238 
On Building of Cottages for Farm- Labourers. 
to promote the comfort and welfare of labourers, and to encou- 
rage the improved management of their cottages and gardens." 
The first step towards this desirable end is to supply them with 
such cottages as afford the means of being kept in a state of com- 
fort and cleanliness, to each of which a small garden should be 
attached, as well as other out-of-door conveniences. This first 
step is exclusively the landlord's business, and it is to their manner 
of fulfilling the duties incumbent upon them in this respect that 
this paper entirely refers. It is unreasonable to look for health, 
comfort, and cleanliness, when a whole family is crowded into a 
low, damp, and dingy hut. Let them first be supplied with the 
means and opportunity, and then let them be blamed if they do 
not avail themselves of them for the purposes of their own im- 
provement in these resj)ects. 
It is agreed on all hands, that to confine all the members of a 
family in a small dwelling, with only one apartment, without the 
means of dividing the young from the old, and the males from the 
females, must be at once destructive of comfort and most inimical 
to delicacy of mind and right moral feeling ; and that, when fever 
and sickness attack the house, it is tantamount to condemning the 
whole family to undergo the painful course of its visitation. It 
has been often alleged that a second room is almost useless to 
poor people as a slee])ing apartment, because they cannot afford 
to keej) a fire in it, and being constantly without one, it becomes 
too cold and damp to be habitable. If it were absolutely neces- 
sary to have the second room on the ground-floor, this argument 
might seem to carry some weight with it ; but even that is in great 
measure overturned by the simple fact, that all that is needful to 
preserve such an apartment from being damp, and to secure a 
moderately warm temperature, is to have the fire-place in the 
adjoining one so contrived as to be in the division wall between 
them, and at the back of that fire-place to build into the wall a 
cast-iron box to contain healed air, with a pipe through it to 
convey the air into the second room, the end of the pipe being 
secured by a small grating. This may also be easily applied to a 
room upstairs, by a trifling addition to the length of the pipe ; 
but, in general, a room in an airy situation, bemg above another 
in which a fire is constantly kept, does not require such means of 
creating a dry and healthy atmosphere.* The advantage of a 
second room upstairs over one on the ground-floor is obvious, 
from its superior dryness, and the greater seclusion which it 
affords to the female members of the family. Sufficient access to 
it is afforded by a good step-ladder placed against the end wall on 
one side, and closed in from view by thin deals on the other, which 
* I consider fiie-pIaces in every dwelling and sleeping-room eiisentiaJ 
on account of ventilation.— Br whrooke. 
