374 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



patible with their necessarily small size. It is only 

 the cottages erected by the labourers themselves on 

 waste plots of ground which are open to objection. 

 Those he builds himself are indeed, as a rule, miser- 

 able huts, disgraceful to a Christian country. I have 

 an instance before me at this moment where a man 

 built a cottage with two rooms and no staircase or 

 upper apartments, and in those two rooms eight per- 

 sons lived and slept himself and wife, grown-up 

 daughters, and children. There was not a scrap of 

 garden attached, not enough to grow half a dozen 

 onions. The refuse and sewage was flung into the 

 road, or filtered down a ditch into the brook which 

 supplied that part of the village with water. In 

 another case at one time there was a cottage in which 

 twelve persons lived. This had upper apartments, but 

 so low was the ceiling that a tall man could stand on 

 the floor, with his head right through the opening for 

 the staircase, and see along the upper floor under the 

 beds ! These squatters are the curse of the commu- 

 nity. It is among them that fever and kindred infec- 

 tious diseases break out ; it is among them that 

 wretched couples are seen bent double with rheuma- 

 tism and affections of the joints caused by damp. 

 They have often been known to remain so long, 

 generation after generation, in these wretched hovels 

 that at last the lord of the manor having neglected to 

 claim quit-rent, they can defy him, and claim them as 

 their own property, and there they stick, eyesores 

 and blots, the fungi of the land. The cottages erected 

 by farmers or by landlords are now, one and all, fit 

 and proper habitations for human beings ; and I verily 

 believe it would be impossible throughout the length 



