Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 29

[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term "Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this quaint t.i.tle, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and coaches." It is an unsparing satire.--Ed.]

Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more generally used--"Within our memories our n.o.bility and gentry could ride well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a _coach_ was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought _tobacco_ into England in _a coach_, for both appeared at the same time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake of their coach and horses had only "a b.u.t.terfly page, a trotting footman, and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons.

Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As. .h.i.therto our females had been accustomed to robust exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to subst.i.tute a domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life pa.s.sed in their coaches.[A]

[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual among the n.o.bility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a _coche_ for the Earl of Rutland, which was the first _coche_ that was ever made in England."--ED.]

Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, they were not only costly in the ornaments--in velvets, damasks, taffetas, silver and gold lace, fringes of all sorts--but their greatest pains were in matching their coach-horses. "They must be all of a colour, longitude, lat.i.tude, cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh them in a pair of balances); and when once matched with a great deal of care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent to the surviving palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or codlings to boiled apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds --"They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, in its novelty, is often extravagant; true elegance and utility are never at first combined; good sense and experience correct its caprices. They appear to have exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first introduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary use.

Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the calamity of coaches, and that "housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; and that a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water-poet, were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes of time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, and in an exchange of modes of industry the nation loses nothing. The hands which, like Taylor's, rowed boats, came to drive coaches. These complainers on all novelties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us a most prosperous view of the condition of "this new trade of coachmakers, as the gainfullest about the town. They are apparelled in sattins and velvets, are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus--seldom without their mackeroones, Parmisants (macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which they have from their debtors, worships in the country!" Such was the sudden luxurious state of our first great coachmakers! to the deadly mortification of all watermen, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our loungers, thrown out of employ!

Tobacco.--It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry; but the blast was too weak against the smoke, and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to terrify his liege children that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, that after their death were opened." The information was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay the extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end themselves; and the royal author might have left the subject to the town-satirists of the day, who found the theme inexhaustible for ridicule or invective.

Coal.--The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may be ascribed to the scarcity of wood in the environs of the metropolis. Its recommendation was its cheapness, however it destroys everything about us. It has formed an artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is acknowledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, from early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said to a friend, "I cannot live in the country; my const.i.tution is not strong enough." Evelyn poured out a famous invective against "London Smoke."

"Imagine," he cries, "a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a ma.s.s of smoke would then stick to it! This fuliginous crust now comes down every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into our bodies. On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it effects on every article of ornament and price; and "he heard in France, that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls, however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never fails to produce. There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of the n.o.bility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of the noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires have now been in general use for three centuries. In the country they persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth; he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.

The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people.

Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the inept.i.tude of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true knowledge.

A n.o.bler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched on--the gradual changes in public opinion--the utter annihilation of false notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other superst.i.tions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their c.u.mbrous machinery; but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out by the friction of ages.

DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.

The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most popular--the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his condition, and consequently that this vast mult.i.tude in society remain ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners--all ear, all eye: the parasitical knave--the flatterer of the follies, and even the eager partic.i.p.ator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's "Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.

Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it rarely pa.s.ses without a sad repet.i.tion. A link in the chain of the intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred.

Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the pa.s.sage from that extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the _Spanish Bawd_. It was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic, yet we should regret that the _Spanish Bawd_ was as generally read by servants as Swift's "Directions":--

"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty, thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity; live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago-- rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such difference is there of estate and condition between you two."

This pa.s.sage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.

Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This searching genius of philosophy and _les pet.i.tes moeurs_ solemnly warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of servile war. The famous farce of _High Life below Stairs_ exposed with great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of the guest, this victim had to pa.s.s along a line of domestics, arranged in the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]

[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly; and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the household economy which led to such results.--ED.]

[Footnote B: These _vails_, supposed to be the free gratuity of the invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that persons paid servants by that mode only--levying a kind of black-mail on their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing,"

says a n.o.ble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the _vails_ are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having, owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play noted above.--ED.]

When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable 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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.s 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 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tutions 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 partic.i.p.ating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized 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 n.o.bly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.

It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense; all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities there is no public--no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading, and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.

The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, 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 a.s.semble, 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 henceforward 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 their joyous musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of the influence of this pa.s.sion of domesticity in the servant;--its merit equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal occasion the city decreed a public expression of their grat.i.tude to the negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon, declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt 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."

Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking ill.u.s.trations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves.

I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady to her last day.

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," subst.i.tuting 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.

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 frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate cla.s.s, how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott--"In a free country an individual's happiness is more immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant if I venture to add, that 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 from domestic cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, 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 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 grat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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 Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari, it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender eloquence.

[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to a.s.sert his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to his dying domestic, antic.i.p.ating all his wants by a personal attendance at his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.--ED.]

MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.

"My Dear George,--I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the grace of G.o.d when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of G.o.d was this happy death to him; yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of life."

Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished inmate.

King George III.

Caused to be interred near this place the body of MARY GASCOIGNE, Servant to the Princess Amelia; and this stone to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense of the faithful services and attachment of an amiable young woman to his beloved Daughter.

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed this equality of affection, which the domestic may partic.i.p.ate: monumental inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves, have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]

[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it is an inscription by one s.e.xtus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto dulcissimo).--ED.]

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