In many parts of these countries, the peasants
and the workmen of the towns attend regular
weekly lectures or weekly classes, where
they practise singing or chanting, or learn
mechanical drawing, history, or science. The
intelligence of the poorer classes of these
countries is shown by their manners. The
whole appearance of a German peasant who
has been brought up under this system, i. e.
of any of the poor who have not attained
the age of thirty-five years, is very different
to that of our own peasantry. The German,
Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up
to manhood under the new system, and since
the old feudal system was overthrown, is not
nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by
an uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they
speak as their teachers speak, clearly, without
hesitation, and grammatically. They answer
questions politely, readily, and with the ease
which shows they have been accustomed to
mingle with men of greater wealth and of
better education than themselves. They do
not appear embarrassed, still less do they
appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed.
If, in asking a peasant a question, a stranger,
according to the polite custom of the country,
raises his hat, the first words of reply are the
quietly uttered ones, "I pray you, Sir, be
covered." A Prussian peasant is always
polite and respectful to a stranger, but quite
as much at his ease as when speaking to one
of his own fellows.'

Surely the contrast presented between the
efforts of the schoolmaster abroad and his
inactivity at home—refuting, as it does, our
hourly boastings of 'intellectual progress,'—
should arouse us, energetically and practically,
to the work of Educational extension.

THE LADY ALICE.

                           I.

WHAT doth the Lady Alice so late on the turret-
     stair,
Without a lamp to light her but the diamond in
     her hair;
When every arching passage overflows with shallow
     gloom,
And dreams float through the castle, into every
     silent room?

She trembles at her footsteps, although their fall
     is light;
For through the turret-loopholes she sees the
     murky night,—
Black, broken vapours streaming across the stormy
     skies,—
Along the empty corridors the moaning tempest
     cries.

She steals along a gallery, she pauses by a
     door;
And fast her tears are dropping down upon the
     oaken floor;
And thrice she seems returning,—but thrice she
     turns again;—
Now heavy lie the cloud of sleep on that old
     father's brain!

Oh, well it were that never thou should'st waken
     from thy sleep!
For wherefore should they waken who waken but
     to weep?
No more, no more beside thy bed may Peace her
     vigil keep;
Thy sorrow, like a lion, waits* upon its prey to
     leap.

* The lion was said to 'prey on nothing that doth seem
as dead.'

                                 II.

An afternoon in April. No sun appears on high;
A moist and yellow lustre fills the deepness of
     the sky;
And through the castle gateway, with slow and
     solemn tread,
Along the leafless avenue they bear the honoured
     dead.

They stop. The long line closes up, like some
     gigantic worm;
A shape is standing in the path; a wan and ghost-
     like form;
Which gazes fixedly, nor moves; nor utters any
     sound;
Then, like a statue built of snow, falls lifeless to
     the ground.

And though her clothes are ragged, and though
     her feet are bare;
And though all wild and tangled, falls her heavy
     silk-brown hair;
Though from her eyes the brightness, from her
     cheeks the bloom, has fled;
They know their Lady Alice, the Darling of the
     Dead.

With silence, in her own old room the fainting
     form they lay;
Where all things stand unaltered since the night
     she fled away;
But who shall bring to life again her father from
     the clay?
But who shall give her back again her heart of
     that old day?

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
                    A GLOBE.

ONE of the most remarkable of self-educated
men, James Ferguson, when a poor agricultural
labourer, constructed a globe. A friend
had made him a present of 'Gordon's
Geographical Grammar,' which, he says, 'at that
time was to me a great treasure. There is no
figure of a globe in it, although it contains a
tolerable description of the globes, and their
use. From this description I made a globe in
three weeks, at my father's, having turned
the ball thereof out of a piece of wood; which
ball I covered with paper, and delineated a
map of the world upon it, made the meridian
ring and horizon of wood, covered them with
paper, and graduated them; and was happy
to find that by my globe (which was the first
I ever saw) I could solve the problems.'

'But,' he adds, 'this was not likely to afford
me bread.'

In a few years this ingenious man discovered
the conditions upon which he could earn his
bread, by a skill which did not suffer under