other country in Europe. A
housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's
bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical
puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the
plainest rudiments of education in this country has fallen, are too
common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can
not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without
the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is
indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote--with the
attestation of our own experience--the following passage from one of a
series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning newspaper:
"Taking the adult class of agricultural laborers, it is almost
impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and move and
have their being. As they work in the fields, the external world has
some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to all the
higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You can not
address one of them without being at once painfully struck with the
intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general neither
speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance. The whole
expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting, too,
in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you, accost him, if
he is not insolent--which he seldom is--he is timid and shrinking, his
whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance from you,
greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is often
doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him; he is
seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and obviously
relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can affirm them
to possess as a class, after having come in contact with many hundreds
of farm laborers. They belong to a generation for whose intellectual
culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements
beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is
associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have
frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult
peasant reading for his own or others' amusement? The invariable answer
is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place,
_the great bulk of them can not read_. In the next