Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/410



selected such receipts as appear to be the most profitable to adopt; and the insertion of these will accomplish nearly all that I can hope to effect under the above head, for we all know that a supply of food alone can avert the misery of hunger, and that if there were a thousand different systems for feeding the poor by the means of voluntary aid, the success of each system must depend on the practical efforts made in its application.

Some persons object to making soups, &c., for the poor, on the ground that poor people are not so well satisfied with this mode of relief as they would be if the materials were given them to dispose of in their own way. This objection is just in some cases, but not so in all; because, as respects domestic management, there are two distinct classes among the poor, the one having learned arts of economy while faring well, and the other being ignorant of those arts from never having had enough means to encourage them to make such things their study.

It is true that the old-fashioned English cottagers, that class so fast falling into decay, are by no means wanting in the knowledge of housekeeping and of cooking in an economical manner. Not only does their labour in the fields produce fertility, bring the richest harvests, and cause those appearances on the face of the country which make it admired as one of the most beautiful in the world; but the habitations of the labourers themselves, their neat cottages, and their gardens so abounding at once with the useful and the elegant; these have always been regarded as one complete feature, and that not the least important, in the landscape of England. And, if we look at the interior of these dwellings, we there find every thing corresponding with what we have remarked without. Where the father, after having done a hard day's work for his master, will continue, in the evening, to toil upon his own small