idealities, little or no question that the condition of our working men wants improvement. Work is honourable to all men: it is the first necessity, the primal law. "This we commanded you," says St. Paul, "that if any would not work, neither should he eat." It follows, as a natural corollary, that he who works well and earnestly should feed well. Unless he be well fed, he will lose health, and not be able to work; yet it must be accepted as a fact, that some of our hardest workers are badly fed and badly housed; and this effect is frequently produced, not through the insufficiency of their pay, but through the ignorance and the insufficiency of knowledge and management on the part of their wives.

Hence we have, on the part of the benevolent, an attempt to do by public means, and by large and systematic endeavours, that which should result from private endeavours on the part of the family. "Every one must have seen with pleasure," wrote a clergyman to the editor of one of our daily papers, "the accounts given in your paper of the proposed restaurants for the poor." Why so? These restaurants will

of necessity, and to a large extent, separate a working man from his family. That they will do well and cheaply that which is now done poorly and inefficiently, is true enough. The present writer was invited to one of these establishments, where a meal of soup and bread, meat and potatoes, was furnished for fourpence. But a working man with a large family cannot afford to pay fourpence a head for a single meal every day. The clergyman referred to goes on to say that, as one well acquainted with the habits of the poor, he could bear witness to the

shocking waste, and to the unnecessarily bad living, to which the poor man is subjected. But, as he says, the fact of making a common table, and of dining and eating in common, must give rise to many grave reflections; and his first reflections, as indeed the first thoughts of all of us on the subject, are forced into somewhat the following shape :-Why are such refreshment-rooms necessary? Why cannot the poor man dine in comfort at home? The answer is a serious one: "I fear," he writes, "that we must lay the blame upon the wife.”

She

Though this should not be the case, it is unquestionably so; and the charge-a very serious one, and a cruel one to bootis too true. The wife is incompetent, generally incompetent, to make her home comfortable, on account of habits previously formed. If she is the daughter of one of the working classes, there is no reason why this should be the case. should have seen the necessity for management, arrangement, industry, and cleanliness. But she, too often, is neither industrious, competent, nor cleanly. The girls of the working classes are brought up on a wrong principle, or on no principle at all. The love of dress is taught them by their mothers, or by foolish companions and neighbours around them. This love, a very natural one, and when properly directed resulting beneficially, is fostered in many schools by teaching the children fancy work and embroidery; whereas, what a girl wants who is hereafter to become the wife of a working man, is a thorough knowledge of plain work; to be skilful and rapid with the needle; to know how to cut out and

to make her own clothing, to patch and to mend. A schoolmistress of a village school, who had observation and a thinking mind, and who used both, was one day asked the cause of her profound melancholy. She answered that she was so because her life was thrown away; that she was teaching children useless things, and all her work did no good; and that she was so bound down by custom, and the rules of the school, that she could effect no reform.

Well, after some time, generally very short, and insufficient for proper instruction, especially so when the wrong things are taught, and the scholars are not old enough to think for themselves, the girl leaves school; and, after an interval spent at home, in a house generally badly managed and disorderly, she enters domestic service. Here, if everything were properly managed, she might hope to learn a great deal. Domestic service should be as honourable as it is un

doubtedly useful. In the "good old times,” or at least in the olden times, which, with all their faults, had something about them we might venerate, the son of the nobleman entered the family of the prince, the son of the gentleman that of the nobleman, and the son of the yeoman that of the gentleman, that he might learn something of life, and that, by being early taught how to serve, he might in good time know how to command. Society is now altered considerably for the worse. When the girl first enters service she becomes freer from restraint than she was in her mother's home; and, not having had instilled into her the first habit, and the most useful of all habits, of education, that of a readiness and

fitness to learn, she spends her time in a forced labour which she does not love; and, instead of growing by degrees into a most valuable member of society, which a good servant is, she becomes rather an encumbrance than a help.

We will let the pen of a lady (one who has endeavoured to help her sex, and especially the daughters of the working classes) describe the figure which presents itself as one of the modern servants.

"She becomes not the modestly dressed, respectful, clean servant of old-fashioned times, but the over-dressed, impertinent slattern of modern date. Behold her any morning that you please, with her dirty cotton dress stretched over an absurd hoop, unable to do her work without making an improper exhibition of herself. Follow her into the kitchen, and observe the waste end of loaves thrown away, vegetables wasted, meat-bones, which might make soup, consigned to the dust-heap. Well, after a time, she gets a young man ; and then either of two things happens: he, seeing her love of finery and her wasteful habits, fears that the same faults will affect him; he amuses himself some time with her company, and then probably ruins her; or perhaps he marries her."

This is written with an unsparing pen; but it is too true. Why not, for once in a way, tell people their faults? It will not do to be always finding out "acceptable words:" we may give sugared advice till it induces a languid disease. But though a considerable deal of blame really rests on the servants, there is this to be said in their favour, that their mistresses are not always perfect, and that the pride, gaiety,

and thoughtless cruelty of society, have a great deal to do with the faults mentioned. A mistress, if she be wise, will attempt to be a friend to her servants. If she is so, she will not only do her duty, but she will actually be the gainer. In a moderate family a great deal may be saved every week by a servant who really wishes to do justice to her employers; and if the servant be the friend of the family, the amount of good which she can do is unbounded. However lowly her position, it is in her power to exercise forethought and judgment; and these should be instilled by her mistress. While she is in service a young woman may be said to be at school. Every day she should learn something; nor does it matter whether she be housemaid or cook, she should endeavour to make herself mistress of all that she sees. It is not too much to say that seventy-five girls out of a hundred do not do this; and that, either from pride or laziness, or from a foolish fear of giving offence, the mistress herself does not advise or try to instruct her servant, but is content with perpetual change, and with letting the girls go their own ways.

Alas! the serious results of pride on the one side, and carelessness and ignorance on the other : both fall upon the working man. Let us continue our extract:

66 -or perhaps he marries her. His home is wretched, his cooking confined to the frying-pan, his wages under his wife's management insufficient; for poor women nearly always buy expensive steaks and chops; they have no idea of cheap stews and soups, nor do they understand the value of fish and vegetables. Such a system of housekeeping generally