ON THE COOKING OF FISH. 231 



to something below the beasts — to a creation without 

 a purpose — human, but without human aims. It is 

 not easy to conceive what a being can be which has 

 lost the great type of its race — which belongs neither 

 to savage life nor civilization — which cultivates the 

 virtues of neither but the vices of both Intelligence, 

 understanding, and self-respect must all be gone 

 before these things will go ; and what can be the end 

 if it be not a seething mass of feculent humanity, 

 whose millennium will be universal drunkenness, and 

 whose church a pot-house ? What a fine satire it is 

 upon civilization to hear a talk of plans for " Moral 

 Cottages," and to find our Legislature actually busy 

 with a "Labourers' Cottages Bill:" as if legislation 

 could be expected to supply the loss of habits of 

 housewifery, cleanliness, order, sobriety, and morality 

 — as if character can be manufactured by Act of 

 Parliament as easily as it can be unmanufactured ! 



But while we deplore the loss of this knowledge 

 among the labouring class, we must not think that 

 it does not affect the middle and even the upper 

 classes. It must be remembered that it is from 

 these lower classes that we draw our servants ; and 

 it is now so much the fashion to make such very 

 fine ladies of the daughters of the middle and upper 

 classes, that the slightest knowledge of domestic 



