It is strange to see into what unreasonable disrepute active housekeeping--first social duty--has fallen in England. Take a family with four or five hundred a year--and we know how small a sum that is for 'genteel humanity' in these days--the wife who is an active housekeeper, even with such an income, is an exception to the rule; and the daughters who are anything more than drawing-room dolls waiting for husbands to transfer them to a home of their own, where they may be as useless as they are now, are rarer still. For things are getting worse, not better, and our young women are less useful even than were their mothers; while these last do not, as a rule, come near the housekeeping ladies of olden times, who knew every secret of domestic economy and made a wise and pleasant 'distribution of bread' their grand point of honour. The usual method of London housekeeping, even in the second ranks of the middle-classes, is for the mistress to give her orders in the kitchen in the morning, leaving the cook to pass them on to the tradespeople when they call. If she be not very indolent, and if she have a due regard for neatness and cleanliness, she may supplement her kitchen commands by going up stairs through some of the bedrooms; but after a kind word of advice to the housemaid if she be sweet-tempered, or a harsh note of censure if she be of the cross-grained type, her work in that department will be done, and her duties for the day are at an end. There is none of the clever marketing by which fifty per cent. is saved in the outlay, if a woman knows what she is about and how to buy; none of that personal superintendence, so encouraging to servants when genially performed, which renders slighted work impossible; none of that 'seeing to things' herself, or doing the finer parts of the work with her own hands, which used to form part of a woman's unquestioned duty. She gives her orders, weighs out her supplies, then leaves the maids to do the best they know or the worst they will, according to the degree in which they are supplied with faculty or conscience. Many women boast that their housekeeping takes them perhaps an hour, perhaps half an hour, in the morning, and no more; and they think themselves clever and commendable in proportion to the small amount of time given to their largest family duty. This is all very well where the income is such as to secure first-class servants--professors of certain specialities of knowledge and far in advance of the mistress; but how about the comfort of the house under this hasty generalship, when the maids are mere scrubs who ought to go through years of training if they are ever to be worth their salt? It may be very well too in large households governed by general system, and not by individual ruling; but where the service is scant and poor, it is a stupid, uncomfortable, as well as wasteful way of housekeeping. It is analogous to English cookery--a revolting poverty of result with