CORRUGATED IRON. 
209 
rigid, and assertive lines ” of the iron fencing which has taken 
the place of the wooden one. The old barn is gone, and in its 
place is a “ hideous staring abomination ” of corrugated iron. 
There it is gleaming in the sunshine, cold, deadly, cruel. A 
strong wish is present to turn from it, to rest the eye on the 
green fields, on the waving corn, or even away there to the sky- 
line, where upon the ridge of the breezy plain the old shepherd 
in his white smock and crook in hand tends and watches his 
vast family of sheep and lambs. But no, that corrugated iron 
structure is a basilisk in its fascination, the eye cannot move 
from its venomous gleam. 
Now all this is very sad and much to be deplored from an 
artistic point of view. It is very jarring to the nerves of those 
who love the country as they knew it in their youth. But, in 
most cases, there is a reason for these changes which, in all fair- 
ness to landowners and country gentlemen, should be placed 
side by side with Mr. Rope’s plaint. The front of the offend- 
ing lies not in the “ mercenary age,” or the desire for “ cheap- 
ness,” but, alas ! in the hard times which have fallen upon 
the landowners. With rents reduced again and again and 
even then badly paid, with hundreds of acres unlet, and yet 
tithes on them to be paid just the same, can it be expected that 
owners of old country properties shall study the artistic and the 
beautiful, by keeping all their timber standing, and spending 
hundreds of pounds in patching up old places which no sooner 
patched have to be repaired again ? Timber fences con- 
stantly decay, are the sport of tempests, and the gymnasium of 
the village youth. Iron and wire is lasting, does not oppose 
such resistance to gales, is not adapted to bucolic gymnastics. 
Therefore, the man of lessened income repairs his rotten wood 
with these. 
Picturesque barns and outbuildings have after years of costly 
outlay in patching become at last past repairing. What is 
to be done ? The timber that might have built others has 
been felled to meet many a pressing need, or that yet stand- 
ing is protected by law. Something must be put up; let it be 
of moderate cost, and the most lasting and weather resisting. 
Then comes the corrugated iron, which, as Mr. Rope points 
out, loves not lichen, and moss and flower. Every one knows 
that when we see moss and flowers flourishing on walls or 
buildings, there too is decay of material, and sooner or later 
must be repairs with their heavy outlay. Therefore, in nine 
cases out of ten against his artistic feelings, the owner erects 
the enemy. 
Then a word may be said about the “ picturesque cottages.” 
Very pretty indeed are these — the thick thatch, the little windows 
almost hidden in a profusion of creeper and roses. But what of 
the inside? Rooms dark and stuffy, floors either of dark cold 
stone, or mud ; sleeping accommodation often lacking in decency. 
These “ sweetly pretty cottages ” are mostly very old, and built 
