Charles Lamb, in one of his delightful
essays, says, that if he were not an independent
gentleman he would like to be a beggar.
Alexander of Macedon expressed a somewhat
analogical wish in reference to Diogenes
in his tub. Thus, to come farther down, and
nearer home, I may say that next to being
the Marchioness of Candyshire, I should like
to be the Marchioness of Candyshire's nurse.
I will not enlarge on the gorgeous estate of
the monthly nurse in an aristocratic family,
on her unquestioned despotism, her unresisted
caprices, her irreversible decrees, her undisputed
sway over Baby, her familiarity with
the most eminent of the faculty, and the
auriferous oblations offered to her in the
shape of guineas in the christening cup,
because the lady of Trotman's Buildings is
the nurse I propose to sketch, not a lunar but
a permanent nurse, one of the arbiters of the
child's career, from its emancipation from the
cradle to its entrance into the school-room.

And surely, when we hear so much of what
schoolmasters and mistresses have done
towards forming children's minds; when old
Fuller bids us remember " R. Bond, of
Lancashire," for that he had the " breading the
learned Ascham," and "Hartgrave in Brundly
school, because he was the first did teach
worthy Dr. Whitaker," and " Mulgrave for
his scholar, that gulf of learning, Bishop
Andrews;" when we are told what influence
this first schoolmistress had towards making
Hannah More a moralist, or that governess
L. E. L. a poetess, should we not call to mind
what mighty influences the nurse must have
had in kneading the capacities, and after-likings
and after-learnings of the most famous
men and women? What heroes and statesmen
must have learnt their first lessons of
fortitude and prudence on the nurse's knee—
what hornbooks of duty and truth and love
and piety must have been first conned under
that homely instructress? On the other
hand, what grievous seeds of craven fear, and
dastardy and rebellion, and hypocrisy and
hate, and stubborn pride must have been
sown in the child's first nursery garden by
the nurse?  Shakspeare, who never overlooked
anything, was mindful of the nurse's mission:
you may turn up a score of quotations on the
nursery head without trouble; and (most
ludicrous descent of analogy) even that American
showman had some shrewd knowledge of the
chords that are respondent in the human
heart, when he foisted an old black woman on
his countrymen as Washington's nurse.

Mrs. Pettifer, now desirous, of an engagement
in a family of distinction, must have
been originally, I take it, a nursery-maid; but
if ever lowliness were her " young ambition's
ladder," she now decidedly—

—looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
   By which she did ascend.

Between her and nursery-maids there is a
yawning gulf as impassable as Niagara in a
cock-boat. " Bits of girls," " trumpery things,"
thus she characterises them. She
overflows with the failing by which angels are
said to have fallen—pride. There is no
humility, real or simulated, about her. She
knows her place thoroughly; but she knows
that place is to command, to imperate, to
overawe high and low, from the Marchioness
of Candyshire to Prue the smallest maid,
who is the slave of her gunpowder tea-pot and
a bond servant to her arrowroot skillet.

At the Marchioness of Candyshire's (where
we will suppose her, for the nonce, to be
installed), at that imposing town house in
Great Gruffin Street, Brobdignag Square,
about which Messrs. Gunter's myrmidons are
always hanging with green boxes; where the
clustered soot from bye-gone flambeaux in the
iron extinguishers on the area railings is
eloquent of entertainments past; and where
the harlequinaded hatchment of Goliath the
last Marquis (a sad man for chicken-hazard,
my dear) hints what a great family the
Candyshires are. Here, in this most noble mansion,
from the nursery wicket to the weathercocks
over the chimney cowls, Martha Pettifer is
Empress and Queen. The lower suites of
apartments she condescendingly concedes to
the Marquis and Marchioness for balls,
dinners, and similar trifles; but hers are the
flight of nursery stairs, both back and front;
hers the airy suite of upper rooms; hers the
cribs, cradles, and tender bodies of the hopes
and pride of Candyshire.

The youthful Earl of Everton, aged four,
Lord Claude Toffie, aged three, Ladies
Dulciana and Juliana Tome, aged two years and
eight months, respectively, are her serfs,
vassals, and villeins. Over them she has all
rights of soccage, jambage, free warren,
turbary, pit and gallows (or rather corner and
cupboard) and all other feudal and manorial
rights. Lord Candyshire—  a timid marquis
with a red head, manifestly afraid of his own
footman, who was expected to do something
great in the House on the Bosjesman Bishoprics
(additional) Bill, but did not—is admitted
to the nursery on sufferance; and gives there
his caresses with perturbation, and his
opinions with deference. Lady Candyshire
—a majestic member of the female aristocracy
(you remember her portrait by Flummery,
R.A., as Semiramis), and whom her cousin
and former suitor Lord Tommy Fetlock
frequently offers to back in the smoking-room
of his club as "game" to "shut up" any
number of ladies in waiting in a snail's canter
—is subdued and complaisant in the nursery.
She has an uneasy consciousness that she is
not quite mistress there; and though Mrs.
Pettifer is not at all like Semiramis, and no
Flummery, R.A., ever dreamt of taking her
portrait, she defers to her, and bears with her
humours, and bends to her will. As for the
Candyshire carriage, sleek horses, tiger-skin
hammercloth, coachman's wig, footman's
batons, and herald painting, they are quite as