House and Garden 
A DOOMED COTTAGE 
keep down the poor rate in a parish, the 
farmers and landlords used to try and dimin¬ 
ish the number of the poor by pulling down 
the old cottages, and driving the laborers 
into the nearest town. It was a sad policy 
and did much mischief; and now our people 
are flocking to the towns, whence we would 
fain bring them back to the land and the fields 
wherein their sires worked. Happily the 
squires and farmers needed laborers; hence 
the destruction of cottages was limited. 
Recent years have doomed many. Some 
are drooping into decay, because landlords 
refuse to spend money in repairing them. 
District Councils, armed with the authority 
to govern our rural affairs, have passed by¬ 
laws which forbid the use of thatch on new 
buildings, though happily they cannot strip 
the old ones, and many cottages have been 
pulled down and replaced by the unsightly 
and uncomfortable enormities which I have 
described, or by the non-substantial, though 
often hideous, erections which the genius of 
an estate agent or builder has devised out of 
his inner consciousness. 
How different are the old cottages of Eng¬ 
land ! I see one before me as I write. It is 
a small house, of odd, irregular form, with 
various harmonious coloring, the effects of 
weather, time and accident, the whole envi¬ 
roned with smiling verdure, having a con¬ 
tented, cheerful, inviting aspect, and a door 
open to receive a gossiping neighbor. Old 
English flowers — roses, pansies, peonies, 
GARDEN OF A HOUSE NEAR PORLOCK 
sweet-williams and London pride— 
adorn the strips of ground on each 
side of the path. There is a timber 
porch with seats on either side. 
There are irregular breaks in the 
direction of the walls, one part of 
which is higher than the other. 
There is a finely thatched roof, a 
yard in thickness, boldly projecting, 
and cut away in graceful curves 
over the windows of the upper 
rooms. The front is partly built 
of brick, partly weather-boarded, 
and partly brick-nogging, with case¬ 
ment windows and diamond panes. 
Such is a cottage which the poet and 
the painter loves, a type which is 
happily not extinct in modern Eng¬ 
land. 
“Its roof with reeds and mosses covered o’er. 
And honeysuckles climbing round the door ; 
While mantling vines along its walls are spread, 
And clustering ivy decks the chimney head.” 
It is set in a framework that enhances its 
perfections. There is in front of it a rugged 
common, and a rude pond whereon some 
ducks disport themselves, and at the back 
