too many ideas), if they were to hear of any articles having been given to them, intended to contribute not so much to the sustentation, as to the embellishment of life. It would be held an act of folly, if not of something worse, to bestow any part of one's charities in the shape of what is, primarily, only ornainental. But it is a mistake to draw a strong line of distinction between things useful and things ornamental. The ornamental is often, in the highest sense, the useful; and nowhere more so than in cottage parlours. The eye has its wants, no less than the back and the stomach. Some sinall article of furniture-a scrap of cheerful carpet-drugget, or of curtain-chintz-a little book-shelf with a few books to range upon it, added to at different times-a print from some work of high art, if from a scriptural subject, so much the better-or even some slight articles of crockery, making the teatable a little gayer and brighter-are all things which may be given with advantage to the poor, for they are gifts of the reproductive class, and are sure to bear good fruit in the shape of increased household comfort and cheerfulness, and a larger stock of good temper. Women are often careless and untidy because they feel they have nothing worth taking care of. It is, doubtless, a mistake; but when they look at their bare walls and bare floors, and see the utter impossibility of extracting anything like cheerfulness out of so much barrenness and sterility, they think that they may leave things to themselves, for nothing can make them worse. But a clean empty room is better than a dirty one; and the less furniture there is in it, the more apparent, perhaps, is the dirt. Still it is very hard to take a pride in bare walls and barren floors. A very well regulated mind will make the best of anything; and its possessor, if condemned to live in an empty room, will take care that it is the cleanest of empty rooms. But very well regulated minds are rare in any condition of life: and we make the greatest of all mistakes when we endeavour to exact from the poor an amount of magnanimity rarely or never to be found in the rich. If angels came to dwell in five-pound cottages, it would be a different matter. But as they do not, we must look at things as they are with the greatest possible amount of toleration, and not judge our poor neighbours too hardly, if they think it better worth their while to keep a nicely furnished room in good order, than one that has the desolate aspect of an empty barn. There is no practical lesson, therefore, that we would wish to have more forcibly and frequently impressed on the English housewife, than the necessity of providing, as far as her means will permit, a comfortable home for her husband and her children. To do this, it is necessary that she should stay at home. It is hard to say anything against the industry of the woman who Duties of the English Housewife. 79 goes out to work whenever she can, and makes up, by charring, harvesting, hay-making, gleaning, hopping, &c., a few stray shillings which are conveniently added to the weekly wages of the husband. But the increase of wealth derived from these sources of income is a delusion rather than a reality. The family loses more than it gains. The few shillings thus earned in the course of the year, are lost twice over by the neglect of ordinary household duties, and spent twice over by the husband at the ale-house, because his wife has been out at work instead of making her house comfortable and herself clean to receive, and the tea ready to refresh him, on his return from his accustomed labour. There are, of course, always exceptional cases. The husband may be sick, may have met with an accident, or he may be out of work; and then it may be absolutely necessary for the wife to labour abroad for the support of her family, and a very fine thing it is, too, to see the zeal and devotedness with which it is often done. But as a general rule it may be laid down that the wife is better employed at home than abroad; and that the truest thrift consists in looking well after household affairs. This is one of the things which people in a higher station, whose words are listened to as words of authority by their lowly neighbours, may profitably urge upon them. A wife has worked well and nobly, when she has done all her household duties, made her home cleanly and comfortable, and prepared herself to receive her husband on his return from the labour mart wherever it may be. At the risk of offending some people, we may add that, perhaps a little spice of coquetry-we use the word for want of a better--is very pardonable in these cases. The husband will not be more likely to betake himself to the ale-house for the consideration that his wife has been making herself, as well as her house, ready to receive him, and for the knowledge that when he reaches home, he will find her looking very fresh and clean-her hair and her dress nicely arranged, and everything about her in the best state of comeliness of which circumstances will admit. All this costs nothing. Slovenliness, indeed, is a very expensive article. They who are neatest in their persons generally spend least upon their dress. At all events, a little money well laid out will go a great way. Sixpennyworth of ribband lasts longer than sixpennyworth of ale. In all probability the man was first attracted by the comeliness of his wife, when, a young girl, she thought it worth her while to make the most of her charms. He married her for her good looks, and he is disappointed when he finds that the neat little maiden has become the slovenly wife; that the fresh, smiling looks which so delighted him have given place to indifference and dirt. poor, It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of a due attention to these matters. The antidote to the ale-house is a comfortable home. If the ale-house be one of the grand causes of the demoralization of the agricultural classes, then is the comfortable home one of the most important of remedial agents. It is true that the question is not merely a moral question: we are aware that there are many material obstacles to the institution of comfortable homes. The cottages, in our rural districts, are for the most part exceedingly ill-constructed and highly rented. The poor do not obtain, in the way of house accommodation, any thing like what they ought to obtain for their money. The cottages which they occupy are elaborately contrived for the perpetuation of the greatest possible amount of discomfort; and if with that discomfort, the elements of demoralization are not mingled, the tenant is a fortunate one. We shall speak of this more fully in another place. It is a comfort, in the meanwhile, to know that the importance of this subject of house accommodation for the both in large towns and in rural districts, is very extensively recognised by men of all shades of political opinion, and that from the palace of the prince and from the garret of the neglected author, come the same solemn utterances and earnest warnings against the negligence and supineness-to say nothing of what is more sordid and repulsive-which has hitherto been so conspicuous in the manner in which we have regarded the dwellingplaces of our lowly brethren. And surely it is high time, when people are making religion a question of brick and mortar, that they should make morality one also. If half as much money were spent on building improved dwelling-houses for the poor as is lavished on the reconstruction and decoration of churches already good enough for all spiritual purposes, what a deal of good might be done. We have known money to be freely offered for the former purpose, even when the parish has arrayed itself against the movement, though for any such object as the erection of dwelling-houses for the poor all the rich purses, which were so freely opened to the church-architect, would be incontinently closed. Now, in our opinion, the cottage-architect is a more important personage than the church-architect. It is doubtful whether we pray any the better for elaborate altars, and painted glass windows, and carved seats, and costly readingdesks; but it is certain that we live much better in houses where something of comfort and something of decency may be maintained, and different members of a family are not compelled to herd together, as gregariously and almost as filthily as pigs. But we may hope that sounder opinions on this subject are steadily gaining ground, if they are not making the rapid progress which we would desire to see all truths making amongst us. In respect of rent, the poor are almost invariably overhoused. In respect of accommodation, they are as certainly under-housed. The splendid mansions of our aristocrats are cheap in comparison with the wretched hovels of the poor. To every one who lays down a plan for the erection of labourers' cottages better calculated to promote comfort and to secure decency than those old crazy tenements which constitute a large proportion of the residences of the poor in our rural districts, we feel profoundly thankful; but we are far more thankful to those who build the cottages thus projected. We admit that the crazy old hovels, with their moss-grown thatch and their leafy walls, are very picturesque objects, and we confess that we have sometimes, in the course of an afternoon walk or ride, groaned at the first sight of some of the model cottages of red brick, which have flared upon us suddenly from unlikely rustic corners. But the first feeling of disappointment soon gives place to one of congratulation, when we come to consider how great the gain of comfort and propriety which these less picturesque dwellings present. There is no reason, indeed, why to a certain extent the useful and the ornamental should not be combined; but the real beauty of a labourer's cottage is in the interior accommodation, not in the outer walls, and we must not be particular about exterior deformities. The only wonder is, it has not occurred to benevolent people before, that, apart from the mere question of physical comfort, a very important moral question is involved in this matter of cottage accommodation; for it must be very obvious, that when different members of a family-male and female, the husband and wife, grown-up sons and daughters, perhaps an unmarried sister of either husband or wife, with younger children in all kinds of different stages-are, as frequently happens, huddled together, many in one room--all separated from each other by the slightest possible partition, if any-all feelings of maidenly modesty must be outraged in such a manner as in time habitually to blunt them. Indeed, many unfortunate girls have attributed, and truthfully attributed, their ruin to this compulsory herding together in their miserable cottage homes. And, indeed, the saddest thing of all to contemplate in connexion with village and country life, is the condition of the daughters of the poor. The kindly heart of the author of Companions of my Solitude has been stirred by the thought of what he calls "the great sin of great cities;" but is not the great sin of great cities also the great sin of small villages? We believe that some people have an inherited faith in the Arcadian purity and simplicity of the rural districts,—as though to be "remote from towns were necessarily to run a VOL. XVII. NO. XXXIII. F godly race." But these credulous ones, we are well assured, have either not lived in country villages at all, or they have been singularly fortunate in their choice. In the country, vice does not wear the same filthy and forbidding aspect that it wears in large towns it is less mercenary, less systematic, less a matter of calculation; but it may be doubted whether, in proportion to the population, there is less of it. in It will be understood that we speak of that vice which peoples the stews of the great cities. How much of it is reared in the country! The town is, doubtless, the ocean into which the stream of pollution flows; but the source of it often lies in remoter rural districts. Indeed, the great sin of the towns is, in no small measure, the necessary sequel of the great sin of the country. In towns it is, for the most part, a stern necessity. Vice comes there ready made; and finds a market. It is a livelihood-nothing more-a very horrible one, felt and acknowledged to be so by the greater number of the poor outcasts who ply their wretched trade on the pavements. The door of retreat is closed against them; and they are compelled to go forward in their terrible career. The towns see the middle and the end; but they do not so often see the beginning. Men are busier than in the country; have fewer opportunities; and finding so many victims ready-made, have less inducement to play the more difficult and more dangerous game of making them for themselves. It is not our province, however, to descant upon what is done "great cities." We are writing now of the small villages; and we return to the point from which we started to say, that there is nothing sadder to contemplate, in connexion with the subject, than the condition of the daughters of the poor. Somehow or other, large families are the rule, not the exception, in our English villages. There is always at least a fair proportion of girls-three or four in a family. What is to become of them? As soon as they are old enough to be of any use they are sent out with one or two of the younger children, mainly to clear the house. Girls of fourteen or fifteen may be seen loitering about the roads with a baby in their arms, and perhaps one or two older children dangling at their heels. One knows, at all events, what are the negative virtues of this. They are not at school-they are not improving themselves in needlework-they are not improving themselves at all. The positive evils of all this loitering and dawdling about are equally intelligible. The amount of idle gossip and evil conversation which grows out of it is not to be calculated. These are the first-fruits. Two or three young girls-almost children—may be seen standing about together, perhaps sitting on a convenient bank or a log of wood, with their little charges on their laps, |