considers the figure
he cuts behind her carriage, and the late hours he is compelled to keep,
a full compensation for the wages he exacts, for the food he wastes, and
for the perquisites he can lay his hands on. Nor should the fast young
man, who chooses his groom for his knowingness in the ways of the turf
and in the tricks of low horse-dealers, be surprised if he is sometimes
the victim of these learned ways. But these are the exceptional cases,
which prove the existence of a better state of things. The great masses
of society among us are not thus deserted; there are few families of
respectability, from the shopkeeper in the next street to the nobleman
whose mansion dignifies the next square, which do not contain among
their dependents attached and useful servants; and where these are
absent altogether, there are good reasons for it. The sensible master
and the kind mistress know, that if servants depend on them for their
means of living, in their turn they are dependent on their servants for
very many of the comforts of life; and that, with a proper amount of
care in choosing servants, and treating them like reasonable beings, and
making slight excuses for the shortcomings of human nature, they will,
save in some exceptional case, be tolerably well served, and, in most
instances, surround themselves with attached domestics.

2155. This remark, which is applicable to all domestics, is especially
so to men-servants. Families accustomed to such attendants have always
about them humble dependents, whose children have no other prospect than
domestic service to look forward to; to them it presents no degradation,
but the reverse, to be so employed; they are initiated step by step into
the mysteries of the household, with the prospect of rising in the
service, if it is a house admitting of promotion,--to the respectable
position of butler or house-steward. In families of humbler pretensions,
where they must look for promotion elsewhere, they know that can only be
attained by acquiring the goodwill of their employers. Can there be any
stronger security for their good conduct,--any doubt that, in the mass
of domestic servants, good conduct is the rule, the reverse the
exception?

2156. The number of the male domestics in a family varies according to
the wealth and position of the master, from the owner of the ducal
mansion, with a retinue of attendants, at the head of which is the
chamberlain and house-steward, to the occu