of life one solitary household of eight persons within a four months' lull, as if within some Arabian tent on some untrodden wilderness, withdrawn from human intrusion, or even from knowledge, by worlds of mist and vapour.

How deep was that lull! and yet, as in a human atmosphere, how frail? Did the visionary bubble burst at once? Not so: but silently and by measured steps, like a dissolving palace of snow, it collapsed.