your care for them is surely most unreasonable, especially if it is not accompanied by a manifest regard and sympathy. You would not expect it, if you saw the child-like relation in which they stand to you. Another mode of viewing with charity the conduct of domestic servants, is to imagine what manner of servant you would make yourself, or any one of those whom in your own rank you esteem and love. Do you not perceive, in almost every character, some element which would occasionally make its possessor fail in performing the duties of domestic service? Do you find that faithfulness, accuracy, diligence, and truth pervade the circle of your equals in such abundance that you should be exorbitantly angry, the moment you perceive a deficiency in such qualities amongst those who have been but indifferently brought up, and who, perhaps, have early imbibed those vices of their class, fear and falsehood; vices which their employers can only hope to eradicate by a long course of considerate kindness? * * * * * I do not speak of the conduct of masters and mistresses as an easy matter: on the contrary, I believe that it is one of the most difficult functions in life. If, however, men only saw the difficulty, they would see the worthiness of trying to overcome it. You observe a man becoming day by day richer, or advancing in station, or increasing in professional reputation, and you set him down as a successful man in life. But, if his home is an ill-regulated one, where no links of affection extend throughout the family, whose former domestics (and he has had more of them than he can well remember) look back upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by kind words or deeds, I contend that that man has not been successful. Whatever good fortune he may have in the world, it is to be remembered that he has always left one important fortress untaken behind him. That man’s life does not surely read well whose benevolence has found no central home. It may have sent forth rays in various directions, but there should have been a warm focus of love—that home nest which is formed round a good man’s heart. * * * * *