be objected to, and there is space lost in the construction of the staircase. The elevation would be improved by making the windows broader and lower, and the panneled front door and knocker might be dispensed with. The plainer elevation is far superior to the gabled and ornate one. The estimated cost of the former is 170l. These estimates are too low for the work. The Duke of Bedford's design for three cottages, two with three bedrooms, and one with two bedrooms, has many points to recommend it. The bedroom accommodation is superior to Mr. Isaac's, but the size of the wash-house, 15 ft. X 11 ft., is unnecessarily large. It would be better to have exchanged the uses of kitchen and wash-house (we whould rather call them 'living-room' and 'scullery'), but that the larger room is placed at the back. The elevation is thoroughly cottage-like in appearance. There is a pump and large oven in common; but the latter, when provided, is, as far as we can judge from our own experience, but little used. A row of six cottages with three bedrooms to each (No. 6 of the Duke of Bedford's plans) is most excellent, both in elevation and in the distribution and arrangement of space.. The living-room, 15 ft. x 11 ft., is a larger size than common, but not too large for a family occupying three bedrooms. The same design might be carried out in pairs. It would make the division of the upper rooms more complete, and more truly express the inside construction, if the two-light windows in the gables were each parted into two windows of a single light. The whole of the Bedford designs show a thoroughly practical understanding of the wants of the labouring class, and are in look exactly what they should be -not villas or town houses in miniature, but unmistakable English cottages. The only general objections which could be raised are to the thinness of the outer walls (9 inch) throughout, and to the doors opening directly on the living-room; but this latter fault is one far more noted by the builders of cottages than by their occupiers. Bills of quantities in every case accompany these designs, and thus the cost, varying so much according to locality, may be at once ascertained. As they embrace, moreover, every variety of ordinary cottage accommodation, none have been published, even by professed architects, so useful to the country builder, as these which emanate from the study of Woburn. The Duke has been as conspicuous in his deeds as in his plans. He has erected scores upon scores of new tenements for the labourer, and the result has been a marked improvement in the well-being of their inhabitants. Lord Spencer's plan of four cottages, founded very much on the Bedford model, has the same shortcoming in the thickness of the walls. By a judicious arrangement of the upper story good-sized bedrooms are distributed, two to the two central cottages, three to the outside houses, the ground-floor accommodation being nearly the same in all. Their elevation would be greatly improved by more prominent eaves and by a happier composition of the double porch. Mr. Weaver's are of that ornamental style now happily abandoned, and offer no special advantages of arrangement beyond that of utilizing the space over the porches for bedroom. Mr. Roberts, the active Hon. Architect to the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labourers, gives a large number of very wellarranged models in his 'Dwellings of the La bouring Classes,' especially in the subordination of the scullery to the living-room, and in the 11-inch hollow walling. The operations of the society which he represents are, however, now chiefly directed to town habitations. We should prefer to have the quasi-Gothic hoodmouldings over the windows and doors omitted in all these designs. The Prince Consort's cottages, of which examples were attached to the Great Exhibition of 1851, are too complicated and costly for ordinary purposes, and are rather suited for towns than for rural districtes. Of the prize models approved by the Society of Arts in 1848, the first by Mr. Hine is exceedingly well contrived and complete, but we much question the possibility of building it for the sum named, though that exceeds a remunerating price. The stone jambs and mullions, however, might be well omitted, and some of the interior fittings simplified, to reduce the cost. The second, equally expensive, has fewer conveniences, and externally fails in simplicity and proportion. Mr. B. Allen, in his 'Cottage Buildings,' flies off into architectural extravagances, and is more successful in his lodging-houses than in his cottages. Mr. Sanderson's 'Rural Architecture' is both too ambitious and too discursive, though the ground plan (Plate VIII.) is good, and would do well for a pair of superior cottages, when denuded of its shields, hipknobs, bargeboards, and other pseudo-Elizabethan quirks. Every province, nearly every county, has some special circumstances of its own which would modify any well-contrived building erected in it. Nothing is more to be deprecated than the idea of a model cottage to be multiplied throughout the land. English proprietors have often overlooked this, and have sent over to Ireland models at once incomprehensible and impracticable. There are habits of domestic life to which the peasantry of the North or the South, of Wales or 6 of Ireland, are wedded, which would require | either side of the border. He has been one a very differently arranged house from that of the most useful members of the Associawhich would suit the midland counties; and tion for promoting Improvement in the Dwellthis has now been recognised by the several ings and Domestic Condition of Agricultural districts taking the subject of their own par- Labourers in Scotland,' which has continued ticular requirements in hand. As long ago since the year 1850 to put forth annually a as 1841 the Rev. Dr. Gilly made his appeal series of economic plans adapted to the wants in behalf of the Border peasantry. The of the northern labourer. Much valuable instate of the hinds as described by him was formation is to be derived from the Reports striking in its difference from the southern of this Association, which appears to be in labourer, and still remains very little altered. excellent working condition, though hardly Being hired by the year, and living in a house yet supported by the landed proprietary of or rather hut found by the employer, they Scotland to the extent which it is benefiting require to be 'spoken to' if they are to stop. them. The published plans show generally Thus they are constantly flitting, and that at one story only, with all the bedrooms on the the most inconvenient season of Whitsuntide. ground floor, and bed-recesses in the livingThis prevents a tidy house and garden, and rooms, after the custom of the country. This destroys the home feeling. Yet their greater very much simplifies the design, especially as physical comfort has been extolled over the all fancy fittings and ventilations-in which more domiciled peasant of the south. The English architects too much run riot-are hind is paid in kind, the keep of his cow, also omitted. The wholesome thickness of which he always possesses, being found by the good stone walls-the material universally his master, who also gives him the carriage employed-makes up for many deficiencies; of his coals, finds wool for the women to spin but the sash-windows militate against the and knit, and continues his allowance in sick-rural associations of the south. ness. He usually kills two pigs in the year, and these, with porridge and the cow's milk, supply the main food of the family. The children are generally kept at home, and all can read and most are good arithmeticians. Dwelling altogether in one room, and sleeping in recessed beds, the moral evils of this cohabitation seem fewer than might be expected; and, though they have little care for the house, they are proud of what little furniture they possess in crockery or metal. They are a most self-contained household. The father is nearly always able to mend the shoes of the family; the women spin, and the village shopbill is unknown. Each hind is bound to find his master the labour of a woman or a boy, and hence the women work too much in the field, and the more domestic comforts are neglected. There is an independence and plenty in their coarse, rough, and primitive life, which may counterbalance the absence of the higher civilisation of the south; but the worst result of the system is the extreme wretchedness of their houses, which the unceasing flitting perpetuates and aggravates. Mud-floors and bad drainage and ventilation entail the misery of typhus and low fever; and it is not worth while for a temporary tenant to insist on any permanent remedies. Dr. Gilly gave designs for a better class of cottages, though curiously behind the present demands of the South; but the Rev. Henry Stuart, in his work entitled Agricultural Labourers,' has more fully entered into the requirements of that body, and drawn up some excellent plans for houses and bothies on The wants of the mountain districts of Wales have been well met by Mr. Poundley's plans, superintended, as they have been, by Mr. T. Turnor, Lord Bagot's agent in Denbighshire, who has had wide experience in cottage-building. The houses are altogether larger than those usually built in England, and the form of one bedroom is inconvenient. Here again the sash-window is at variance with the rustic aspect we look for in such localities. A second design is for a double cottage of one story, of flag and iron, for districts where flag-stone abounds, and the cartage of materials is expensive. Mr. Marley, an Irish proprietor, has bestowed great pains on a design adapted to Ireland, which the Cottage Improvement Society are likely soon to publish. Mr. Wheeler's Homes for the People' of America teaches us nothing we might not as easily have learnt in England; and it is singular how little there is characteristic of a new country, either in his cottage or mansion plans. The publications which we have selected for notice, and the large number of designs sent in whenever prizes have been offered, show how wide is the interest taken in this matter both by landlords and architects; and this has led to the formation of a new Society in London, called The Cottage Improvement Society. Unfortunately, though commenced with the best motives, and supported by an influential council, it has been too much clogged by its provincial antecedents to make as fair a start as it should have done when it assumed metropolitan life; and designs to which the Kent Society, from which it sprung, were pledged, have been circulated without almost universally fatal to the obtaining three that careful revision which might have been good bedrooms above without loss of space expected from a new and central society. We below. In his own plan he departs from this should have severely criticised their two first rule, thereby entailing some extra complicaplans, did we not understand that in the re- tion and, probably, expense in the construcorganization which the Society is now under- tion of the roof, but his whole arrangement going they are likely to be withdrawn. We is so excellent that this slight increase of prefer a third plan of the Society's, only par- cost should not deter the proprietor from tially circulated, where, by placing one of the adopting so perfect a model, especially as bedrooms on the ground, two other sufficient much picturesqueness is gained to the buildrooms are gained on the upper story. It ing by the break in the side-wall. This dewould seem an improvement on this plan if sign has every convenience which has ever the pantry or north end of the lean-to were been called for in this class of building; an continued, so as to be flush with the back entrance giving separate access to the livingwall, giving room for a porch at the south or room, the staircase, and the pantry; the sculfront end, with a side entrance into the living-lery communicating with the living-room, room. and having a back-door of its own; the best room, above and below, is to the front, as is also the entrance door; of the three bedrooms two have fireplaces, and all are of fair size, with windows and bed-site well placed. The actual and relative proportions of the livingroom, scullery, and pantry are very good, and, granting that the cottage faces south, the pantry has a north aspect. The chimSe-neys are all in the centre of the house and carried up into one stack. The dust-bin, office, &c., are supposed to be detached. The whole contrivance is so good that, by placing a kitchen-range in the scullery, and making the scullery-door open, as it might, into the lobby, any lady with one servant might comfortably live in the cottage and miss no point of arrangement which the best class of houses offer, while nothing is sacrificed to take away from the more hand-to-mouth conveniences and homely comforts of a working man's large family. It is equally good as a cottage of gentility' and as a labourer's dwelling. It might, perhaps, be still further improved by an angular porch over the front door or by a lean-to passage, closed or open, its entrance ranging with the front wall of the house. In 1858 Mr. Bentley, of Rotherham, offered prizes of 201. for the best and 57. for the second best design for a pair of cottages (which might also be built singly), the expense not to exceed 1107. for the single cottage or 2001. for the pair. The conditions were very well considered, except, perhaps, the requirement that the plan should equally apply to a single and double tenement. venty-six plans were sent in, and exhibited at the show of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society at Northallerton. Mr. C. W. Strickland, in the most practical pamphlet on 'Cottage Architecture which we have seen, gives an account of the competition, and ably analyses the respective merits of fifteen selected designs. The first prize was assigned to Mr. Blackmoor, to whose block-plan there seems no objection but the very small dimensions (7 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. 6 in.) of the third bedroom. The elevation might be greatly improved by better proportioned windows and by the omission of their hood-mouldings and transoms. The second prize plan, by Messrs. Hickes and Isaac, fails rather in the dimensions of the largest bed-room and in the arrangement of the entrance, which, however, might readily be altered, and advantageously, according to our views, by turning the porchentrance to the front instead of the back. There is, too, an unnecessary variety in the side-windows, which might easily be made Inore uniform. Into the details of the other plans we cannot enter, except to draw attention to Mr. Strickland's own design, which we conceive to be by far the best yet offered to the public. It is an acknowledged rule, that the nearer a building approaches to a cube the greater will be the economy of construction. All cottagedesigners have therefore endeavoured to avoid projections and recesses of any kind, and to bring their ground-plans within a square or a parallelogram; but Mr. Strickland rightly remarks that this arrangement has been found We have gone into details which will be dull to those who think that a cottage just consists of four low walls and a roof; but the gist of the whole matter lies in these minntiæ, and it is only by the study of them that any substantial benefit will accrue to our peasantry from the present movement in favour of cottage-improvement. Most of the plans we have reviewed have been largely adopted on the authority of the important names or societies from which they emanate, and continue to be erected at a cost which would furnish far more perfect buildings. Though it has hitherto been found a most difficult matter to build a good cottage, yet the requirements are so comparatively uniform and within compass, that the principles at least only want a fair amount of attention bestowed upon them to procure universal | this silly arrangement, as in Mr. Strickland's proportions, which may be well adopted. assent. A dry and gravelly site is of course the first desideratum, but cottagers cannot always be choosers, and therefore freedom from damp should be secured by foundations not less than 18 in. deep, with space under the wooden floors of 12 in., or, where tile-flooring is used, the same depth of rubble, brickends, and concrete. Close under the floor-line a course of slates embedded in cement, or a layer of asphalt, should be laid in the walls. As slate is impervious to damp, it stops the rise of the moisture which the bricks suck up from the soil. No outlay pays so well for keeping the walls dry; and this precaution is imperative. The thinness of the outer walls'in most new cottages is the disadvantage which the poor almost universally set against the gains of modern improvement. Nine inches is the ordinary thickness allowed; and this, as in the Bedford cottages, where the walls are built partially hollow, and where many cottages are joined together, may be sufficient; but for a single cottage, with ordinary brickwork and second-rate bricks, it is often cruelly starving. The best walls are those which either in the bricks themselves, or in the mode of working them, are partially hollow. Though it is often objected to, we are in favour of the inner walls being plastered, if only to encourage the furnished look which papering and pictures give, and which cottagers are so fond of. If the living-room is not floored with wood, the best and hardest tiles should be used, or the cherished operation of 'swilling' will keep up a perpetual damp. The habits of the poor vary much in different places as to the occupation of their house; but in the midland and southern districts it is quite useless to provide a living-room independent of the kitchen. One family-room, where the meals are cooked and eaten, and where the party gathers round the fire on a winter's evening, with a smaller scullery or washhouse at the back, and a pantry or larder with opening window, best meets the requirements of the ordinary labourer. This living-room should be fitted up with a grate containing a boiler and an oven, not, as in many cases, with what the people themselves call a boiler and a sham,' where the corresponding space to the boiler is occupied in mockery by a brass handle and nothing more. Several ranges are recommended by the societies, but few are sufficiently simple. When the scullery or back room is the larger, and the chief fireplace is placed there, the family will almost invariably crowd into this room, reserving the front room in its musty finery for company at fair or feast tide. The relative sizes of the two rooms should prevent The scullery should have a back door, and the chief entrance by all means be in front, always supposing the house to have a southward aspect. The rule for a cottage is the reverse of that which holds good for a great house. There, the garden front should be to the south, and the entrance anywhere else; in the cottage the garden front and entrance should be the same; for garden privacy here is neither desired nor obtainable, and the cheerfulness and tidiness of the cottage is much enhanced by the front door opening towards the road, from which a straight path of about six yards should bring the workman home, through the little plot of ground devoted to herbs and flowers. The great crux in cottage-building, already alluded to, is to get three convenient bedrooms over the ordinary amount of ground floor required by the cottager; but it is a mistake to suppose that these three bedrooms are always necessary. When boys and girls are not at home together, a second only is wanted; and two large rooms are often preferable to the common modern arrangement, where all are spoilt to obtain the desired three. Nor, admitting the evils which sometimes arise, can we forbear to add that much that is false and foolish has been written on the moral aspect of large families sleeping in the same room. Fine people judge of their poorer neighbours from their own highly artificial and dressing-room point of view; yet it is not many hundred years ago since lords and ladies and their families and retainers slept in the same hall, with no greater injury to their morals than the refinements of the nineteenth century have produced. The Irish peasants of the present day, who hardly know the luxury of a separate bedchamber, are most honourably conspicuous for their chaste and correct conduct. Travellers in the East, who have been thrown together, day and night, in large mixed companies, know how readily the manners accommodate themselves to such a phase of life. It is a great libel upon our poor and upon human nature to suppose that the common sleeping-room of a family necessarily involves those offences against purity which over-refined people imagine. It is full as much on the ground of health as of morality that a change is required; but where a given amount of space is broken up into small and ill-partitioned apartments, there is no gain to the physical | rated projection of eaves. The eave is as the nature, and perhaps some loss to the moral. brow to the eye, and the want of it is always In the instance already referred to of a a deformity. crowded bedroom, there were only 100 cubic feet of air to each occupant, whereas the Lodging-house Act requires 700-most of our hospitals calculate on 1000, and the Victoria Hospital has given 1500 cubic feet to each person. No partition is preferable to an imperfect one; and a curtain is often better than a thin wall. Fireplaces should always be made in two bedrooms at least, for ventilation more than firing. Where an open chimney does not exist, a ventilator should be placed in the roof; but it should be very unassailable and simple, for cottagers, like bees, will stop up every ventilating cranny in their way, especially if constructed some highly scientific principle. For general ventilation below, there is nothing equal to the open hearth and a good fire in it; but iron perforated bricks should be inserted flush with the outer wall, beneath the floor, and tiles may also be used in the inside close under the ceiling, and communicating with ventilating pipes conveyed into or up the chimney shafts. on It is the windows, however, that give the character to every building and mark its style; and this to the cottage as much as to the palace. From old association we should regret the substitution of the sash for the casement-window; but in fact the latter, if of three lights and opening outwards in the centre, is also more convenient for the cottage, being much more easily repaired when out of order, and its interior sill serving as a useful shelf. If lead lattice is objected to, the best casement is a wooden frame with square lights. Large diamond panes never look well, and are particularly ugly either in wood or cast-iron. If the windows are sufficiently large there can be no objection to small lead lattice, as a cottage window is not wanted to look in or out of, but simply for transmission of light. When near the road, large panes render the interior too public. A single sash-window can never be made proportionate to a low room; for all low buildings the windows should run in horizontal not vertical length. Good proportions for cottage window lights are 4 ft. high by 18 in. wide, or 2 ft. 9 in. by 15 in. We have referred to Mr. Strickland's plan as almost perfect in its arrangement of entrance, stairs, and room-communication, but The chimneys should be gathered up into these points are much less regarded by the the centre of the house for economy, warmth, cottagers themselves than by those who think and effect. The heavy brick chimney top for them. They seldom allege any objection of the Kent cottages always looks well, and, to stairs springing from the kitchen or scullery, by its projection, assists the draught of the outer doors opening upon the living-room or flues. These should be of round or oval bed-rooms one within the other. To avoid glazed pipes, enabling the tenant to sweep his cold and draughts are their main considera- own chimney, and, if this is tolerably well artions; and they willingly sacrifice barge- ranged below, they almost certainly prevent boards and pretty porches for thick walls, the smoke descending. If the stack of chimwell-placed doors, and well-drawing chimneys can be built with wind-breaks between neys. There is much difference of opinion the flues, the effect, as well as the draught, is whether the bedrooms should be partly in improved. the roof; the great objection is the cold; but this may be obviated by a layer of straw, reed, or felt, beneath the tiles or slates; indeed, slates, which are rapid conductors of heat, letting it out in winter, and conveying it in in summer, should never be used for houseroofing without some such addition. With this modification, they form the best of all coverings. But the roofing of cottages will always be determined by the cheapness of the material at hand-stone, slate, tiles, or thatch. The latter is excellent as being cooler in summer and warmer in winter, but its constant want of repair, and the backwardness of the farmer to give up what he requires for his farinyard, are fatal to its general use. Gutters and pipes should always be provided; and herewith we must ask the one sacrifice, not of convenience but of money, for appearance sake, to effect a certain, but not exagge We have all along taken brick as our material, bnt where stone is at hand it will of course be used as cheaper, and from its necessary bulk, warmer. In this case the single chamfered stone mullion may economically replace that of wood. Thus we perpetuate the style of old English cottage which, with very little variation, has continued in the stone districts of England from the earliest time of house-building to the present day. The stone cottages of the midland counties, and we may add the brick rural villages of the south, have all along been so thoroughly domesticated on our soil, that they may be truly viewed as the uninterrupted continuation of that school which built our cathedrals, castles, and manor-houses.* better name, we must call Gothic, which-while This unbroken thread of what, for want of Classic revivals and foreign fashions were from time |