the views of the eccentric author of "The Gentlewoman," still there is no doubt that in the main he is in the right-that the Englishwoman is no longer what she ought to be-that great innovations have been introduced into many classes of society which are prejudicial to the interests of all parties concerned-and that there is a very wide opening for improvement and reform. What is equally important is that the kind of reforms advocated by our author do not unsex the sisterhood, but, on the contrary, are especially directed to the object of rendering them more serviceable, economical, and consequently lovable and respectable housewives:

The real and substantial relief for distressed ladies, is not to depend upon charity, because charity cannot be substantially extended to every eleven women out of every twelve-"the preserves of paupers and sanctuaries of sloth" are already too full. Let poor ladies adopt that which gentlewomen learned when in their girlhood, let them study the manipulation of food-it is their duty; it is not difficult to a woman that can read and has a turn for industry. Moreover, let poor ladies turn their minds to that which Miss Nightingale did and they will come in for all those praises which Lord Brougham so eloquently bestowed on the Sisters of Charity-and they will no longer have occasion to talk of the want of employment; let them reconcile their minds to work, for work they must, and not to think work beneath them; let them read Burke on the vicissitudes of families; and let those poor ladies who have depended on a pretty face and personal appearance to gain a husband, learn "that few men can support women merely for ornament, and soon they tire of their toys." Let them acquire the knowledge which is so befitting a female-so simple, so easy-and which would place them above genteel penury, and they may firmly rely that they will be treated with all the respect, all the kindness, and all the consideration that is at all times yielded to useful industry, and there would end the misfortunes of poor ladies and the great social evil. Lastly, let all ladies without education, or with a bad education, abandon the idea that they are fitted for "anything not menial," or "anything genteel," and not forget that twenty millions sterling is annually wasted in food by the people that require "anything not menial”"anything genteel."

During the last dozen years English housewives have most deplorably neglected their duty; they have permitted domestics to wear cheap Manchester tawdry, and their own cast-off clothes, and to so outrage decency that the nation is disgraced in caricatures all over the Continent-representing the English females with petticoats which expose details that are supposed to be hidden. Even our cads and cabmen are put to the blush, who, to their credit, try to preserve decency at the entrance of their conveyances, by skilfully placing their hands on the objectionable garment, and, as far as possible, prevent the passers seeing the shameless exposures of the women who should know better. But the offences of the whole garment may well cause the reflective to shudder, not on account of those immolated in the inflammatory monstrosity, but on account of the thousands of infanticides and murders that have resulted from the masking.

Neatuess and simplicity was the characteristic of former days, but which is changed for masquerade; shame appears to be unknown. The daughters of the semi-genteel, the daughters of the shopkeeper, the drivers of perambulators, the Molls of common soldiers, and domestic servants of all kinds, are all engaged in one common purpose, trying to outvie each other in their shameless dress. From whence comes the money to purchase the folly? It is a fearful question, and the intent of the indulgence is still more fearful. Dress is the cause of the sacrifice of virtue-dress is the cause of theft-dress increases the expenses of our criminal law, and fills our prisons; and when skin-deep beauty fades, relief is sought in the gin-shop, which ends in bridewell and death.

This is a sad picture, characterised by the writer's usual proneness to run into extremes, but still it is true in the main. So likewise, in depicting the overstrained pretence to gentility so characteristic of the present day, he describes two weddings:

There was a mob collected before the door of a lodging-house, to see the departure of the bride and bridegroom; there was a chariot with two grey horses, a postilion with a satin pink jacket, and a bouquet as large as a birch-broom; a passage was made by the mob for the six bridesmaids; they lined the opening, three on either side; they were all tawdry, and duly crinolined and mantled in those six-and-sixpenny red cloaks, sold at cheap shops, and appeared like the figurantes at Astley's Theatre. The day was very hot and the sun very bright, which gave great effect to the beauty of the bridesmaids and their lovely dresses, and great was the sensation of the crowd. The bride appeared, and when duly seated, out rushed the dirty mother, and into the chariot she jumped, overwhelming her daughter with kisses so strong and so long, that the bridegroom had to pull her out. Here was a sensation, and loud was the applause; there then came a shower of old shoes, and off drove the bride amidst the shouts of the mob. To a certainty this bride claims the title of lady, because of the chariot, the bouquet, the mantled bridesmaids, and the shower of old shoes.

The author was passing a rag-shop, and was attracted by the grandeur of the wedding cortége. There were three large flys, each drawn by a white horse, each driver had a white favour stuck in his coat, each fly conveyed six women and children; dressed, oh, how they were dressed! and what trouble to get in such beautiful balloon petticoats. Curiosity led the author to wait the return from church the bride and bridegroom came first in a chariot with two grey horses, a postilion dressed in a bright, shiny, cherry-coloured jacket, a white favour stuck in his hat and a bouquet under his nose; and then came the three flys, looking so nice, as the mob said, all with white favours. On inquiry, it appeared that the bridegroom was a retailer of split peas, hay, and corn at a little shop about twelve feet square. No doubt but that this bride claims to be a lady; and so does every wench that advertises for situations," anything not menial," "anything genteel," to sell gin behind a publican's bar, or bread over a counterthey invariably call themselves ladies."

Who has not witnessed the counterpart of such follies? It is not many months ago that in our own neighbourhood—a suburban Stoke Pogis-we accidentally witnessed the going forth of the bride and bridegroom from the bride's mother's very humble greengrocery. The bride was a

sempstress, the bridegroom an omnibus conductor. The bride's father being an omnibus driver, he drove the fly; the conductor that day rode inside. There were four or five carriages besides, and the party, half a mile from home, would have been supposed by any one who had seen olden times to have belonged to any social rank but that in which they really moved.

Here is another picture of the present as compared with the past:

In those days mothers and fashionable daughters knew the uses and prices of starch and smalt blue-pearlash was not allowed to be used—and young ladies, instead of sending their ruffs and laces as in the preceding ages to Holland, washed and stiffened and ironed at home; indeed, assisted the laundry-maid, who in those days was a person of respectability, above the average middle-class of the present day, and who never thought of saying "they could do nothing menial," or wanted to be genteel. The washing was done at home, and many of the laundries in Grosvenor-square, Brook-street, and the neighbourhood, still remain, although not used. Then came the great enemy of the females of the

middle and inferior classes. Manchester poured in its cheap dress; every other house was a shop for the sale of gossamer rubbish, which superseded the substantial and respectable draper of that period; every village huckster's shop was crammed with the cobweb rubbish, comfort and home were invaded, cheap shops became the rage, mothers allowed their daughters to be dressed as dolls, and themselves changed the useful morning gown for the flaunting evening dress; markets were abandoned, homes were made uncomfortable, because household duties were neglected. Clubs arose, taverns and hotels held out the comforts that were not to be had at home. Dolls and muslin-dressed mothers declared their duty to be degrading, and cooking fell to what it is, and hence it is that eleven out of every twelve women die worth nothing, and four husbands out of every five die in the same unhappy circumstances.

are not.

In the present day girls in every rank of life seem to think every kind of work shameful. Fifty years ago young gentlewomen looked after their own wardrobes, and when the fire required coals they did not ring for the servant to put them on; now young ladies, with only yellow faces for their fortunes, cannot do that which the young gentlewomen did. Now they want somebody even to put on their stockings; and if their parents should by chance keep a carriage, although if looking to all things they ought not to do so, yet the silly creatures look for husbands as well placed as their parents, and assume that they are to start where the parents leave off; the poor things think of carriages and servants, and the usual indications of wealth, which turns out a dream never to be achieved. 'It is unfortunately the custom of parents to try and appear that which they 'Keeping up appearances," concealing poverty, sacrificing gain and comfort without the least consideration for old age or the future of children. Bythe-by, it is generally said that there are no children now-a-days, and that is pretty nearly the fact. You may walk many miles before you meet a girl dressed according to her age; from five years old they are all dressed in those vulgar sugar-hooped petticoats, that are outrageous indecencies; their lubberly brothers, with incipient flock on their upper-lips, smoke and assume the swagger of fashionable snobs, without prospects or expectancies. They fancy themselves Esquires," and address each other as Esquire," and when they do their betters the honour of a call, they knock at their door with the clamour of footmen. This is the result of their education, and their assumption of vulgar greatness ends in a tour to the diggings. The girls pant and pine for dress and trumpery ornaments, and for amusements utterly inconsistent with their position or future well-being; they stand without correction, they are neglected in essentials, and it is the want of domestic knowledge that causes so many shipwrecked females; the supposed well-to-do parent becomes insolvent or dies, and in the absence of domestic knowledge nothing is left to sustain them in their doomed struggle for existence, except that which it is dismal and dreary to think of.

What, then, is the remedy proposed for a state of things which demands the pen of a Juvenal to expose in all its flagrant folly and demoralising effects—a state of things which, between flippant young men, toys of girls, and sluts of servants, is becoming a national disgrace ? Simply to educate the sisterhood to that position in life to which it has pleased a kind Providence to call them. As surely as over-educating the parish girl-teaching her geography and crochet-work instead of domestic duties and plain sewing-raising her above her position by tea-parties and addresses by gentlemen in black, who shake hands with their more interesting pupils -unfits a girl ever afterwards for servitude, so does the neglect of the common duties of life lead the young gentlewoman to disappointment and chagrin:

Among the innumerable difficulties besetting a hard-working father, especially

in a family where there are a preponderance of girls, is the task of providing a sufficient dowry for each girl. What is a poor father to do? The answer is simple: Let the girls be taught their domestic duties; teach them to avoid the frivolity, the show, falsehood and vanity of most girls of the present day; tell them that cheap dress is a curse and deception; that, however innocent it may appear, it is destructive of their future happiness; that humility becomes the most exalted, and that it is highly dangerous to imitate the seeming affluent. Let them read prayers at home; teach them that the display of gilt-edged books is the vulgar sham of mushrooms, notwithstanding they may be carried by a little boy with a hat too large for his head, and a cockade big enough for a giant. Be continually reminding them of what the registrar-general says, and that you really believe that you will be one of the four out of five men that the registrargeneral says die leaving nothing. Do this, and your daughters will pray that you may live.

The objections that are at once started upon proposing any such extraordinary innovations, as in the farmer's household, the return to good old times, when the churn took precedence of the piano, and early hours of late; or as in the professional man's house, as well as that of the tradesman, where plain sewing and domestic duties have been supplanted by dress and idleness, is, that no one else does otherwise! This is a great mistake. The writer has here a most triumphant reply to such listless objections, even albeit urged by pretty lips and languid smiles :

It is a fact that from the most ancient times the duty of the superintendence of cooking has never been lost sight of by the highest orders all over the Continent, any more than it has been by our own nobility, among whom, in the present day, may be named the Duchess of Marlborough, the Marchioness of Londonderry, and the Countess of Stratford de Redcliffe; so that the excuse of the ten millions of English ladies "that it is a degrading occupation," fails.

But what will these ten millions of females say when they learn that Queen Victoria, the highest gentlewoman in the land, did, down to the lamented death of the Prince, pay daily visits of inspection of her kitchen, pantry, confectionary, still-room, and was proud of, and did herself show those rooms to her visitors when staying at the Castle; and, carrying out the recognised principle of female duty, model kitchens were constructed at Windsor and Osborne, where all the princesses, from the eldest downwards, have passed a portion of each day in acquiring a knowledge of the various duties of domestic economy in the management of a household. In their model kitchen the princesses have daily practised the art of cookery and also confectionary in all its various branches. There is a small store-room adjoining each kitchen, where each princess in turn gives out the stores, weighing or measuring each article, and making an entry thereof in a book kept for the purpose; besides which, the princesses make bread; and that is not all, they have a dairy where they churn butter and make cheese.

Refinement belongs only to those whose tastes accord with perfection, and it is beyond all question that the characteristics of those that feed upon half-dressed or spoiled food are barbarous in mind and barbarous in complexion, which is the cause of so many jaundiced complaints that quacks undertake to cure, but which end in weakness, exhaustion, and early death.

It is a lamentable fact that in England upwards of twenty millions of English money is annually wasted-yes, actually wasted-in the destruction of human food among a class of people that can ili afford such a waste.

So much for the principles. In the practical way of applying a remedy there will be much difference of opinion. Our author's hobby is a model kitchen, an American stove, the use of gas, by which rashers of bacon or fine-herb omelettes, or a rechauffée of any little delicacy remaining of the

preceding day's dinner, can be cooked on the sideboard; and the use of porcelain utensils, by which cleanliness, comfort, and perfection of cookery are ensured. The dishes, too, are cheap and elegant in shape. "Fancy," says our gastronomic enthusiast, "slices of salmon brought from the stove, ooking what an artist would paint rather than a piece of cookery; a dish of quails in their garb of lard and vine-leaves, at the very moment they are ready, without the trouble of re-dishing and disturbing their beauty!"

Nature (says the advocate of the model kitchen) was in her kindest humour when she suggested such. Happy is the queen thereof, and fortunate is the graceful Psyche; both are equally admired, not by the bedizened flash, or the semi-genteel, or by the praises that are bestowed on common things and common persons, but that admiration which is akin to what is paid to divine goodness.

An invitation only to breakfast is a treat never to be forgotten. The care and delicacy of the little dishes, probably only the remains of the preceding day rewarmed, are presented to the admiring guests; all are enchanted, and foresee the happy future of Psyche.

In the model kitchen everything is prepared with chemical exactness and godly cleanliness; the saucepans and cooking utensils are of porcelain, and Psyche has not to wet her taper fingers; the cooking utensils are washed, as if by magic, in the neat little sink with a small brush and the aid of a little soda, thereby getting rid of the filthy black saucepans, and, at the same time, the gorilla of the kitchen.

The fittings-up are within the means of most persons; the stoves may be had from the cost of a few shillings to whatever fancy may suggest, and the other appurtenances may be had according to the means or taste of the presiding queen, to whom alone belongs the right of controlling all that relates to it.

Those that could afford the expense would fit up the room adjacent to their dining-room; but if it happened to be large, they would also make it the salleà-manger, and adjourn to the dining-room for wine and dessert. None but those who have experienced it know the delight of dining where the dishes are handed from the stove to the table, Psyche handing them to the man-servant one dish at a time. Novelty may, like a pic-nic, have something to do with it, but, when once adopted, nothing induces to depart from it or go back to the old system. There is a drawback, and that is, you have a horror of dining abroad.

Besides the gas or American stove, there is required, for comfort sake, a china sink large enough to soak a ham, with water laid on and a tap to let it off, which saves Psyche the trouble of fetching and carrying, and enables her to wash a salad or anything else at a moment's notice, without the nuisance of ringing for the gorilla to bring it.

With regard to the table, every operation may be performed on a tablecloth with the aid of a small chopping-board, and the very few other things that may be required will be suggested by any respectable ironmonger.

Psyche can not only learn in the little book before us how to flavour all kinds of dishes, soups, and stews, without sending to the greengrocer or the pickle-shops, "which saves more money in one year than will pay for her dress," but also how to cook the dishes themselves, after approved or original recipes.

Now that invention has supplied us with a metal in which we may perform every culinary operation on our parlour table if we are so minded, it is to be hoped that the young females of the present age will turn their minds to so beneficial an amusement, which will tend to restore their parchment complexions