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 in Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalised and domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.

of their maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only practised in such limited communities. MalteBrun, in his "Annales des Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their good conduct. On that happy day, the mistress and all the friends of the family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are reviewed. The servant introduced, kneels to receive the benediction of her mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden, that having been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from henceforwards she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity, which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with It is in limited communities that the domestic their joyous musicians; and, if the maiden prefer virtues are most intense; all concentrating them- her old domestic abode, she receives an increase selves in their private circles, in such localities of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years, there is no public, no public which extorts so another jubilee provides her second good fortune. many sacrifices from the individual. Insular situa- Let me tell one more story of the influence of tions are usually remarkable for the warm attach- this passion of domesticity in the servant;-its ment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the merit equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack personal regard of families for their servants. on Buenos Ayres, where our brave soldiers were This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia; slaves as they were, joined the inhabitants to for there they provide for the happiness of the expel their invaders. On this signal occasion, the humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early city decreed a public expression of their gratitude age, are received into families, educated in writing, to the negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the reading, and arithmetic. Some only quit their same time awarded the freedom of eighty of their abode, in which they were almost born, when leaders. One of them having shown his claims tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enter- to the boon, deelared, that to obtain his freedom prise. They form a race of men who are much had all his days formed the proud object of his sought after for servants; and the term applied wishes; his claim was indisputable; yet now, to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recom- however, to the amazement of the judges, he remendation of character for unlimited trust and fused his proffered freedom! The reason he unwearying zeal. alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt The mode of providing for the future comforts sensibility:-"My kind mistress," said the negro,

"once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she possesses a slave who never will quit her side."

pations, and undisturbed habits, abstracted 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

Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking illustrations of the power-raised a monument not only to his father and to ful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we are his mother, but also to the faithful servant who without instances in the private history of families had nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly among ourselves. I have known more than one struck by the fact, that she declared that "This where the servant has chosen to live without monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress its singularity, as I know of no other instance." in their decayed fortunes; and another where the Our churchyards would have afforded her a vast servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters to her last day. to faithful servants *; 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 :

Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of "servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little; their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile without the slightest intimation.

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.

Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life they must The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the frequently come in contact with them. On this votive gift of a master to his servant; for on its subordinate class, how much the happiness and back, written by the poet's own hand, is the foleven the welfare of the master may rest! The lowing dedication:-"This picture belongs to gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William await him at all seasons and all spots, in pleasure Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgor in peril. Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott, ment of her native genius, her magnanimity, her "In a free country an individual's happiness is tenderness, and her fidelity.-W. S." We might more immediately connected with the personal refer to many similar evidences of the domestic character of his valet, than with that of the gratitude of such masters to old and attached monarch himself." Let the reflection not servants. Some of these tributes may be familiar be deemed extravagant, if I venture to add, that to most readers. The solemn author of the the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of friendship and the tenderness of relatives,--for these are but periodical; but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt from the gentle offices of servitude?

Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom

"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 Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant. Published only in the voluminous collection of the letters of

Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling,

from domestic cares. Persons of sedentary occu- and exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.

proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence published his love-letters; and with the felicity to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, parsimony to Satur- of an Italian diminutive, he fondly entitled them days, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, obser- "Pistolette Amorose del Doni, 1552, 8vo." These vances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to Pistole, were designed to be little epistles, or the dying, festivals to saints, images to churches, billets-doux, but Doni was one of those fertile masses to altars, lights to lamps, organs to quires, authors who have too little time of their own, to benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies, and compose short works. Doni was too facetious to decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be be sentimental, and his quill was not plucked wanting (thanks to your pious and most entire from the wing of Love. He was followed by a nature,) possession has been regained to offices graver pedant, who threw a heavy offering on the of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six of shrines; to the confessed, of absolutions; to books of "Lettere Amorose, 1565, 8vo." was too priests, of habits; to preachers, of pulpits; to phlegmatic to sigh over his ink-stand. ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, avemaries and matins, the privileges of daily and nightly bells."

The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered and despised.

The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the too elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X. and the more elegant correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous and published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a publisher, is a model of familiar letters.

Denina mentions LEWIS Pasqualigo of Venice as an improver of these amatory epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author as having given birth to those novels in the form of letters, with which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in literary researches, for the precursors of these epistolary novels, to the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.

"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI, and the Circe of GELLI, of which we have more than one English translation, which under their fantastic inventions cover the most profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the finer genius of "The Persiau Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous progeny, of D'Argens and others.

The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters, which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the works of artists. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to princes-" Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a Principi, o ragionano di Principi; Venezia, 1581," in 3 vols. quarto.

But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has appeared in more recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X., gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes. They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions; chronicles of the dreams of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.

These collections being found agreeable to the taste of their readers, novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers-Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch son- It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be nets. DONI, a bold literary projector, who in- the first satirist in the English language, claims vented a literary review both of printed and also, more justly perhaps, the honour of being the manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity | first author who published familiar letters. In the

END OF LITERARY MISCELLANIES.