They belong to a generation for whose intellectual culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult peasant reading for his own or others' amusement? The invariable answer is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place, _the great bulk of them cannot read_. In the next, a large proportion of those who can, do so with too much difficulty to admit of the exercise being an amusement to them. Again, few of those who can read with comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is but justice to them to say that many of those who cannot read have bitterly regretted, in my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall never forget the tone in which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me what a comfort it would now be to her could she only read her Bible in her lonely hours.'" From statistics given by Kay, it is apparent that the proportional amount of crime to population, calculated in two years, 1841 and 1847, was greater in almost all the agricultural counties of England than it was in the mining and manufacturing districts. The peasants of England must be subjected to a singularly demoralizing system to produce so terrible a result. The extreme poverty of the agricultural labourers is the great stimulant to crime of all kinds; but the darkness of ignorance is also a powerful agent. Poverty renders the peasants desperate, and they are too ignorant to see the consequences of crime. In a former part of this work, it was mentioned that the miserable cottages in which the peasants are compelled to reside have considerable influence in demoralizing them. This deserves to be fully illustrated. The majority of the cottages have but two small rooms; in one of which husband and wife, young men and young women, boys and girls, and, very often, a married son and his wife all sleep together. Kay says—