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THEIR MASTERS' SECRETS.

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people opines that servants have the longest pair of ears of any created beings, jackasses not excepted, for they stretch from the pantry to the parlour. Acton Bell's fine lady indiscreetly pours forth her confidence at table, regardless of the presence of the footman, who preserves an inflexible wooden expression of countenance the while; and a remonstrant is silenced with the assurance, "Oh, no matter! I never care about the footmen : they're mere automatons: it's nothing to them what their superiors say or do; they won't dare to repeat it;" and even if they did, "it would be a pretty thing, indeed, if we were to be tongue-tied by our servants." Mrs. Gore, on the other hand, singles out the Jeames class as foremost in mastering and in divulging a family secret, their opportunities being so exceptionally great. Accompanying the carriage, conveying messages, etc., etc., Jeames is more confided in, though a less confidential servant, than the butler for instance, and is able to announce a flirtation in the family to the housemaid at least a fortnight before the butler drops a diplomatic hint to the housekeeper.

Fielding thinks people always deceive themselves who imagine they can hide trouble and embarrassment from their servants, "for these are always extremely quick on such occasions." Jotting down in his Diary a confidential colloquy with an unnamed friend, about a recent scandal, horrible in its complication and issues, Sir Walter Scott appends the remark: "All that was whispered is true a sign how much better our domestics are acquainted with the private affairs of our neighbours than we are." Richardson's Lovelace protests of servants at large, that nothing they know of their master, or of his affairs, is a secret from any one of their fellows or followers, were it even a matter that would hang him. But of all our novelists of note it is Mr. Thackeray who

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BLABS OF THE BASEMENT STORY.

has most pointedly and most persistently harped on this string, a jarring one. Our lackeys sit in judgment on us, he says in Esmond: my lord's intrigues may be ever so stealthily conducted, but his valet knows them; and my lady's woman carries her mistress's private history to the servants' scandal-market, and exchanges it against the secrets of other abigails. When little Rawdon Crawley gasped out at various intervals significant exclamations of rage and grief, which told against his mother, "the cook looked at the housemaid; the housemaid looked knowingly at the footman; the awful kitchen inquisition which sits in judgment in every house, -and knows everything,-sat on Rebecca at that moment." At the disturbing episode which ruffled the smooth surface of a certain wedding at St. George's, as related in The Newcomes, John jeered at Thomas, we are told, and William turned his powdered head and signalled Jeames, who answered with a corresponding grin; and the author dares say that little history was discussed at many a dinner-table that day in the basement story of several fashionable houses. "Young people" he elsewhere apostrophizes with the caution, that when they think they are managing their “absurd little love-affairs ever so quietly, Jeames and Betsy in the servants' hall are very likely talking about them." When Colonel Newcome, a ruined man, had to break up his establishment, his dismissal of Martin and his comrades by no means took those worthies by surprise: they had been expecting this catastrophe quite as long as the Colonel himself, who thought he had kept his affairs so profoundly secret. And readers of Vanity Fair will easily recall to mind an exclamation of awe at the range and rigour of "that servants' inquisition "how the characters of the visitors have been talked over by functionaries in white waistcoats on the landing, and

'IN THE MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS:

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retainers in various uniforms in the hall-the man who brings you refreshment and stands behind your chair discussing you with the large gentleman in motleycoloured clothes at his side. We see Discovery walking respectfully up to my lady yonder, in the shape of a huge powdered man with large calves and a tray of ices -and Calumny behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow carrying the wafer biscuits; and we know that her secret will be talked over by those men at their club at the public-house to-night. The suggestion sounds plausible, that some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair-mutes who cannot write; for it follows the warning, If you are guilty, tremble: that fellow behind your chair may be a Janissary with a bowstring in his plush breeches pocket.

IX.

COUNSELLORS MANY, AND TOO MANY.
PROVERBS xi. 14, xxiv. 6.

ROBABLY one is more struck, on reflection and in

PROBABLY

reading, with the exceptions to the rule, than with confirmatory examples of it, that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. The advantage of a council is intimated in one of the proverbs of the Sheviri attributed to Realmah: "Four fishes smelt at the bait and turned their tails to it: one fish came by and swallowed it;" of which proverb one of the Friends in Council, and the most critical, approvingly says that he has himself observed how much easier it is to delude fish when they come singly than when they come three or four together, and are fishes in council. And of the three leading advisers of Realmah we are told, that to get the good that

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IN THE MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS

was really to be got out of these men, you must have mastered the peculiar bent of each of their minds, which prevented each one of them, taken by himself, from being a perfect counsellor; but which did not prevent their being of great use as individual members of a council. But it is noteworthy, that when the realm was in danger, and the council therefore met at once, the first thought of Realmah was a patriotic determination to get rid of the greater part of his council, and to conduct the war in the plenitude of despotic authority. A modern historian finds in the unlicensed discretion reposed by the Roman Senate in the general, the most efficient aid to the extent of early Rome's conquests; for war requires in a leader all the licence of a despot; and triumph, decision, and energy can only be secured by the unfettered exercise of a single will. And he points, by way of contrast, to the modern republics of Italy, as denying themselves scope for large conquests by their extreme jealousy of their commanders, often wisely ridiculed by the great Italian historians; an order from the Senate being almost indispensable before a baggage cart could move or a cannon be planted. One thing Salathiel speedily settled: the first assemblage of his confederate chieftains satisfied him of the absurdity of councils of war. Every man had his plan; and every plan had some personal object in view. "I saw that to discuss them would be useless and endless." So he desired the proposers to reduce their views to writing; received their memorials with perfect civility; took them to his cabinet, and gave their brilliancy to add to the blaze of his fire.

Good authorities in Roman history are of opinion that Pompey, in the war with Cæsar, was superior to him in military tactics, and that, had he not been hampered by his colleagues, the result might have been different.

IS THERE SAFETY?

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Charles the Seventh's policy in 1429 was to march boldly from Orleans to Rheims, before the English had recovered from their panic: so think modern critics, in confirmation of what was the counsel of the Pucelle alone, at whose idea the royal counsellors smiled in contempt, their counsel being to proceed slowly and surely, in other words, to give the English time to recover their spirits. Anarchy in Antwerp is the heading of one of Mr. Motley's graphic pages; and a lively picture it offers us of the confusion that ensued when the hydra heads of the multitudinous government were laid together: the college of ward-masters, the college of select men, the college of deacons, the college of shipbuilding, of fortification, of ammunition, and of what not more, all claiming equal authority, and all wrangling among themselves; not to forget, however, the college of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all the rest put together. So true is it, that neither in politics nor in physic does the adage always hold good, that

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when any difficult work's to be done,

Many heads can despatch it much better than one."

The wit is on Lisette's side, whether the wisdom be on Sganarelle's or not, in that question and answer scene in Molière :

"Lisette.

Que voulez-vous donc faire, monsieur, de quatre médecins ? N'est-ce pas assez d'un pour tuer une personne?

Sganarelle. Taisez-vous. Quatre conseils valent mieux qu'un.” One has heard of half being more than the whole, and sometimes the quarter may have the same advantage.

In Drake's expedition of 1595, there were too many in command; and after losing time in debate which Sir Francis, if alone, would have spent in action, they were obliged to give up the attempt on the Canaries, with some loss. The otherwise unaccountable inaction of De

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