374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The cottage homes of England ! 



By thousands on her plains, 

 They are smiling o'er the silv'ry brooks, 



And round the hamlet fanes. 

 Through glowing orchards forth they peep, 



Each from its nook of leaves, 

 And fearless there the lowly sleep 



As the bird beneath their eaves. 



They recall that verse, but with a difference, for while Mrs. Heman's 

 cottage homes gave delight to the eye by their rugged and peaceful 

 external beauty, they must have brought anxiety to the soul of the 

 sanitarian who peeped into them by their primitive squalidity. The 

 cottage homes of Letchworth are not less gratifying in their sanitary 

 than in their esthetical aspects, and may be slept in by their lowly 

 inhabitants with a sense of security that the cottagers of a century ago, 

 when typhus and smallpox patrolled the land, where scarcely entitled 

 to feel. These cottages have dealt the death blow to foolish restric- 

 tions on country housing . That village leads the way in a new move- 

 ment to which all sound sanitarians will cordially wish success. 



A survey of some of these cottages at Letchworth, so quaintly 

 pretty, so minutely commodious, so hygienically correct, so reasonable 

 in price, suggests that they should have attractions for the well-to-do, 

 not less than for the laboring class. Perched on some beetling cliff 

 or breezy down, bosomed in some bosky dell, or planted in the fields 

 neighboring some quiet hamlet, they would form a delightful week-end 

 or holiday resort for families of moderate means. For children living 

 in London, or other populous city, the seaside town, with the vulgar 

 riot of the sands, is not the place in which their vacations can be most 

 healthfully or profitably spent. They should be brought into living 

 contact with nature, be enabled to form friendships with trees and 

 animals, to pry into the secrets of insects and birds, and taught to 

 take more pleasure in the hedge rows with their ' profuse wealth of 

 unmarketable beauty,' than in the shop windows with their flaunting 

 temptations. The cheap cottage as a holiday-home would create new 

 family affinities, promote the unfolding of faculties that are apt to 

 remain dormant or stunted amongst bricks and mortar, and teach self- 

 help and independence instead of the feeble snobbery that meets every 

 want as it arises by ringing the bell, for I saw no bells, electric or 

 other, in these cottages. It would obviate the apprehensions of infec- 

 tion that are often not unjustifiably felt in taking possession of lodg- 

 ings or furnished houses at seaside resorts, and elicit taste and ingenuity 

 as no mere hired and temporary residence can do. Its decorative im- 

 provement would be a recreation, and the owner would be proud to say 

 of it — ' a cheap thing, but mine own.' It is thought sometimes that 



