THE CUPBOARD PAPERS.

INTRODUCTION.

ROUSSEAU'S ISLAND, GENEVA.

I WAS feeling one of my opal favourites,' as Thackeray called his much-beloved plover's egg, in the placid atmosphere of a club, when my mind wandered away-I suspect, by the waving of the trees that are the glorious background of our coffee-room-to Rousseau's Island, and to the talk I had there with a young and fervent advocate of the city, to whom I had explained, in an off-hand way, the ideas I proposed to include in my Cupboard Papers. Leblond was a shrewd, hard young man; secretary to half-a-dozen learned Genevese Clubs and Societies. He was an active advocate; he was known to everybody; he could draw up resolutions, counter-resolutions, and riders at a prodigious rate; he had a bookcase or two full of reports; and he was delighted at the prospect of being my guide, philosopher, and friend through Geneva. He had travelled twice to London, and

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two or three times to Paris; was proud to show his acquaintance with a member or two of the Society of Arts and the Statistical Society, and, in short, liked London better than Paris.

'But,' said he, delighting in his command of our vernacular, 'your Cupboard Papers will not go down there. You are a people of formalists. It will take you just half a century to alter the shape of your bread-which is often like dough, and out of which you never get all the possible strength. I am afraid all your preaching will leave those horrid little cook-shops and coffeeshops of yours just where they are. Do you think that in our generation you will ever set up new standards for servant-maids ? '

'New standards for servant-maids!

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'Yes; schools for them in which they will learn something beyond the boiling of a potato and the roasting of a leg of mutton. You must teach them economy to begin with—such economy as you will see in practice behind the white walls and the green shutters (which, by the way, we owe to Rousseau) scattered among our Swiss mountains. Or, again, such regard for the master's interests, such identity with the family, as I am told you will still find in English and Scotch country places.'

'Aye,' I interrupted, and it exists in France, through all the levelling of their revolutions. Sainte-Beuve used to complain to his friends about his faithful housekeeper, in a very whimsical and characteristic, that is to say, French, manner.

He used to go once a month to dine with the old professor of philosophy, who directed him from the lancet to the pen, and led him to the offices of the "Globe "—a famous paper in his young time. The great critic never forgot the obligation; and when the professor was in a sad plight both in fortune and in health, and was wheeled about in an invalid's chair, he still found the distinguished critic at his table. Only the critic sent the dinner-and even the plate-beforehand. It was the duty of Sainte-Beuve's housekeeper to see the plats and silver duly forwarded on the appointed days. "Pity," said Monday's "Causeur," "pity the fate of an old bachelor, who has a confidential, a devoted servant. The first month she is simply the person who keeps your rooms in order; the second month she is your companion; the third your absolute ruler. She orders, and it saves you much time and trouble to obey her, without complaint. Not long after Jeanne came to me, I met her close to my house, and asked her where she had been. In a most respectful tone she answered I have been fetching your plate from the house of Monsieur's friend!' A month afterwards I met her in the same way, and repeated my question. 'I have been,' said she, 'to fetch away our plate.' It would have been foolish to complain of the 'our,' since it left me, at any rate, half a share in the contents of my basket. Before I met her a third time I had lost all the authority I pre

tended to have when I addressed her in my severest tones: 'Jeanne, where have you been?' She was impatient at my intrusion, and replied pettishly: It is of no consequence to you. I am carrying home my plate, which I was obliged to lend to your friend yesterday: he's no friend of mine, I can assure you.""

'Yes, yes, Jeanne exists in France, and in your English papers I often see advertisements of the death of a valued servant who had been in the family of Blank Blank, Esq., for forty or thirty years. But this is not my affair-my meaning. Such servants are only in the families of the rich. You may have a devoted valet or lady's-maid, but not a devoted maid-of-all-work; and if we grant that the devotion is to be obtained, it is not accompanied by skill or knowledge. How can it be, my dear sir? Your English wives don't know how to save, how to please their family with a variety of foods. To market they will not go. Now just look at the lady opposite, under the trees, with two children playing about her. I am sure she knows the market-price of everything that goes into her kitchen: she gives the most charming dinners in Geneva; her apartments are models of good taste, and yet she has not the fortune to buy expensive things, or have a cordon bleu. She has just a bonne for the children and another servant, whom she has schooled. Everything is in order at home: the pot-au-feu is lazily bubbling; and she has come out to enjoy a couple