I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. We have in New England many villages almost exclusively of farmers,--villages where the old-time settlers gathered together for defence against the Indians, and for the protection of houses and stock and store from river floods. These villages are as different as it is possible to conceive from the ordinary European cluster of unattractive cottages, lining both sides of a street which is filled for one-half of its width with manure-heaps. It may be naturally assumed that any adaptation of the village system among us would be governed by the same refining influences which have made our few existing agricultural villages so beautiful and attractive. That which most distinguishes American people is the general spread of education among them; but it is, after all, an education which soon reaches its limit, and, so far as the district-school of a sparsely-settled country neighborhood is concerned, it goes little beyond the simplest rudiments. An inexperienced young miss holds school for not more than one-half the year in an unattractive and inconvenient room, in which are gathered together most of the boys and girls of the school-going age from all the farms about. The books and other appliances of instruction are inadequate. There is no grading of the pupils, and the frequent change of teachers prevents the possibility of experienced instructions. Even in the meanest peasant village of Germany, a village always prolific in children, an inexorable law compels all between the ages of five and fourteen to attend regularly the teaching of a master, an officer of the state, who has generally adopted his profession for life, and who adds to a certain specified degree of capability the advantages of long experience. No thoughtful person can fail to be convinced, after a due consideration of the argument in its favor, that, if the social influences inseparable from village-life could be secured to the American farmer, the greatest drawback of his life would be done away with. It remains, unfortunately, a serious question, how far such a radical change is practicable. There is little doubt that the family would naturally drift into some more costly style of living; and the necessity for hauling to a distant home all the crops of the fields, and of hauling out the manure made at the homestead, would add somewhat to the expenses of the business.