670 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 



but the scenery of social life is impoverished by radial building. The 

 straggling suburb is inferior to the town in illustration of collective life 

 and inferior to the country in illustration of the round of individual occupa- 

 tion. The detached suburb of compact plan, by providing better illustra- 

 tion of both individual and collective occupation, would remove the 

 common reproach that suburban scenery is uninteresting. Moreover we 

 can plan its residential roads so as to combine excellencies which in Great 

 Britain have hitherto been separately associated with the college, the 

 mansion, the cottage and the villa. The plan to which I refer is well 

 established on the other side of the Atlantic, where the admirable example 

 of Toronto is fresh in the minds of many members of the British Association. 

 The front gardens are not fenced from one another, and in? consequence 

 the detached villas stand in the dignified sociability of collegiate 

 architecture. The avenue of shady trees by which the citizen goes forth 

 to his work in the morning and returns at eventide is stately as the approach 

 to a lordly country mansion. The front gardens with their flowers for 

 all to see have the friendly brightness which is the charm of the English 

 cottage garden open to the road, whilst the gardens at the back of the 

 houses, adequately fenced from one another, give the privacy which is a 

 cherished character of English villadom. 



The large parks and heath lands now being re-planned, sometimes with 

 a central golf course, are free both from the bane of nineteenth-century 

 building and from the pressure to conform to an earlier tradition. Here 

 adaptations of a Mediterranean type of architecture, harmonising with 

 the landscape, are already to be seen. These embody the upper loggia and 

 other facilities for shelter combined with open-air life. It cannot be too 

 clearly realised that this return to Nature is an advance upon any of the 

 earlier architecture of England. 



The sea coast is our chief health resort, both for the annual holiday 

 from business and for the restful years of retirement, and sometimes a 

 suburb also for the city man. Half smothered in the modern growth of 

 the seaside resort are the cottages of the old fishing village which was 

 rightly placed to hug the shore. Here and there on our coast can still be 

 found an untouched fishing village in a cove beneath the protecting cliff 

 which preserves an unspoilt scene of the adaptation of occupation to 

 environment. The general practice of developing the seaside resort on 

 similar lines, with building front close to the beach, is however radically 

 wrong. The building-line should be placed at the back of a broad lea, 

 for a mere roadway and footpath between the houses and the beach is 

 utterly inadequate as seaside pleasaunce for a considerable town, and the 

 mind can with difficulty receive the message of the free and open ocean 

 amidst a jostling crowd. Fortunately, the more spacious planning is a 

 counsel of economy as well as amenity, for the need for erecting costly 

 sea defences is postponed, and meanwhile the growing population becomes 

 better able to bear the financial burden. 



4. Scenic Harmonies of Farm and Village. 



The country parishes of the English lowland have a decorative 

 character unsurpassed in quiet charm. The land undulates, rivers flow 

 quietly in gracious curves, there is wealth of broad-leaved trees of rounded 



