Knowledge is the parent of knowledge. He who possesses most of the information of his age will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. The multitude of objects that surround them becomes a reason of indifference; and they pass, from day to day, for a whole life, in full view of a town, without sufficient curiosity in its history to inquire its name, or, if told by accident, sufficient interest to remember it. We see this principle exemplified daily in cities. One seldom thinks of asking the name of a passer-by, though he may be seen constantly; whereas, in the country, such objects being comparatively rare, the stranger is not often permitted to appear without some question touching his character.[3] [Footnote 3: When in London, two years later, I saw a gentleman of rather striking appearance pass my door for two months, five or six times of a morning. Remembering the apathy of the Norman peasant, I at length asked who it was--"Sir Francis Burdett," was the answer.] I once inquired of a servant girl, at a French inn, who might be the owner of a chateau near by, the gate of which was within a hundred feet of the house we were in. She was unable to say, urging, as an apology, that she had only been six weeks in her present place! This, too, was in a small country hamlet. I think every one must have remarked, _coeteris paribus_, how much more activity and curiosity of mind is displayed by a countryman who first visits a town, than by the dweller in a city who first visits the country. The first wishes to learn everything, since be has been accustomed to understand everything he has hitherto seen; while the last, accustomed to a crowd of objects, usually regards most of the novel things he now sees for the first time with indifference.