336 ENGLISH COTTAGE GARDENS 



viz., " If there is nothing to copy, why is it that everybody is so 

 enthusiastic about English cottage gardens?" 



HALF THE CHARM EXPLAINED 



In my opinion about one half of this universal rhapsody is due 

 simply to the fact that every cottage has a garden. The American 

 is used to seeing ugliness everywhere wooden buildings, no 

 national style of architecture, billboards, big advertisements, and 

 houses without gardens. When he goes to England he sees beauty 

 everywhere houses built of brick and stone, a national style of 

 architecture, no billboards, shop signs relatively small and modest, 

 and every foot of ground cultivated to the utmost. These general 

 conditions are enough to put the American in an enthusiastic 

 mood, and enthusiasm rises to ecstasy when he finds that even 

 the labouring people live amid beautiful surroundings. Every 

 cottage is built of permanent materials and every cottage is sur- 

 rounded by fruits, flowers, or other forms of living beauty. It 

 all seems too good to be true, because American labourers generally 

 live in big tenements or else in monotonous rows of wooden cottages, 

 which are temporary and subject to disastrous fires, while the 

 yards are usually bare and shabby or foul with weeds and rubbish. 

 Therefore, I say the infinite number and variety of English 

 cottage gardens is enough to explain five tenths of the American 

 tourist's enthusiasm. 



FOUR TENTHS MORE EXPLAINED 



The second great reason why we cannot copy English cottage 

 gardens is that about four tenths of their charm is due to the 

 cottages themselves and these do not fit our present mode of life 

 at all. I wish you could see the book that lies before me as I 



