themselves,” and which restriction, all who understand human nature know is the greatest possible inducement to picking and stealing; happily, I say, English servants have no temptation to steal the necessaries of life; they are fed and treated as human beings; and consequently there is not a tithe of the extravagance, the waste, the pilfering, which is to be met with in Irish kitchens.

For all this I blame the system rather than the servant; and it is quite odd how Biddy accommodates herself to every modification of system in every house she goes to. The only thing she cannot bear is to hear her country abused; even a jest at its expense will send the blood mounting to her cheek; and some years ago (for Biddy and I are old acquaintances) I used to tease her most unmercifully on that head. There is nothing elevates the Irish peasant so highly in my esteem as his earnest love for his country when absent from it. Your well-bred Irishman, in nine cases out of ten, looks disconcerted when you allude to his country, and with either a brogue or a tone, an oily, easy, musical swing of the voice, which is never lost, begs to inquire “how you knew he was Irish?” and has sometimes the audacity to remark, “that people cannot help their misfortunes.”

But the peasant-born have none of this painful affectation. Hear Biddy when challenged as to her country: the questioner is a lady.

“Thrue for ye, madam, I am Irish, sure, and my people before me, God be praised for it! I’d be long sorry to disgrace my counthry, my lady. Fine men and women stays in it and comes out of it, the more’s the pity—that last, I mane; it’s well enough for the likes of me to lave it; I could do it no good. But, as to the gentry, the sod keeps them, and sure they might keep on the sod! Ye needn’t be afraid of me, my lady; I scorn to disgrace my counthry; I’m not afraid of my character, or work—it’s all I have to be proud of in the wide world.”

How much more respect does this beget in every right-thinking mind, than the mean attempt to conceal a fact of which we all, as well as poor Biddy, have a right to be proud! The greatest hero in the world was unfortunate, but he was not less a hero; the most highly favoured country in the world has been in the same predicament, but it is not less a great country.

Biddy’s reply, however, to any one in an inferior grade of society, is very different.

“Is it Irish?—to be sure I am. Do ye think I’m going to deny my counthry, God bless it! Throth and it’s myself that is, and proud of that same. Irish! what else would I be, I wonder?”

Poor Biddy! her life has been one long-drawn scene of incessant, almost heart-rending labour. From the time she was eight years old, she earned her own bread; and any, ignorant of the wild spirit-springing outbursts of glee, that might almost be termed “the Irish epidemic,” would wonder how it was that Biddy retained her habitual cheerfulness, to say nothing of the hearty laughter she indulges in of an evening, and the Irish jig she treats the servants to at the kitchen Christmas merry-making.

Last Christmas, indeed, Biddy was not so gay as usual. Our pretty housemaid had for two or three years made it a regular request that Biddy should put her own wedding ring in the kitchen pudding—I do not know why, for Jessie never had the luck to find it in her division. But so it was. A merry night is Christmas eve in our cheerful English homes—The cook puffed out with additional importance, weighing her ingredients according to rule, for “a one-pound or two-pound pudding;” surveying her larded turkey, and pronouncing upon the relative merits of the sirloin which is to be “roast for the parlour,” and “the ribs” that are destined for the kitchen; although she has a great deal to do, like all English cooks she is in a most sweet temper, because there is a great deal to eat; and she exults over the “dozens” of mince pies, the soup, the savoury fish, the huge bundles of celery, and the rotund barrel of oysters, in a manner that must be seen to be understood. The housemaid is equally busy in her department. The groom smuggles in the mistletoe, which the old butler slyly suspends from one of the bacon hooks in the ceiling, and then kisses the cook beneath. The green-grocer’s boy gets well rated for not bringing “red berries on all the holly.” The evening is wound up with potations, “pottle deep,” of ale and hot elderberry wine, and a loud cheer echoes through the house when the clock strikes twelve. Poor must the family be, who have not a few pounds of meat, a few loaves of bread, and a few shillings, to distribute amongst some old pensioners on Christmas eve.

In our small household, Biddy has been a positive necessary for many Christmas days, and as many Christmas eves. She was never told to come—it was an understood thing. Biddy rang the gate bell every twenty-fourth of December, at six o’clock, and even the English cook returned her national salutation of “God save all here,” with cordiality.

Jessie, as I have said, is her great ally; I am sure she has found her at least a score of husbands, in the tea cups, in as many months.

The morning of last Christmas eve, however, Biddy came not. Six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, and the maids were not up.

“How did they know the hour?—Biddy never rang.” The house was in a state of commotion. The cook declaring, bit by bit, “that she knew how it would hend!—it was halways the way with them Hirish. Oh, dirty, ungrateful!—very pretty! Who was to eat the copper, or boil the am, or see after the sallery, or butter the tins, or old the pudding cloth?”—while Jessie whimpered, “or drop the ring in the kitchen pudding!”

Instead of the clattering domestic bustle of old Christmas, every one looked sulky, and, as usual when a household is not astir in the early morning, every thing went wrong. I got out of temper myself, and, resolved if possible never to speak to a servant when angry, I put on my furs, and set forth to see what had become of my poor industrious countrywoman.

She lived at the corner of Gore Lane!—the St Giles’s of our respectable parish of Kensington; and when I entered her little room—which, by the way, though never orderly, was always clean—Biddy, who had been sitting over the embers of the fire, instead of sending the beams of her countenance to greet me, turned away, and burst into tears.

This was unexpected, and the ire which had in some degree arisen at the disappointment that had disturbed the house, vanished altogether. I forgot to say that Biddy had been happily relieved from the blight of a drunken husband about six years ago, and laboured to support three little children without ever having entertained the remotest idea of sending them to the parish.

She had “her families,” for whom she washed at their own houses, and at over hours “took in” work at her small cottage.

To assist in this, and also from motives of charity, she employed a young girl distinguished by the name of Louisa, whom she preserved from worse than death. This creature she found starving; and although she brought fever amongst her children, and her preserver lost much employment in consequence, Biddy “saw her through the sickness, and, by the goodness of Almighty God, would be nothing the worse or the poorer for having befriended a motherless child.”

Those who bestow from the treasures of their abundance, deserve praise; but those who, like the poor Irish Washerwoman, bestow half of their daily bread, and suffer the needy to shelter beneath their roof, deserve blessings.

The cause of Biddy’s absence, and the cause of Biddy’s tears, I will endeavour to repeat in her own words:—

“I come home last night, as usual, more dead than alive, until I