The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-31 00:00:00

ruE SUN, LONDON, TO F SPAY EVENING, AUGUST 31, 1869.

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS.

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THE IVEATITEII.

The peculiarities of the weather are causing genera;
remark. The International :University Boat Bac(
was rowed on the Thames on Friday amidst tropical
heat. Saturday was so warm that one would fain
have sat in one's skeleton to think was a hard-
ship. Unhappy is he who, going to bed
on Saturday night, hoped to cool his room
by opening wide his windows. The sun
descended, and the wind rose; before the light
on Sunday morning people were beginning to
shiver in their bed. Sunday was a dull, cold,
wintry day, and overcoats and shawls took the place
of the light clothing with which we keep away the
heat of the sun. The change which had taken place
during the previous night was about as complete
and startling as ever the variable climate of .Eng-
land produced.

aone Ira TO a cumax_pn. aturaay. A Man, wno swori
that he had received in various ways during one,
election four thousand:pounds to distribute in bribery,
and traced the money right back to the candidates,
was told by one of the Liberal lawyers froM whom
he had received the money that he was mistaken,
and essaying to correct his mistake before
the Commission, confessed who had drawn his
attention to it, and was toldthe rest of his disclosures
were valueless. The commissioners deliberated on the
matter, and passed the following resolution :

That Henry Chapman Bussell, having informed the
commissioners that that he had made a full disclosure of
all matters, and the names of all persons implicated, they
are about to make a first report, in order that the
Attorney-General might have time to consider the 'ques-
tion whether or not there was any witness or other person
named by him that should be prosecuted ; and that the
question of granting a certificate to Bussell should be re-
served until the close of the inquiry.
At Beverley the evidence as yet Las been mostly
confined to the proof of bribery having been carried
on at the municipal elections.

DIST,INC7IONS FROM BRIDGE? S

S7ANDPOINT.

• (Prom the New York Nation.)
There was one period in the domestic history of the Ro-
manEnt pire which must have bean full of humorous and
odd situ -diens, but of which, owing to the destruction of
the files of great dailies, monthly magazines, and religious
and °tin 3r weekly newspapers by Altric, who hated the
press, .:' Jot a trace has come down to us—we mean the
period s‘ -hen manners, having become very luxurious, and
social lb splendid and complicated, British, Thracian,
and Germ •an slaves fresh from the forest were constantly
called upe n to act as waiters, grooms, valets, cooks, and
so forth. it is useless to tell us that the newly caught
savages were.fiirst used as field-hands, and tied up in the
ergastula ow:night, and that it was after long training
that they- evere employed in menial duties, properly so
called—if -ndeed the Roman-born slaves were not always
reserved fo r this class of service. This was, no doubt,
true of the e mat establishments ; but there must have been
plenty of B oinans of moderato means who, when they
wanted a cot 'k or man-of-all-work, went to the market and
bought a cheap newly imported barbarian ; and, having
taken hint home, went through the agony of seeing him
break their dishes and ;wine-jars, upset their lamps, and
spoil their victuals. We know very well that many peo-
pie feel waeranted in supposing, on the strength of one
passage in Jirvenal, that, when things went wrong in this
way, the master -went out, dug a hole, set up a cross, and
crucified the clumsy- servant ; but this can hardly have been
a common pracqee. The vast majority of Romans bore
with him as best. they could larupped him probably with
moderation ; and. the mistress, when she went to the bath,
told amusing stories to her friends of the queer things he
bad done, and of his ignorance of the usages of genteel
Roman life. Now, what would we not give for a volume
of these stories Some of them must have been curious
beyond imagination, because the contrasts they described
must have been such as have never been seen in the
modern world.
And yet we are probably now witnessing in the United
States the last of a state of things not very far removed
from it in grotesqueness and oddity. Since the fall of the
Empire, nothing:se closely resembling this ono feature of
domestic life iu Rome has over been witnessed as the
efforts of Americans during the last thirty years to get
their house-work done by European, and particularly
Irish, immigrants. The classes in Europe which employ
servants have ever since found or formed servants for their
work amongst their own countrymen, possessing a certain
familiarity with their ways, and prepared for household
duties either by acquaintance with them from childhood
or gradual training, it has fallen to the lot of the Ame-
ricans to be forced suddenly to receive into their houses
a great body of aliens, fresh from a mode of life not
very much superior to that of the ancient Germans, as
described by Tacitus, and to trust to them for the per-
formance, without any preparation, of the thousand small
domestic duties on which so much human happiness de-
pends. The result has been a body of comedy which, if
preserved, would not only be one of the most amusing
pieces of literature in existence, but would throw more
light on American civilisation and manners in our day
than anything the celebrated coming historian will find
to his hand. One hears every day perfectly well-authen-
ticated anecdotes, which for comicality and illustrative
and descriptive absurdity have never been surpassed, and
which ought to be written down, but which thirty years
hence will be forgotten. By that time, the typical
Bridget of the magazines will have become a faint
memory. The supply of her is already beginning to
slacken, and she is getting old. Before long, she will be
simply known as the mother of innumerable Maggies and
;Hinnies, who will work sewing machines and make
watches and tend power-looms, read the " Ledger and
Godey's Ladies Book," and be a good deal " out of
heal th."o
The Chinaman will by that time have taken her place,.
and, heathen and outlandish though ho be, ho will never
be half as amusing as she has been, because though Ame-
rican ways may be strange to him, he has in him some-
thing which Bridget has not, and which is the mainstay of
Chinese civilization, and that is a highly developed imita-
tive faculty. He can repeat, with extraordinary fidelity,
what he has once seen done; and—though he may copy
without intelligence, like the Californian Chinaman who,
having been shown by his mistress how to make a pudding
containing three eggs, but having seen her throw ono bad
egg away, continued for months after, whenever he made
the pudding, to use four eggs, regularly breaking, examin-
ing, and throwing one away as he bad seen her do—still,
it will be found that a capacity for routine is perhaps, on
the whole, far more valuable in a household than intelli-
gence—if we have to choose between them. Untrained
intelligence is apt for a good while to run into mere zeal
which in housekeeping, as in diplomocy, is a dreadful
thing. Anyhow, the Chinaman is coming, and we ven-
ture to predict that he will in twenty years have totally
superseded Bridget.
Like nearly all actual observers of social and politica
phenomena, we do not know or do not consider how inte-
resting future generations will consider the household
crisis through which we are now passing,'and how eagerly
they will pick up all scrape of information about the effect
on American life of the great European emigration of the
nineteenth century. To be sure, the subject ha►s been
greatly discussed in periodical literature, but the discus-
sions have been too homiletic or reflective, and not sal-
ciently narrative or anecdotical for the purposes of the
future historian. We ought to have a printed collection
of the incomparable stories now current in every circle of
the extraordinary things Bridget has done, of the preten-
sions she has put forward, and the mistakes she has com-
mitted.

There is one of her difficulties which only few Ameri-
cans understand, and which, neverthelosa, must be under•
steed, in order to judge her fairly. There is something
almost pathetic in her attempts to grapple with it. It lies
in the confusion in which she is involved by finding the
standard she has been in the habit of using at home to
ascertain the social positian of her employer—and thus
satisfy herself whether, when she changes her place, she
has risen or fallen in the social scale—almost utterly use-
less on her arrival in America. The following advertise-
ment, which appeared in the Herald a few days ago, is a
very amusing illustration of the fog in which she gropes
her way for a good.while after landing, if not all her life :
WANTED -A SITUATION BY A WOMAN AS
COOK IN A.PRIVATE FAMILY; the family
to be as high in society as a lord's family is in Europe.
Apply at No. 125, West Twenty-fifth-street, between
Sixth and Seventh avenues.
In Ireland she has tolerably easy working in raking
people. The landowner—or, as she is in the habit of call-
ing him, "the estated gintleman "—occupies, in her mind,
as he does in that of the rust of the community, the highest
place ; if he is a " Lord," so much the better, but a " Lord"
is, after all, only a superfine landowner; the title is a mere
ornament on an article in itself good and substantial.
After the landowner come the professional classes—bar-
risters, dlctors, and ministers of the Established Church—
and sh', of course, grades these, in some degree, by their
wealth and connections, but still puts none of them down
very law. With merchan4s of means she is not familiar;
and has the old feudal or -what is still more intense—
Celtic clansman's doubts whether a trader can ever be a
gentleman. She grows up with the idea that this is the
natural order of society, which was from the beginning
and shall be to the end, and does not even dream of the
existence of any other arrangement of classes. She arrived
in America with her scale in her band, and finds it utterly
useless. The equivalent of the country gentleman she looks
for in vain. She would probably put in his place an idle
man drawing a large income from any source, but him she
does not light upon, or sees only in very small numbers.
On beginning her practical acquaintance, too, with Ame-
rican life, she finds that—no matter how fine the houss
in which she undertakes to cook, sweep, dust, or wash—
the owner probably has "a store " to which he repairs
daily, and in which he passes most of his waking hours
at work. Now this tact, when she first grasps it, is more
than "a painful revelation " to her. It absolutely dis
orders her faculties, and destroys some of her best facili-
ties. The horrible feeling takes possession of her that
her master and mistress are not " a rale lady and gintle-
man," and, after a brief period of sauciness, she tries again
--perhaps advertises for a "Lord," in order to make
assurance doubly sure•—and on finding that everybody
either has "a store," or associates with people who have,
she concludes that in the new country wealth is the only
standard of respectability ; and to wealth, merely, apart
from occupation or birth, she never brings herself to pay
any respect, much less "petty allegiance."
In attempting to judge people by the standard of wealth
however, she again finds herself plunged in difficul-

ties. She has certain notiens about the manners peculiar
to a gentleman of which she cannot rid herself, and which
exercise a disturbing influence on her Investigations. It is
simple enough to divide families as she does—into "first-
class," "second-class "—according to the kind of house they
live in, and the number of servants and horses they keep!;
we have heard of her asking a lady
.at an intelli-
gence office " whether she was a first-class family." But
then, if tho bend of the family does not answer her ideal
in respect to dress, bearing-, and exigence, she is again
plunged in doubt. Tho nature of hor difficulty hero is
well illustrated by what she said tho other day when giv-
ing warning to a lady, on the ground that her master was
not a gentleman ; her previous employer was a gentleman,
she said, inasmuch as "he bad three kinds of wino on his
table, and swore." In f.tct, the mild-mannered, kindly
American householder, who wears old clothes, runs er-
rands for his wife and daughters, likes rather than eschews
chores," never rings the hell, and hates to give trouble,
and does not tuital blacking his boots on a pinch, and
washes down his meals with ice-water, and speaks to
Bridget as if ho and she bad gone to school together, is a
being whom she never thoroughly understands, and is
constantly disposed to regard as an impostor.—a person
living in a style ho has no right to, and stn•reunded by
luxuries he does not know how to enjoy. She will pro-
bably never understand the society in which she lives;
and the only definite conclusion she appears to have
reached about her business in it is, that she ought to get
all she can out of everybody she has dealings with, and
wear silks.

EXCLUSITE, VERY IMPORTANT, RAItE, AND VALUABLE
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