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252 WEST-END HOUSEKEEPERS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
• The Lively Discussion Excited By A Cer...
her maidens , and tlie Cliatelaine superintended tlie domestic weavingto say nothing of cookery . But a line there was—clear ,
defined , , unmistakeable . Man or woman might pass by , force of arms or light of fair eyes from the one class into the other , but
could not hang suspended , like Mahomet ' s coffin , between either _. Of the two great liberal professions—the army and the
Church—, , the members of the one were sorted into different ranks with the nicest accuracy , while the members of the other -were unmarried ,
and so did not complicate the question by families who occasionally dropped their h ' s , though " papa was a clergyman . " The tenure of
land a " gentleman again was farmer closely " defined nor his , daug and hter the yeoman call him could an agriculturist not set up as "
, and " talk about a couple of old gigs as the carriages . " It never entered into anybody ' s head three hundred years ago
that a woman who was a good Christian was therefore a lady or a gentlewoman , and the Bailiff's Daughter of Isliiigtown , or that
other fair creature who fell out of the window of a house on London Bridge into the river , and was opportunely picked up by the
particular apprentice who owned her heart , married respectably , and lived happy ever after , without dreaming that
beautymisfor-, tune , or the possession of a large amount of silver plate during life , and posthumous poetical fame after death , _coiild alter one iota
the fixed relations of the servitor or the artisan . Now the difficulty in which we find ourselves in this year 1861
arises from the fact , that while certain classes in England mould all their ideas of social life upon the theory of the middle ages ;—
the feudal theory ;—other classes , rising of late into political and social importance ,. warmly repudiate the connexion . This struggle
is going on everywhere , and is the balance-wheel which prevents England running into extremes . We see it in politicsroughly
, typified by Lords and Commons , but more truly by the contests in every county between the Conservative and the Radical
interest ; we see it in municipal or town governments , where for long series of years the whole authority is kept in the hands of a
Radical or a Tory clique , according to whether the prevalent interest is commercial or professional . We see it most markedly
in domestic and social life ; for instance , our large manufacturing towns are still belted by the estates of neighboring * nobility and
gentry , who do not associate with the townsfolk , except in a select way with the clergy , possibly the very uppermost professional
people , and with such a sprinkling of the manufacturers as by dint of enormous wealthand two or three generations of culture , are
, coated with exceedingly thick Japan . Thus we are daily , in England , brought in contact with two
worlds of social feeling . The fusion is incessant , and in innumerable cases completeand it is a good and wholesome thing for
every Englishman to ; know that nothing prevents him from rising ,
and . securing at least to his children or grandchildren the advan-
252 West-End Housekeepers.
252 WEST-END HOUSEKEEPERS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1861, page 252, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121861/page/36/
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