"MR. SPECTATOR,

"UPON reading your late dissertation concerning idols, I cannot but complain to you that there are, in six or seven places of this city, coffee-houses kept by perons of that sisterhood. These idols sit and receive all day long the adoration of the youth within such and such districts. I know, in particular, goods are not entered as they ought to be at the custom-house, nor law-reports perused at the Temple, by reason of one beauty who detains the young merchants too long near 'Change, and another fair one who keeps the students at her house when they should be at study. It would be worth your while to see how the idolaters alternately offer incense to their idols, and what heart-burnings arise in those who wait for their turn to receive kind aspects from those little thrones, which all the company, but these lovers, call the bars. I saw a gentleman turn as pale as ashes, because an idol turned the sugar in a tea-dish for his rival, and carelessly called the boy to serve him, with Sirrah! why don't you give the gentleman the box to please himself?' Certain it is, that a very hopeful young man was taken with leads in his pockets below bridge, where he intended to drown himself, because his idol would wash the dish in which she had just before drank tea, before she would let him use it.

"I am, Sir, a person past being amorous, and do not give this information out of envy or jealousy; but I am a real sufferer by it. These lovers take any thing for tea and coffee; I saw one yesterday surfeit to make his court, and all his rivals, at the same time, loud in the commendation of liquors that went against every body in the room that was not in love. While

these young fellows resign their stomachs with their hearts, and drink at the idol in this manner, we who come to do business, or talk politics, are utterly poisoned. They have also drams for those who are more enamoured than ordinary; and it is very common for such as are too low in constitution to ogle the idol upon the strength of tea, to fluster themselves with warmer liquors: thus all pretenders advance, as fast as they can, to a fever or a diabetes. I must repeat to you, that I do not look with an evil eye upon the profit of the idols or the diversions of the lovers; what I hope from this remonstrance, is only that we plain people may not be served as if we were idolaters; but that from the time of publishing this in your paper, the idols would mix ratsbane only for their admirers, and take more care of us who don't love them.

What will not masters do, when servants thus presume?

66 MR. SPECTATOR,

"I HAVE no small value for your endeavours to lay before the world what may escape their observation, and yet highly conduces to their service.

You have, I think, succeeded very well on many subjects; and seem to have been conversant in very different scenes of life. But in the considerations of mankind, as a Spectator, you should not omit circumstances which relate to the inferior part of the world, any more than those which concern the greater. There is one thing in particular which I wonder you have not touched upon, and that is, the general corruption of manners in the servants of Great Britain. I am a man that have travelled and seen many nations, but have for seven years last past resided constantly in London, or within twenty miles of it. In this time I have contracted a numerous acquaintance among the best sort of people, and have hardly found one of them happy in their servants. This is matter of great astonishment to foreigners and all such as have visited foreign countries; especially since we cannot but observe that there is no part of the world where servants have those privileges and advantages as in England. They have no where else such plentiful diet, large wages, or indulgent liberty. There is no place wherein they labour less, and yet where they are so little respectful, more wasteful, more negligent, or where they so frequently change their masters. To this I attribute in a great measure, the frequent robberies and losses which we suffer on the high road and in our own houses. That indeed which gives me the present thought of this kind is, that a careless groom of mine has spoiled me the prettiest pad in the world, with only riding him ten miles; and I assure you, if I were to make a register of all the horses I have known thus abused by negligence of servants, the number would mount a regiment. I wish you would give us your observations, that we may know how to treat these rogues, or that we masters may enter into measures to reform them. Pray give us

a speculation in general about servants, and you make me

"May 30, 1711."

"Yours,

66 PHILO-BRITANNICUS.

"P. S. Pray do not omit the mention of grooms in particular."

This honest gentleman, who is so desirous that I should write a satire upon grooms, has a great deal of reason for his resentment; and I know no evil which touches all mankind so much as this of the misbehaviour of servants.

The complaint of this letter runs wholly upon menservants; and I can attribute the licentiousness which has at present prevailed among them, to nothing but what a hundred before me have ascribed it to, the custom of giving board-wages. This one instance of false economy is sufficient to debauch the whole nation of servants, and makes them as it were but for some part of their time in that quality. They are either attending in places where they meet and run into clubs, or else, if they wait at taverns, they eat after their masters, and reserve their wages for other occasions. From hence it arises, that they are but in a lower degree what their masters themselves are; and usually affect an imitation of their manners: and you have, in liveries, beaus, fops, and coxcombs, in as high perfection as among people that keep equipages. It is a common humour among the retinue of people of quality, when they are in their revels, that is, when they are out of their masters' sight, to assume in a humorous way the names and titles of those whose liveries they wear. By which means characters and distinctions become so familiar to them, that it is to this, among other causes, one may

impute a certain insolence among our servants, that they take no notice of any gentleman, though they know him ever so well, except he is an acquaintance of their master's.

My obscurity and taciturnity leave me at liberty without scandal to dine, if I think fit, at a common ordinary, in the meanest as well as the most sumptuous house of entertainment.-Falling in the other day at a victualling-house near the house of peers, I heard the maid come down and tell the landlady at the bar, that my lord bishop swore he would throw her out at window if she did not bring up more mild beer, and that my lord duke would have a double mug of purl. My surprise was increased, in hearing loud and rustic voices speak and answer to each other upon the public affairs, by the names of the most illustrious of our nobility; till of a sudden one came running in, and cried the house was rising. Down came all the company together, and away! The alehouse was immediately filled with clamour, and scoring one mug to the marquis of such a place, oil and vinegar to such an earl, three quarts to my new lord for wetting his title, and so forth. It is a thing too notorious to mention the crowds of servants, and their insolence, near the courts of justice, and the stairs towards the supreme assembly, where there is an universal mockery of all order, such riotous clamour and licentious confusion, that one would think the whole nation lived in jest, and there were no such thing as rule and distinction among us.

The next place of resort, wherein the servile world are let loose, is at the entrance of Hyde Park, while the gentry are at the ring. Hither people bring their lacqueys out of state, and here it is that all they say at their tables, and act in their houses, is communicated to the whole town. There are men