he women of these villages. The "nut-brown
maid" grows too fast into the wrinkled-brown woman; but better a
sunburnt and weather-beaten cheek than that pallor that comes of
anthracite and in-door toil. Better the broad back and stout limb of the
peasant mother than the hollow chest and wasted energy of the American
farmer's wife.

I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far
superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good
system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the
modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American
character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. We
have in New England many villages almost exclusively of
farmers,--villages where the old-time settlers gathered together for
defence against the Indians, and for the protection of houses and stock
and store from river floods. These villages are as different as it is
possible to conceive from the ordinary European cluster of unattractive
cottages, lining both sides of a street which is filled for one-half of
its width with manure-heaps. It may be naturally assumed that any
adaptation of the village system among us would be governed by the same
refining influences which have made our few existing agricultural
villages so beautiful and attractive.

That which most distinguishes American people is the general spread of
education among them; but it is, after all, an education which soon
reaches its limit, and, so far as the district-school of a
sparsely-settled country neighborhood is concerned, it goes little
beyond the simplest rudiments. An inexperienced young miss holds school
for not more than one-half the year in an unattractive and inconvenient
room, in which are gathered together most of the boys and girls of the
school-going age from all the farms about. The books and other
appliances of instruction are inadequate. There is no grading of the
pupils, and the frequent change of teachers prevents the possibility of
experienced instructions. Even in the meanest peasant village of
Germany, a village always prolific in children, an inexorable law
compels all between the ages of five and fourteen to attend regularly
the teaching of a master, an officer of the state, who has generally
adopted his profession for life, and who adds to a certain specified
degree of capability the advantages of long experience.

No thoughtful person can fail to be convinced, after a