With growing tendency to equality of fortune, as the people pass from slavery toward freedom, there is less of ostentatious display, and less necessity for that slavish devotion to labour remarked in England. "All classes," says Mr. Kay-- "In Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland are therefore satisfied with less income than the corresponding classes in England. They, therefore, devote less time to labour, and more time to healthy and improving recreation. The style of living among the mercantile classes of these countries is much simpler than in England, but their enjoyment of life is much greater."--Vol. i. 303. As a consequence of this, the amusements of their leisure hours are of a more improving character, as is here seen:-- "The amusements of the peasants and operatives in the greater part of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, where they are well educated, and where they are generally proprietors of farms or gardens, are of a much higher and of a much more healthy character than those of the most prosperous of similar classes in England. Indeed, it may be safely affirmed that the amusements of the poor in Germany are of a higher character than the amusements of the lower part of the middle classes in England. This may at first seem a rather bold assertion; but it will not be thought so, when I have shown what their amusements are. "The gardens, which belong to the town labourers and small shopkeepers, afford their proprietors the healthiest possible kind of recreation after the labours of the day. But, independently of this, the mere amusements of the poor of these countries prove the civilization, the comfort, and the prosperity of their social state." * * * "There are, perhaps, no peasantry in the world who have so much healthy recreation and amusement as the peasants of Germany, and especially as those of Prussia and Saxony. In the suburbs of all the towns of Prussia and Saxony regular garden, concerts and promenades are given. An admittance fee of from one penny to sixpence admits any one to these amusements." * * * "I went constantly to these garden-concerts. I rejoiced to see that it was possible for the richest and the poorest of the people to find a common meeting ground; that the poor did not live for labour only; and that the schools had taught the poor to find pleasure in such improving and civilizing pleasures. I saw daily proofs at these meetings of the excellent effects of the social system of Germany. I learned there how high a civilization the poorer classes of a nation are capable of attaining under a well-arranged system of those laws which affect the social condition of a people. I found proofs at these meetings of the truth of that which I am anxious to teach my countrymen, that the poorer classes of Germany are much less pauperized, much more civilized, and much happier than our own peasantry." * * * "The dancing itself, even in