‘I remember one day,’ says Mr. Kay in another page, ‘when walking near Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg’s Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up, in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out to me and said, “Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the neighbourhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of Sir Walter Scott’s Novels, and many of the interesting works of your language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.” This account was afterwards confirmed by the testimony of several other persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin, while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books, which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours. In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they practise singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has been brought up under this system, _i. e._ of any of the poor who have not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of our own peasantry. The German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak, clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education than themselves. They do not appear embarrassed, still less do they appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country, raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones, “I pray you, Sir, be covered.” A Prussian peasant is always polite and respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking to one of his own fellows.’ Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster abroad and his inactivity at home—refuting, as it does, our hourly boastings of ‘intellectual progress,’—should arouse us, energetically and practically, to the work of Educational extension. THE LADY ALICE. I. What doth the Lady Alice so late on the turret-stair, Without a lamp to light her but the diamond in her hair; When every arching passage overflows with shallow gloom, And dreams float through the castle, into every silent room?