I found but little intelligence in the neighbourhood, among even the villagers and country people, that stood on a higher platform than the colliers. The fact may be variously accounted for; but so it is, that though there is almost always more than the average amount of knowledge and acquirement amongst the mechanics of large towns, the little hamlets and villages by which they are surrounded are usually inhabited by a class considerably below the average. In M. Quetelet's interesting "Treatise on Man," we find a series of maps given, which, based on extensive statistical tables, exhibit by darker and lighter shadings the moral and intellectual character of the people in the various districts of the countries which they represent. In one map, for instance, representative of the state of education in France, while certain well-taught provinces are represented by a bright tint, as if enjoying the light, there are others, in which great ignorance obtains, that exhibit a deep shade of blackness, as if a cloud rested over them; and the general aspect of the whole is that of a landscape seen from a hill-top in a day of dappled light and shadow. There are certain minuter shadings, however, by which certain curious facts might be strikingly represented to the eye in this manner, for which statistical tables furnish no adequate basis, but which men who have seen a good deal of the people of a country might be able to give in a manner at least approximately correct. In a shaded map representative of the intelligence of Scotland, I would be disposed--sinking the lapsed classes, or representing them merely by a few such dark spots as mottle the sun--to represent the large towns as centres of focal brightness; but each of these focal centres I would encircle with a halo of darkness considerably deeper in shade than the medium spaces beyond. I found that in the tenebrious halo of the Scottish capital there existed, independently of the ignorance of the poor colliers, three distinct elements. A considerable proportion of the villagers were farm-servants in the decline of life, who, unable any longer to procure, as in their days of unbroken strength, regular engagements from the farmers of the district, supported themselves as occasional labourers. And they, of course, were characterized by the ignorance of their class. Another portion of the people were carters--employed mainly, in these times, ere the railways began, in supplying the Edinburgh coal-market, and in driving building materials into the city from the various quarries. And carters as a class, like all who live much in the society of horses, are invariably ignorant and unintellectual. A third, but greatly smaller portion than either of the other two, consisted of mechanics; but it was only mechanics of an inferior order, that remained outside the city to work for carters and labourers: the better skilled, and, as to a certain extent the terms are convertible, the more intelligent mechanics found