These cottages are not exceptional. Many worse examples could be
quoted. I give them merely because they were presented to my eyes this week. Any sort of repair or im- provement, however necessary for the comfort or the health of the cottagers, is so unlikely to be granted that it is seldom asked for. Peasants of an infinite patience accept present conditions as if they were ordained by nature. The cottager whom I went to call on, paying 6s. a week rent out of a 10s. pension, was " doing " his minute square of garden in which were flourishing and flowering, even at this date, as rare a group of primulas as you could wish to see. We shall never secure the revival of the village in any satisfactory form while so large a number of cottage homes are owned by small local rack-renters. As a class they extract the maximum and restore the minimum, and are often the unwitting agents of ill-health and low morality.
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