winds and the waves, husbandry to the clouds and the seasons: not to weaken their strength by bounties, nor to hamper their elasticity by protections.

These respective divisions of our population are characterised by particular features. It would seem that the difference is not accidental; but that it arises from the necessary circumstances of the parties, and from the nature of their several occupations.

It immediately strikes us, on comparing the two, that the one is always more condensed and the other more scattered. The first is more civic, the second more rural. The manufacturing town and the commercial port will sometimes exceed in the number of their inhabitants an entire county. It is a crowded hive of men. Every spot is covered with buildings : every nook teems with life. You gaze upon another scene. There are beheld, wide-diffused, the farmhouse and grange of the yeomanry, and the humbler dwellings of their servants. The roads are generally of a kind to prevent easy communication. The meetings of these sons of the soil are the hurried passages of the market. They exist by themselves.

Nor can it be denied that the thick settlement of a population is favourable to its intellectual development. Mind acts upon mind with a necessary force. This effect must be proportioned to proximity and collision. Both these influences are in operation in the supposed case. Men throng upon each other, and the claim of each requires a very nice attention.

Every interest is to be secured. Institutions come easily into existence. These soothe and elevate and polish. When men are dispersed, it is a too common misfortune that mental hebetude succeeds. Associations are almost impossible. Neighbourhood brings not its excitements to improve, nor its inconveniences to redress. A facility of life may induce its stupor. Though agriculture is daily becoming a more scientific pursuit, having its proper chymistry,-guided by new plans of tillage and draining,—receiving manures from distant shores,-holding out the hope of a very enlarged production,—yet, in the ordinary processes of its labour, it has been simple and unarousing. The annual drama awakes poet and moralist, but it can little raise the soul of the hind. He toils on, and, in his round of humble errands, there is little call for mental effort. His implements are scanty, and are not imaginative. The manufacturing labourer is always in sight of suggestions to thought and research. His motive power is as a fairy charm and a giant force; combining the grace of the altar's incense with the heaving of the volcano's fury. The presence of such an agency can scarcely fail to cause reflection.

Since it generally happens that a few powerful minds produce the movements of opinion around them, we need not wonder that the information of the town is generally larger than that of the country. Active spirits look for meet audience and remuneration. They

are best supported by the many; out of the many they find the appreciating few. The means of knowledge and the stimulants of investigation are discovered in every place of resort. Every town is not, indeed, manufacturing: but manufacture almost invariably colonises in towns.

We cannot, we would not, for the moment suppose, that agricultural pursuits are, of their own nature, unfavourable to intellectual development. They ally themselves with genuine science. They lay open the wonders of the vast laboratory of earth. They seem most necessarily attentive to the moral of the seasons. But we have to discourse of facts. We do not see the equality of the hind and the farmer, with the workman and the manufacturer. We have adduced some of the causes. But these operate with no certain influence upon all tillers of the soil. Many of these, in different parts of the world, are not less intelligent than the citizen and operative. These, however, are dependent upon none other. They are bound by no seigniory nor feudalism. They cultivate their own lands. They are erect in allodial rights. It is difficult to understand, when the principal landed property of a country is in the hands of those who do not occupy it, how the landlord shall not use a power, and the tenantry suffer an ascendancy, which virtually place the respective parties in the relation of a chieftain to his clan.

But against the quick, astute, excitable, intellect, which is commonly allowed to a dense population,—

race.

at least if that density be the effect of manufactures, -many contrasts are set up in favour of the predial It is contended that urban labour is engrossing, unhealthy, and demoralising, while agricultural occupation is unattended by these evils. As both are necessary, it would be very undesirable that the labouring classes of the country should be so differently and unequally placed. It may not be improper, therefore, to examine the charge.

The employment of families in the manufacturing districts is thought to be a very serious disadvantage. The wife, the child, as well as the husband, are frequently, it is stated, employed in the same mill. Wives, children, husbands, it is admitted, are so employed, but they rarely are members of the same household. If it were so, if it could be so, at least there would be domestic supervision. But in our fields is there no employment of women and children? Does not the traveller descry on every side those groups constantly busy on the soil?

The influence of manufacturing labour on health has been loudly asserted, and no doubt is suffered to rest in most minds as to its injuriousness and fatality. The ruddy complexion of the villager is not seen on the cheek of the artizan. The best tended child of the city is not flushed as is the peasant boy and girl. The atmosphere is different in these respective localities. The one has the less healthy, the other the more healthy, air. In comparison, however, of factories and

cottages in the same town, it is believed that there can be no question as to the better ventilation. Drier, warmer, freer in circulation, these mighty chambers are opposed most favourably to the rooms of the poor. If this be thought still further evidence against such form of life, it would be easy to show that the cottagehouses of the poor in towns are in every way preferable, within the walls, to the cabins of the rural poor. But is the effect of agricultural labour duly considered? The figure of the manufacturer continues erect, until age bows it: that of the agrestian early learns to stoop, and the bent head and shoulder are not the awkward carriage of the body, but they reveal its oppressed powers. Every observer must have marked this frequent deformity.

It might surprise those who have only read a certain preparation of Parliamentary evidence, who have received their impression of the manufacturing system from idle or prejudiced rumour, who take for granted that the children of the mill must be distorted in form and stunted in growth, who would expect to find the streets of the Northern towns filled with spectres of famine and disease, with unsightly shapes and aspects, -it might surprise such persons to enter the Sabbath Schools which there abound and flourish. Let them

pass along row after row, let them pause at group after group. Where can children be found better fed, better clothed, better tended, -more sprightly, more intelligent, more happy? Whit-Monday is the common