Furm-Strvanls' Collages. 263 



like the operative manufacturers, will be enabled to command 

 such dwellings, and other means of subsistence, as their supe- 

 rior condition will require. At present, what are called the 

 lowest class in Scotland, and especially the agricultural la- 

 bourers, consider themselves as living by the sufferance of 

 those who are above them ; and nothing but knowledge can 

 eradicate this degrading idea, and relieve them from the 

 numerous privations which they undergo in consequence. 



We are persuaded that many absentee landlords are igno- 

 rant of the sort of cottages which already exist, and still con- 

 tinue to be erected, on their estates. It is difficult for us to 

 persuade ourselves that the wives, who are perhaps mothers, 

 of these men of wealth, are aware of the large ftimilies that 

 are born and live together in one square room, open to the 

 roof, with no division but that formed by wooden bedsteads, 

 and with no floor but the earth. We cannot believe, for ex- 

 ample, that the Duchess of Buccleugh, whom we know to be 

 highly cultivated, and who has the reputation of being kind- 

 hearted and charitable, ever entered any one of the fourteen 

 cottages lately erected on one of her husband's estates, not 

 far from his magnificent palace of Drumlanrig, in Dumfries- 

 shire. On crossing the country from Jardine Hall to Close- 

 burn, Aug. 9. 1831, we passed the farm of Cumroo. The 

 farm-house and farmery are ample and most substantial-look- 

 ing buildings. The dwelling-house is more than usually 

 large, with two rooms in its width ; a part of its exterior wall 

 is covered with large well-trained fruit trees ; and there is an 

 excellent kitchen-garden, well stocked, and apparently in 

 good order, in which a professed gardener (judging from his 

 blue apron) was at work ; so that the whole, had it not been 

 for the farm-yard behind, might very easily have been taken 

 for a mansion residence. Passing this house, and advancing 

 about a furlong, we came to a row of fourteen cottages occu- 

 pied by yearly servants of the farmer and occupant of the 

 large house, who, we were told, came from the best cultivated 

 district in Scotland, East Lothian. Observing that to every 

 door in the row of cottages there was but one window, we 

 entered one of them, and found a woman sitting at a table, 

 w^riting a letter (which seemed in a very good hand for a 

 person in her rank of life), while she rocked the cradle with 

 her foot. The room, which comprised the whole cottage, was 

 about 14 ft. square, without a ceiling, and open to the roof; the 

 floor was of earth, and the walls were left rough, just as the 

 stones were put together in building, but whitewashed : there 

 was a fireplace, but only one fixed window of four small 

 panes. In this room there were two box beds, placed end to 



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