COUNTRY LIFE .
House or Haystack?
We continually see, not without regret, the farm house become the dwelling house, the homestead that was productive become the ornamental home, perhaps of an urban worker. Last week, walking in Hampshire, I came upon a transforma- tion of this sort that might be poetically recorded as a symbol. A new, and not lovely villa, was being built within the pale of a dismantled farmyard and homestead ; the left wing of this new " concrete mendacity " (as 'CarlYle used to call the '• mushroom house) encroached on the stackyard ; and one haystack had been carved •to allow for the projections of the house ; and its shaved' side stands within a yard or two of the new windows. In Bottom's immortal panegyric " good hay, sweet hay hath no fellow." Certainly a slate- roofed villa is no fellow to a stout rick. It is neither good nor sweet.
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