Full forty gentlemen, wealthy and bold,
Have climbed up in spite of the labour and cold;
But of all that number there lives not one

Who speaks of the journey as very good fun.

With their batons so sharp, tra la.

JACK SHEPPARD.

ODE ON THE BIRTH OF A PRINCE.

WHAT thunder-peal the air hath rent?
Again! again! From yonder battlement
Echoing it rolls the hoary Thames along.
I know, I know that sound;

"Tis the cannon's brazen tongue:
England an heir hath found!
A princely son

Is born to England's throne.

Arise! arise! thou City of the Earth,

And with thy million tongues proclaim the glorious birth!

True to our faith, our laws, and liberty;

A shining light to us, a minister to Thee.

Oh! while I pray

On this auspicious day,

Do Thou my soul inspire.

Now, blessed be the morn

On which this child was born;

Long live his princely Sire,

Long live our Queen Victoria!

But glory be to Thee alone, from whom all glories are.

582

BY ALBANY POYNTZ.

IMPOSSIBLE to approach with too grave a step the consideration of a functionary so important as the Family Butler !-Linkmen, and even footmen, are of the populace, baptized more or less indelibly with the waters of the kennel. But the butler is a man so many degrees upraised above his origin as to have cast aside his nature, and in every sense of the word to have forgotten himself. A renegade to gutter-baptism, he has gradually achieved greatness passing all human understanding, even his own. His essential distinction is to be 'highly respectable.'

The family butler is one of the outward and visible graces of every family qualified to call itself a family. A footman is only a slovenly half-and-half appendage of gentility. People who live in 'houses' keep a footman; people who reside' in 'mansions' superadd a butler, with second, third, fourth, or fifth footmen, as the case may be. But the butler is indispensable; i. e. indispensable to a 'family' and a 'mansion.' Saving his presence therein, who would there be to drink the last three glasses out of every bottle of port, the last two out of every bottle of sherry,-and the first of every bottle of Nantes or liqueur? Who would there be to detect an oversight in the brewer's bill of seven-pence-halfpenny to his master's disadvantage, and exact at the same time a mulct of five-and-twenty per cent. in his own favour? Who would there be to complain of the badness of the broadcloth in the liveries sent home from the tailor's; and interpolate in the bill an item of an odd waistcoat or two furnished to himself?

The butler may be said to represent the Upper House in an Englishly constituted establishment. The servants' hall stands for the Commons; the steward's or housekeeper's room for the Lords ;master or mistress for the throne. No bill passes to the sign-manual of the latter, without having progressed through the ordeal of the former two. Of late years it has been the custom of the Upper House of Parliament to wag its head in the face of royalty, and have a will of its own,-a will equally at variance with those above and those below. It is ever so with the butler, who is pretty sure to be at once his master's master, and his master's servant's master. He is too powerful over the supplies not to make his authority respected. If factiously opposed by the domestics, or fractiously by their proprietor, he contrives to throw the whole weight and labour of the state upon the shoulders of the latter, and the whole weight and labour of everything else into the hands of the former. When Louis the Fourteenth, in pursuance of his state maxim, 'l'état c'est moi,' took it into his head to become his own minister, Louvois was careful to fling into the portfolio such an agglomeration of state papers, such a complication of public business, that, at the close of a few days, his Majesty was right glad to cry for mercy, and beg the cabinet council to do his work for him, as in duty bound.

So is it with the adroit butler, on finding his lord or master impertinently bent upon looking into things.' The cellar-book,the plate-list-and every other list-(oh! list!)-committed to his

administration, is made to assume a degree of mysterious complexity, defying the decipherment of Babbage. Pipes of port, hogsheads of claret, cases of champagne, gallons of spirituous liquors, are unaccountably added up, subtracted, and divided, by the rule of three and the rule of contrary, into Babylonic confusion, such as worse confounds the confusion of the proprietor of all this intolerable quantity of sack. In the end, he throws it up as a bad job,-begins to entertain a sincere compassion for the Barings and their budget, and finally entreats the family butler will be so very obliging as to cheat him on, in peace.

The butler, according to the superficial plausibilities of civilized life, though the booziest member of every establishment, is expected to be the most sober-looking. A peculiar decency of vesture and gesture is required of him; something of the cut of a county member,something exceeding square-toed and solemn is the complement exterior most in vogue for the professional decanter of port. In the households of bankers and professional men, a more dressy order of upper servant is preferred,—not only because he officiates in the double capacity of valet de chambre, but for the reason which induced the late Sir Charles C. to bestow badges upon his out-of-livery servants; because, having himself the air of a respectable upper servant, he was repeatedly required at his own balls to call up carriages, or bring shawls, for fashionable ladies myopic enough to mistake him for his delegate.

But, though sober-looking as a judge, the butler should have a comely and portly aspect. He should look well-fed and uncareworn. There should be indication in his countenance that matters in his master's house move upon casters;-that the weekly bills and refractory knifecleaners are duly discharged; and that everything like an impertinent rejoinder is as carefully bottled up as the Burgundy. He must have an air of aptitude and decision, and a tone of authoritative good breeding. It is part of his business to take the guests out of the hands of the footmen, and deliver them in proper order to his master and mistress; tasks to be accomplished with something of the disdainful deference of a Lord Chamberlain.

It may be observed that the butler is almost always at daggersdrawn with his lady; who is sure to consider him a troublesome officious personage,-apt to quarrel with the lady's maid for being too late at meals, and to grudge the housekeeper her due allowance of sherry and ratafia for creams and jellies. The footman is a slave more peculiarly her own. The footman accompanies the carriage, goes on errands, remembers addresses, conveys messages to tradespeople, and is more confided in, though a less confidential servant, than the butler. The footman has a thousand methods of judging of my lady's or the young ladies' loves and likings. He perceives in the daily drives who bows, who nods, who kisses hands,-who calls the carriage at Almack's, or whispers as he hands Miss Julia into it, after the dé jeuner or ball. John 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, or convulses the sensibilities of the femme de chambre.

The butler is uniformly a Tory and a disciplinarian ;--thumbs the John Bull on Sundays, and spells over the Times with one eye open, after his daily quart of stout. He has a sort of sullen and interested

reliance in the immutability of the Church and the Corn Laws. Butlers, bishops, and landed proprietors he fancies to be as naturally affinitive as cart and horse. There may be horses without carts, he knows, but a cart can't move without a horse. No aristocracy, secular or ecclesiastical,-no butlers! But this, it must be admitted, is mere livery logic and kitchen-stuff. A butler is not the only public functionary who entertains an inordinate respect for property, as the true criterion of human merit; or who holds the only book worth speaking of to be a banker's. But his opinion on that point is very decided; and, so far from admitting

that

'learning is better than house or land,'

he respects the proprietor of a cow-shed more than a senior wrangler or Seatonian prize-man. The three things he most detests to see at his master's table are, a bottle of the old Madeira he keeps for his private drinking, a poor relation, and an author. It puts him out of his calculations, indeed, to find every now and then a new novel announced by a Lady Clara, or a new poem by a Lord John; for he owns 'he can't abide to hear of the nobility descending to such low-lived things.'

There are, of course, as many classes of butlers in town and country, as there are of London men and country gentlemen. But it may suffice to consider two species of the genus: fierce extremes, such as the butler of Russell and the butler of Grosvenor Squares,-'alike, but oh! how different!'-dissimilar in aspect and aspirations as a Guineaman and a

Hindoo.

The butler of Russell Square is an obese, hazy-eyed personage, declining in years and in the corners of his mouth, sullen in disposition, yet to his superiors submissively spoken,—having an eye to the main chance and to Mrs. Dobinson's prim-visaged lady's maid.

His master, Mr. Dobinson of Russell Square, is a thriving stockbroker, rich enough to be a prompt paymaster, and consequently to take the liberty of examining his own accounts; a sufficient pretext for his butler to regard him as a natural enemy, and to do his spiriting as ungently as Caliban. Scrupulously punctual in the discharge of his duties, so as to escape jobation,-Jobson takes a revengeful delight in the wry face which announces that a bottle of wine is corked; or when the man in authority, after finding fault with successive carving-knives, is forced to plead guilty to the toughness of the sirloin that smokes before him.

In his own principles of gastronomy, such a butler is a positive Pagan. He dresses the salad to be eaten at seven, early in the afternoon, and places it in a sunny window in company with the Sauterne and Moselle, which he is careful not to put into the wine-coolers till the last minute; and in the frostiest weather, leaves the claret to catch cold on a stone floor in a damp passage. One of the great triumphs of his life is to pull in and out a silver watch, the size of Uncle Humphrey's clock, and announce, on the slightest retardment, that the cook is shamefully behind her time; while, should any unpunctuality on the part of Dobinson himself retard the usual dining-hour, Mr. Jobson issues his orders to 'dish up' in a Stentorian voice, before the delinquent has time to give him his hat and gloves in the hall.-N. B. Be it observed that Jobson is as regularly mistered by the establishment as his master is

Dobinsoned.

Fussy and consequential, his mode of bringing in the tea-things, while the footman follows him with 'the bubbling and loud hissing urn,' is as authoritative as the tone of the President of the Council; and there is a solid gravity in his mode of carrying round the fishsauces at dinner, while the company are splitting their sides at some joke of Sydney Smith's or Hayward's, which cannot be too warmly ap plauded.

'Jobson is the steadiest man in the world.-Jobson is a man in whom I have implicit confidence,' is Mr. Dobinson's continual certificate in favour of one whose voice is so sonorous in family prayers, and who is the very Cardigan of a servant's hall. Not the smallest peccadillo of the livery was he ever known to pass over. 'I never heerd of no such doings in a reg'lar establishment,' is the grand arcanum of his form of government. The words 'reg'lar establishment' have all the charm from his lips that the words 'British Constitution' obtain in the ears of a Conservative constituency. Next to opulence, he reverences 'reg'larity,'—or rather he accepts 'reg'larity' as an indication of opulence. Most people well to do in the world are 'reg'lar;'-fixed stars, while your dashing, flashing, smashing meteors of fashionable life glitter for a moment, and are no more seen. Mr. Jobson would not have entered the service of a stockbroker,stockbrokers being like captains, 'casual things,'-but that Dobinson had a very good character from his last butler, as being 'the most reg'lar gentleman he ever lived with,-punctooal to a second.' Without such a certificate, Mr. Jobson would not have taken him; and the butler has consequently a right to be displeased and mistrustful, when he finds the 'punctooal' gentleman too late for dinner.

The butler himself being the most sedentary of created slaveys, has, of course, no natural indulgence for gadding. The coachman must drive to thrive; the footman flies to rise. But the family butler remains fixed in the family mansion from week's end to week's end, like a gold fish in its globe. The utmost stretch of air-taking in which he can indulge, is by keeping the street-door open, with respectful deference, till the carriages of departing visiters have reached the angle of the square; the utmost stretch of sociability he is able to enjoy, consists in a game of cribbage with some brother butler of a next-door neighbour, when the Dobinsons dine out, or visit the theatre. Even then, his companionability is of far from a cheerful nature. Habitual taciturnity has fixed its gripe upon him. His voice is modified so as to give short answers to his master, and long reprimands to the livery; and when Mr. Corkscrew, of No. 45, discusses with him a glass of stiff punch and the state of the times, he expands mechanically into murmurs; complains that Dobinson is a prying fellow, as wants to do the gentleman, and 'ministers shirkin' fellows, as wants to do the people.' Conviviality only renders him grumphier and grumphier. John or Thomas is gay in his cups. But the butler remains sullen in his punch; fancying, perhaps, that a dogged humour is the nearest approach to sobriety.

A booziness, meanwhile, become almost constitutional, is his guarantee against committing himself by overt acts of ebriety. The man who is never quite sober, rarely becomes quite drunk. It is in vain that the Johns and Thomases who smart under his pragmatical jurisdiction, flatter themselves that, some day or other, Mr. Jobson and the coffee-tray will tumble together into the drawingroom, after a dinner-party for which a dozen of wine has been de