it. Lest I should be suspected of vanity, which of all weaknesses I hate the most, I shall say nothing more than that I intend to give to each number an engraving of some woman who has distinguished, or who may distinguish, herself, either by her actions or her writings.

"I am, SIR,

"Your humble servant,

"PROJECTOR LITERARIUS."

No. 61. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1786.

IN treating of the moral duties which apply to different relations of life, men of humanity and feeling have not forgotten to mention those which are due from masters to servants. Nothing, indeed, can be more natural than the attachment and regard to which the faithful services of our domestics are entitled; the connexion grows up, like all the other family-charities in early life, and is only extinguished by those corruptions which blunt the others, by pride, by folly, by dissipation, or by vice.

I hold it indeed as the sure sign of a mind not poised as it ought to be, if it is insensible to the pleasures of home, to the little joys and endearments of a family, to the affection of relations, to the fidelity of domestics. Next to being well with his own conscience, the friendship and attachment of a man's family and dependents seems to me one of the most comfortable circumstances in his lot. His situation with regard to either, forms that sort of bosom comfort or disquiet that sticks close to him at all times and seasons, and which, though he may

now and then forget it amidst the bustle of public, or the hurry of active, life, will resume its place in his thoughts, and its permanent effects on his happiness at every pause of ambition or of business.

In situations and with dispositions such as mine, there is perhaps less merit in feeling the benevolent attachment to which I allude, than in those of persons of more bustling lives and more dissipated attentions. To the LOUNGER, the home which receives him from the indifference of the circles in which he sometimes loiters his time, is naturally felt as a place of comfort and protection; and an elderly man-servant, whom I think I govern quietly and gently, but who perhaps quietly and gently governs me, I naturally regard as a tried and valuable friend. Few people will perhaps perfectly understand the feeling I experience when I knock at my door, after any occasional absence, and hear the hurried step of Peter on the stairs; when I see the glad face with which he receives me, and the look of honest joy with which he pats Cæsar, a Pomeranian dog who attends me in all my excursions, on the head, as if to mark his kind reception of him too; when he tells me he knew my rap, makes his modest inquiries after my health, opens the door of my room which he has arranged for my reception, places my slippers before the fire, and draws my elbow-chair to its usual stand: I confess I sit down in it with a self-complacency which I am vain enough to think a bad man would be incapable of feeling.

It appears to me a very pernicious mistake, which I have sometimes seen parents guilty of in the education of their children, to encourage and incite in them a haughty and despotic behaviour to their servants; to teach them an early conceit of the difference of their conditions; to accustom them to consider the services of their attendants as perfectly com

pensated by the wages they receive, and as unworthy of any return of kindness, attention, or complacency. Something of this kind must indeed necessarily happen in the great and fluctuating establishments of fashionable life; but I am sorry to see it of late gaining ground in the country of Scotland, where, from particular circumstances, the virtues and fidelity of a great man's household were wont to be conspicuous, and exertions of friendship and magnanimity in the cause of a master used to be cited among the traditional memorabilia of most old families.

When I was last autumn at my friend Colonel Caustic's in the country, I saw there, on a visit to Miss Caustic, a young gentleman and his sister, children of a neighbour of the Colonel's, with whose appearance and manner I was peculiarly pleased.

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The history of their parents,' said my friend, is somewhat particular, and I love to tell it, as I do every thing that is to the honour of our nature, Man is so poor a thing taken in the gross, that, when I meet with an instance of nobleness in detail, I am fain to rest upon it long, and to recal it often; as, in coming hither over our barren hills, you would look with double delight on a spot of cultivation or of beauty.

The father of those young folks, whose looks you were struck with, was a gentleman of considerable domains and extensive influence on the northern frontier of our country. In his youth he lived, as it was then more the fashion than it is now, at the seat of his ancestors, surrounded with Gothic grandeur, and compassed with feudal followers and dependents, all of whom could trace their connexion, at a period more or less remote, with the family of their chief. Every domestic in his house bore the family name, and looked on himself as in a certain degree partaking its dignity and sharing its fortunes. Of these,

one was in a particular manner the favourite of his master. Albert Bane-the surname, you know, is generally lost in a name descriptive of the individual-had been his companion from his infancy. Of an age so much more advanced as to enable him to be a sort of tutor to his youthful lord, Albert had already taught him the rural exercises and rural amusements, in which he himself was eminently skilful; he had attended him in the course of his education at home, of his travels abroad, and was still the constant companion of his excursions and the associate of his sports.

'On one of those latter occasions, a favourite dog of Albert's, whom he had trained himself, and of whose qualities he was proud, happened to mar the sport which his master had expected, who, irritated at the disappointment, and having his gun ready cocked in his hand, fired at the animal, which, however, in the hurry of resentment, he missed. Albert, to whom Oscar was as a child, remonstrated against the rashness of the deed, in a manner rather too warm for his master, ruffled as he was with the accident, and conscious of his being in the wrong, to bear. In his passion he struck his faithful attendant; who suffered the indignity in silence, and retiring, rather in grief than in anger, left his native country that very night; and, when he reached the nearest town, enlisted with a recruiting party of a regiment then on foreign service. It was in the beginning of the war with France which broke out in 1744, rendered remarkable for the rebellion which the policy of the French court excited, in which some of the first families of the Highlands were unfortunately engaged. Among those who joined the standard of Charles, was the master of Albert.

After the battle of Culloden, so fatal to that party, this gentleman, along with others who had

escaped the slaughter of the field, sheltered themselves from the rage of the unsparing soldiery among the distant recesses of their country. To him his native mountains afforded an asylum; and thither he naturally fled for protection. Acquainted, in the pursuits of the chase, with every secret path and unworn track, he lived for a considerable time like the deer of his forest, close hid all day, and only venturing down at the fall of evening, to obtain from some of his cottagers, whose fidelity he could trust, a scanty and precarious support. I have often heard him, for he is one of my oldest acquaintances, describe the scene of his hiding-place at a later period. when he could recollect it in its sublimity, without its horror- At times,' said he,' when I ventured to the edge of the wood, among some of those inaccessible crags which you remember a few miles from my house, I have heard, in the pauses of the breeze, which rolled solemn through the pines beneath me, the distant voices of the soldiers, shouting in answer to one another amidst their inhuman search. I have heard their shots re-echoed from cliff to cliff, and seen reflected from the deep still lake below, the gleam of those fires which consumed the cottages of my people. Sometimes shame and indignation well-nigh overcame my fear, and I have prepared to rush down the steep, unarmed as I was, and to die at once by the swords of my enemies; but the instinctive love of life prevailed, and, starting as the roe bounded by me, I have again shrunk back to the shelter I had left.

'One day,' continued he, the noise was nearer than usual; and, at last from the cave in which I lay, I heard the parties immediately below so close upon me, that I could distinguish the words they spoke. After some time of horrible suspense, the voices grew weaker and more distant; and at last I heard