e
or pretensions. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for
advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their
daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their
agricultural operations. From all this there resulted a certain
innocence and kindliness of character, joined with great hardihood and
gaiety. Though not very well educated, the population were exceedingly
devout; though theirs was a kind of superstitious and traditional
devotion, it must be owned, rather than an enlightened or rational
faith. They had the greatest veneration for crucifixes and images of
their saints, and had no idea of any duty more imperious than that of
attending on all the solemnities of religion. They were singularly
attached also to their cures, who were almost all born and bred in the
country, spoke their _patois_, and shared in all their pastimes and
occupations. When a hunting-match was to take place, the clergyman
announced it from the pulpit after prayers, and then took his
fowling-piece and accompanied his congregation to the thicket."[J]

The chief contrasting features of these two kinds of society may be
recognized in all parts of the civilized world. The most intensely loyal
of the loyal Chinese will be found irrigating the terraces of the
mountains, or busy in the ploughing-matches of the plains; and the least
contented will be found at the loom. Spain is removed from a capacity
for social freedom just in proportion to the discouragement of
manufactures. The vine-growing districts of Germany are the most, and
the commercial towns the least, acquiescent in the rule under which they
are living. Russia will be despotically governed as long as she has no
manufactures; and England and the United States are rescued, by the full
establishment of their manufactures, from all danger of a retrogradation
towards feudalism.

The way in which these considerations concern us in this place is, that
public and private morals, no less than manners, depend on the degree of
feudalism which is left in the community. We have spoken before of the
morals of the feudal and democratic states of society; and what we are
now pointing out is, that these states, with their attendant morals and
manners, may be discerned from the face of the country, and the
consequent occupations of its inhabitants.

It appears as if a geological map might be a useful guide to the
researches of the moralist,--an idea whic