This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble friend of Swift, Lord Orrery.  His lordship censures the laughter in “Rabelais’ easy chair” for having directed such intense attention to affairs solely relating to servants.  “Let him jest with dignity, and let him be ironical upon useful subjects, leaving poor slaves to eat their porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think proper.”  This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter Scott:—­“The noble lord’s feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society.”  Such, in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.

Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with the interests of the house they inhabit.  They are unconscious that they have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of the servant.  But in small communities we perceive how the affections of the master and the domestic may take root.  Look in an ancient retired family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit, and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and endearing term of “our house.”  We discover this in whole countries where luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from each other, to deaden their sympathies.  We behold this in agrestic Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants of certain localities.  Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity.  It is not unusual in Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses aunt, and the children of the family their cousins.  These domestics participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the heart.  An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.