Calls at Suburban Gardens. 685 



they do on a design for a stable. We throw the entire blame, in all cases 

 of this kind, on the architect, and never on the employer ; because, even if 

 the employer were to limit the cost of the cottage to a certain sum, it would be 

 the duty of the architect to curtail the ornamental finishings, rather than the 

 requisite dimensions, of the apartments. Besides, it is the duty of an archi- 

 tect of character rather to refuse giving a design at all, than to give one which 

 he knows to be unfit for a human being to dwell in with health and comfort. 

 A high-minded architect will no more accept employment, where his employer 

 limits him to a sum that will prevent his rendering a dwelling comfortable, 

 than a medical man would consent to administer poison for illegitimate pur- 

 poses. It is said that, when Bonaparte was obliged to leave a number of his 

 troops ill of the plague at Jaffa, he sent for his chief surgeon, and stated to 

 him that, as these men could not recover, and would, in all probability, fall 

 into the hands of the Turks, he wished to give them opium, to put an end to 

 their miseries. The surgeon refused to administer the drug, stating that it was 

 his business to preserve life, not to destroy it. An architect, in our opinion, 

 ought to act in an analogous manner, whenever he is limited to such a sum as 

 will prevent him from producing a dwelling fit for a human being to live 

 comfortably in. 



It may be asked, how it happens that architects fall into this error of limited 

 accommodation and low ceilings, so very generally, in the construction of cot- 

 tages for the servants of gentlemen. We know the causes well, both from 

 long observation, and from having had some intercourse with architects, both 

 in Scotland and England. First, many architects think low ceilings and small 

 dark rooms essential to the character of a cottage ,* we suppose,' on the same 

 principle that some men of wealth think ignorance essential to servants and 

 common people : secondly, many architects are not at all aware of the im- 

 portance of a constant supply of fresh air to health : and, thirdly, as almost 

 all architects are sprung from the lower or from the middling class, and 

 aspire (partly from inclination, and partly from the circumstance of, while 

 employed, living on a footing of equality with their employer) to be considered 

 as belonging to the higher class, they feel ashamed to acknowledge their sym- 

 pathy with the class from which they have sprung, by entering minutely into 

 their wants and wishes. If they did so, they would have to encounter the 

 prejudices of men of wealth, generally, against rendering the labouring classes 

 too comfortable ; and thus, according to them, discontented with their con- 

 dition. To sit at the tables of some of the nobility and gentry, as we have 

 done, and hear the manner in which they talk of the poor, one is not surprised 

 that an architect or an artist, who has sprung from that class, should feel him- 

 self a parvenu in such society, and should wish to avoid indicating any thing 

 like a sympathy which would stamp him at once as unfit for the company into 

 which he was admitted. Very few artists who mix with the higher classes 

 have the moral courage to act otherwise. The times, however, are improving 

 in these respects : the rich are becoming more humane, in consequence of 

 becoming poorer; and the poor are becoming more intelligent and moral, in 

 consequence of the diffusion of knowledge : and this, by bringing the two 

 extremes nearer to a common level, will, in time, cause the rich to look on 

 the poor in a very different point of view from what they do at present,, We 

 wish we could get architects and builders of cottages to enter into our views 

 on this subject, because they have it in their power, most materially, to bring 

 about such a desirable result, as that of the rich and poor being comparatively 

 equalised in the essentials of comfortable existence, in useful intelligence and 

 manners, and wholly equalised in point of moral character. Every really 

 comfortable cottage that is erected is a contribution to this desirable result. 



Stratford Green ; J. Allcard, Esq. — This is a much smaller place than Mr. 

 Gurney's; but it is a place of intense interest, from its botanical collections. 

 We have no doubt that, in a few years, there will be here one of the best and 

 richest private botanic gardens in the neighbourhood of London. There are 

 already excellent collections of ferns and Orchidese in the hot-houses, and of 



