ing an
appetite? So even the highest means of happiness may become a savor of
death unto death when perverted or unimproved. Never should we stimulate
the intellect merely to feed upon itself. Unless intellectual culture is
directed to what is useful, especially to the necessities or improvement
of others, it is a delusion and a snare. Better far to be ignorant, but
industrious and useful in any calling however humble, than to cram the
mind with knowledge that leads to no good practical result. The buxom
maiden of rural life, in former days absorbed in the duties of home,
with no knowledge except that gained in a district school in the winter,
with all her genial humanities in the society of equals no more aspiring
than herself, is to me a far more interesting person than the
pale-faced, languid, discontented, envious girl who has just returned
from a school beyond her father's means, even if she can play upon an
instrument, and has worn herself thin in exhausting studies under the
stimulus of ambitious competition, or the harangues of a pedant who
thinks what he calls "education" to be the end of life,--an education
which reveals her own insignificance, or leads her to strive for an
unattainable position.

I am forced to make these remarks to show that the Mediaeval peasant was
not necessarily miserable because he was ignorant, or isolated, or poor.
In so doing I may excite the wrath of some who think a little knowledge
is _not_ a dangerous thing, and may appear to be throwing cold water on
one of the noblest endeavors of modern times. But I do not sneer at
education. I only seek to show that it will not make people happy,
unless it is directed into useful channels; and that even ignorance may
be bliss when it is folly to be wise. A benevolent Providence tempers
all conditions to the necessities of the times. The peasantry of Europe
became earnest and stalwart warriors and farmers, even under the
grinding despotism of feudal masters. With their beer and brown bread,
and a fowl in the pot on a Sunday, they grew up to be hardy, bold,
strong, healthy, and industrious. They furnished a material on which
Christianity and a future civilization could work. They became
patriotic, religious, and kind-hearted. They learned to bear their evils
in patience. They were more cheerful than the laboring classes of our
day, with their partial education,--although we may console ourselves
with the reflection that these are passing throug