casion to your children and servants to imagine that family worship is a thing that may be attended to, or may be set aside. Rather let it be firmly lodged in their minds, by your unvarying practice, that, whatever are the calls of business or other engagements, the time of rising, and retiring, and of meals, must be so arranged as to secure suitable and regular seasons for family worship, and the presence of the entire household.

The same beautiful order should prevail in all your domestic arrangements, great and small. To every individual in the family certain duties should be assigned, and a regular time allotted for the performance of them. Every article of furniture, every implement of labour, should be employed only in its proper use; and, when done with, should be immediately restored to its proper place. These remarks will not be deemed needlessly minute, if it is duly considered how much time is needlessly consumed, how much property wasted, and how much irritation of temper is excited in many families, by the things-perhaps very trifling things-being used for any purposes, right or wrong, just as they come to hand, and then thrown here and there, nobody can tell where, when next they are wanted for their proper use. Want of order, which is so frequently the occasion of sin, cannot itself be innocent; and the young wife, who desires to promote peace and holiness in her household, must establish plans, and set an example of order.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MISTRESS.

THIS chapter shall commence with a quotation from Mr. Gisborne.

"To superintend the various branches of domestic management, or, as St. Paul briefly and emphatically expresses the same office, 'to guide the house,' is the indispensable duty of a married woman. No mental endowments furnish an exemption from it; no plea of improving pursuits and literary pleasures can excuse the neglect of it.

"Are you then the mistress of a family? Fulfil the charge for which you are responsible. Attempt not to transfer your proper occupation to a favourite maid, however tried may be her fidelity and her skill. To confide implicitly in servants is the way to render them undeserving of confidence. If they be already negligent or dishonest, your remissness encourages their faults, while it continues your own loss and inconvenience. their integrity be unsullied, they are ignorant of the principles by which your expenses ought to be regulated; and will act for you on other principles, which, if you were conscious of them, you ought to disapprove. They know not the amount

If

of your husband's income, nor of his debts, nor of his other encumbrances; nor, if they knew al! these things, could they judge what part of his revenue may reasonably be expended in the departments with which they are concerned. They will not reflect that small degrees of waste and extravagance, when it would be easy to guard against them, are criminal; nor will they suspect the magnitude of the sum to which small degrees of waste and extravagance, frequently repeated, will accumulate in the course of the year. They will consider the credit of your character as intrusted to them; and will conceive that they uphold it by profusion. The larger your family is, the greater will be the annual portion of your expenditure, which will by these means be thrown away. And if your ample fortune incline you to regard the sum as scarcely worth the little trouble which would have been required to prevent the loss, consider the extent of good which it might have accomplished, had it been employed in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Be regular in requiring, and punctual in examining, your weekly accounts. Be frugal without parsimony; save, that you may distribute. Study the comfort of all under your roof, even of the humblest inhabitant of the kitchen. Pinch not the inferior part of the family to provide against the cost of a day of splendour. Consider the welfare of the servants of your own sex as particularly committed to you. Encourage them in religion, and be active in furnishing them with the means of instruction. Let their number be fully adequate to the work which they have to perform; but let it

not be swelled, either from a love of parade or from blind indulgence, to an extent which is needless. In those ranks of life where the mind is not accustomed to continued reflection, idleness is a never-failing source of folly and of sin. Forget not to indulge them at fit seasons with visits to their friends; nor grudge the pains of contriving opportunities for the indulgence. Let not one tyrannise over another. In hearing complaints, be patient; in inquiring into faults, be candid; in reproving, be temperate and unruffled. Let not your kindness to the meritorious terminate when they leave your house; but reward good conduct in them, and encourage it in others, by subsequent acts of benevolence adapted to their circumstances. Let it be your resolution, when called upon to describe the characters of servants who have quitted your family, to act conscientiously towards all the parties interested, neither aggravating nor disguising the truth. And never let any one of those whose qualifications are to be mentioned, nor of those who apply for the account, find you seduced from your purpose by partiality or by resentment."

The principles of the above quotation are of general application, though the scale supposed is far more extended than will fall to the lot of most of the readers of this volume. They will probably commence life at the head of a small establishment, consisting of only one or two servants. Some, perhaps, may manage their own little matters without, until increase of family requires, or advance in circumstances enables them to engage a servant. To such the following hints may be

acceptable. However large or however small the establishment, it is important to exercise discretion in the choice of servants. Such only can be engaged with a prospect of their proving faithful, orderly, and comfortable servants, as are neat and modest in their dress and demeanour, and who have been brought up by honest, industrious, and thrifty parents; or who come with a good character from a steady, respectable, and religious family. A young mistress, who is not thoroughly initiated into the details of domestic management, may find her advantage in engaging an experienced servant, though at high wages. If such a one be conscientiously honest and frugal, she will be an invaluable treasure; especially if, in addition to those qualities, she possesses a good temper, manifests a respectful deportment, and is capable of faithful attachment. But some young mistresses have smarted severely for reposing implicit confidence in a clever servant, who proved to be unprincipled and selfish, and abused the trust in which she was placed; or who, though faithful and careful, was supercilious and assuming, who resented as an intrusion any interference on the part of her mistress, or who treated her with ungenerous contempt on account of her inexperience, and seemed to make it the tacit condition of her services, that her mistress should remain in ignorance all her days. A young mistress, who engages an experienced servant, ought to treat her with consideration, to be willing to listen to her suggestions, and to improve by her experience; but she ought not to suffer the distinction between mistress and servant to be lost sight of; neither ought