Cobbett complains that the farmer has been spoiled by the growth of luxurious habits and effeminacy in the nation. That the simple old furniture is cast out of their houses; that carpets are laid on their floors; that there are sofas and pianos to be found where there used to be wooden benches and the spinning-wheel; that the daughters are sent to boarding-school, instead of to market; and the sons, instead of growing up sturdy husbandmen, like their fathers, are made clerks, shopkeepers, or some such “skimmy-dish things.” It is true enough that the general style of living and furnishing has progressed amongst the farmers as amongst all other classes of the community. And perhaps there has been too much of this. But it should be recollected that Cobbett was opposed to popular education altogether. He would have the rural population physically well off, but it should be physically only. He would have them feed and work and sleep like their sturdy horses or oxen: but is such a state desirable? Is it not far more noble, far more truly human, to have all classes partaking, as far as their circumstances will allow them, of the pleasures of mind? I would have real knowledge go hand in hand with real religious principle and moral feeling, and where they go, a certain and inseparable degree of refinement of manner and embellishment of abode will go with them. Would I have the follies and affectations of the modern boarding-school go into the farm-house? By no means. It is by the circulation of healthful knowledge that all this is to be rooted out, and the race of finical and half-genteel, and wholly ridiculous boarding-school misses to be changed into usefully taught and really valuable and amiable women. We should avoid one extreme as the other.