Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/297

 a7id Sentiments. 277 you. But when you wipe your mouth for drinkuig, do not wipe your eyes or note with the table-cloth, and avoid fpilling from your mouth, or greafing your hands too much." The lady is further, and particularly, recommended not to utter falfehoods. The remainder of the poem confift of direftions in making love and receiving the addrefles of fuitors. The "Book" of the chevalier de la Tour-Landry contains inltru6tions for young ladies, in fubllance very much like thefe, but illultrated by ftories and examples. The chamber-maidens alio went abroad, like the young fons of gentlemen ; but female fervants who came as llrangers appear not in general to have been well regarded, and they probably were, or were confidered as, a lower clafs. The circumflance of their having left the country where they were known, was looked upon as prima fade evidence that their condu6l had brought them into difcredit there. The author of the " Menagier de Paris" advifes his daughter never to take any iuch chamhricres, without having firll lent to make llritt inquiries about them in the parts from whence they came. This fame early writer on domeftic economy divides the fervants, who, in a large houfehold, were very numerous, into three clalTes : thofe who were employed on a fudden, and only for a certain work, with regard to whom the principal caution given is to bargain with them for the price of their labour before they begin ; thofe who were employed for a certain time in a particular defcription of work, as tailors, flioemakers, butchers, and others, who always came to work in the houfe on materials belonging to the mafter of the houfe, or harvelVmen, ^'c, in the country 5 and domeftic fervants who were hired by the year. Thefe latter were expeiled to pay an abfolute palhve obedience to the lord and lady of the houfehold, and to thofe let in authority by them. The lady of the houfe had the efpecial charge of the female fervants, and the "Menagier" contains rather minute direftions as to her houfekeeping duties. She was to require of the maid-fervants, " that early in the morning the entrance to your hoftel, that is, the hall, and the other places by which people enter and flop in the hoftel to converfe, be fvvept and made clean, and that the footftools and covers of the benches and forms be dufted and Ihaken, and after this that the other