a fine jewel casket, composed of plaques of rare Oriental enamelled china painted, with ormolu, fifty-eight guineas; a superb Sèvres écuelle, with cupids and bouquets of flowers, delicately pencilled in camaien pink, seventeen guineas; two fine old Dresden verrières, richly gilt borders, and painted with birds, fifteen guineas; a large Dresden ink tray, of the finest period, with scroll borderings, nineteen guineas." A CONSIDERATION. "SERVANTS are such a trial!" is now the general complaint. Mrs. A. has five cooks in one winter; Mrs. B. changes her chambermaid every month; Mrs. C.'s nurse neglects the baby; and Mrs. D.'s waiter is impertinent to her mistress and cross to the children. To hear a knot of ladies discuss their respective domestic grievances, one would suppose that there was no honesty of purpose and little ability left among "those of our own household." And yet in the old times which we now look upon as dark ages, in the days of our youth, when we should have been learning better lessons than idleness and extravagance, servants grew old and gray-haired in the employment of one family. It can not be all the fault of those in service. If those who complain the most would spend half the time wasted in talking over their trials, in gaining the interest, and enlightening the ignorance of their servants, half their lamentations would be spared. Many an indifferent cook might be made capable and grateful with a little instruction, and the impertinence and idling often come from a spirit fretted by accumulated task-work, that should have been arranged to a methodical routine. There is a good lesson worth laying to heart in the memorable last words of Justice Talfourd, the wise jurist and elegant poet. It will be remembered that he died the past spring, in the discharge of his judicial duties, in the midst of an appeal from the bench for sympathy with those we employ:-- "I am afraid we all keep too much aloof from those beneath us, and whom we encourage to look upon us with suspicion and dislike. Even to our servants, we think perhaps that we fulfil our duty when we perform our contract with them; when we pay them their wages and treat them with the civility consistent with our habits and feelings; when we curb our temper and use no violent expressions towards them. But how painful is the thought that there are men and women growing up around us, ministering to our comforts and necessities, continually inmates of our dwellings, with whose affections and natures we are as much unacquainted as if they were the inhabitants of some other sphere. This feeling, arising from that kind of reserve peculiar to the English character, does, I think, greatly tend to prevent that reciprocation of kind words and gentle affections, gracious admonitions and kind inquiries, which often, more than any book education, tend to the culture of the affections of the heart, refinement and elevation of the character of those to whom they are addressed."