32 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



Night had set in when I sought for a 

 lodging at the hamlet of Wootton Rivers, a 

 hamlet where evidently not only cottages, but 

 men also, decay. 



Consumption is rife in the village ; the 

 cottages dark and stuffy ; the water-supply 

 inadequate, and what there is of it is bad. It 

 is one of life's little ironies that extensive 

 estates from here straight down the vale are 

 owned by colleges and hospitals (instituted 

 presumably to educate the people in hygiene 

 and sanitary science), and yet these very 

 hospitals and colleges have strenuously opposed 

 recent demands made by the people of Pewsey 

 for land to till ! 



The standard of intelligence among the 

 labourers here struck me as being lower than 

 in most other rural districts. Either the more 

 highly organised die of phthisis, or set their 

 faces townwards, leaving the dullards to accept 

 12s. a week wages. The population in 1821 

 was 400 ; in 1911 it was only 325, in spite of 

 the population of England and Wales having 

 multiplied threefold. 



It was close by here, on Milton Hill, that 

 Cobbett on horseback pulled up and beckoned 

 to a boy to lead his horse down the narrow 



