142 TEE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does 

 not matter so much ; the owners cannot be found 

 fault with for using the advantages of modern times. 

 On old houses where tiles were once,' to put slates 

 is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes 

 exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at 

 home ; they nestle together, and look as if you could 

 be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They 

 are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves 

 turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, 

 with the exception of the slates — the hateful slates — 

 the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great 

 deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was 

 slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which 

 was there. 



The new cottages are ugly with all their orna- 

 mentation ; their false gables, impossible porches, 

 absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are 

 an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all 

 glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They 

 are of no style or time; only one thing is certain 

 about them — they are not English. Fortunately there 

 are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they 

 show little or no sign of disappearing), and these 

 can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward 

 appearance much as they used to be, but the people 

 are very different. In manners, conversation, and 

 general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, 

 the people who have altered more than the surface of 

 the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and 

 plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface 

 of the land does not much vary ; but the farmer him- 



