The sources of enjoyment in nature have been too long closed to the poor. The rich can wander from side to side of the island, and explore its coasts, its fields, and forests--but the poor man is fettered to the spot. The rich can enter the galleries and exhibitions of cities, and contemplate all the great works of art; the poor _ought to be taught to know_ that, if they cannot see the works of art--statues and paintings--they can see those of God;--if they cannot gaze on the finest forms of beauty from the chisel of the sculptor, they may be taught to distinguish the beauty of all _living_ forms;--if they cannot behold splendid paintings of landscapes, of mountains, of sea-coasts, of sunrises and sunsets; they can see, one or other of them, all the originals of these--originals to whose magnificence and glory the copies never can approach. To the poor, but properly educated man, every walk will become a luxury, a poem, a painting--a source of the sweetest feelings and the most elevating reflections. But there is one class in these back settlements of England to whom a liberal education is most requisite, and to whom it would be most difficult to give it--the class of smaller resident proprietors. The effect of the possession of property in such places is singular and most lamentable. It produces the most impenetrable hardness of nature--the most selfish and sordid dispositions. Everywhere, the tendency of accumulation is to generate selfishness: but, in towns, there are many counteracting influences; the emulative desire of vying, in mode of life, with equals and superiors--the greater spread of information--the various objects of pleasure and association, which keep open the avenues of expenditure, not only in the purse, but in the heart. Here there are none. Amusements and dissipations are self-gratulatingly denounced as gross follies and sins; objects of display, as pride. The consequence is, that habits of the strangest parsimony prevail--the rudest furniture, the rudest style of living. Men who, in a town or its neighbourhood, would appear as gentlemen, and, perhaps, keep a carriage, there wear often clouted shoes, threadbare and patched clothes, and a hat not worth a farthing; and all in a fashion of the most awkward rusticity. All wisdom is supposed to lie in penuriousness. They have abundance of maxims for ever in their mouths, full of that philosophy; as “Penny-wise and pound-foolish”--“A penny saved is a penny got”--“A pin a-day’s a groat a-year.” All ideas seem absorbed in the one grand idea of accumulating coin, that will never be of more value to them than so many oyster-shells. Such a thing as a noble or generous sentiment would be a surprise to their own souls. Of such men are made the hardest overseers of the poor; whose screwing, iron-handed administration of relief is the boast of the parish, and has led to the most monstrous abuses. To them all objects are alike; they have no discrimination; the