A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 75 



they were built, with their steep roofs of " Horsham 

 slate " and central chimneys, to keep out damp and 

 cold. The new cottages, built by speculators from 

 Tisfield, and owned by two or three small tradesmen 

 in Arnington, are detestable styes, with thin slate 

 roofs, rubbishy doors and windows, and scamped 

 brickwork ; externally, an educational power in ugli- 

 ness which not twenty thousand Schools of Art could 

 overcome ; internally, a dull horror with their unused 

 front parlours, sacred to antimacassars and wool- 

 works and the family Bible reposing cornerwise on 

 the table. The small kitchen-living-room at the 

 back, with an impracticable little range (charged 

 extra in the rent), perhaps a copper as well, is often 

 inhabited at one time by a family of seven or eight 

 souls, the dinner a-preparing, and the week's wash 

 half dried. Up the breakneck stairs there are two 

 or three little bedrooms, stifling in summer, bitter 

 in frost. The whole building, whether Jacobean or 

 Victorian, reeks with a thick warm smell, compounded 

 nastiness, preserved within well-closed windows, save 

 in the full dog-days. There is small wonder that in 

 these shanties of the Jerry-builder personal cleanli- 

 ness is not much followed ; a comprehensive tubbing 

 is perhaps impossible in a kitchen which is the 

 common-room of the house. In this matter the old 



