him with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the social
valuation of the English merchant, and also the social valuation of the
English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the paradise of
household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in fact, as extending itself to
the meanest servants, and the disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar
to England. And in this respect the families of English merchants, as a
class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not only amongst
the corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst the
poorer sections of our own nobility--though confessedly the most
splendid in Europe; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I
have had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and
in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affecting the domestic economy
of English merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the usual scale
for measuring the relations of rank. The equation, so to speak, between
rank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which usually runs parallel
to the graduations of expenditure, is here interrupted and confounded,
so that one rank would be collected from the name of the occupation, and
another rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic _menage_.
I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has already
warned him,) that he is not to infer, from any casual indications of
luxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation of rank.

We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the very happiest
tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of
Agur--"Give me neither poverty nor riches"--was realized for us. That
blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we
were to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple
dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply
furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with _extra_ means
of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the