Country Life
Here is a brief and inadequate census of a single group of the country houses that have undergone a complete metamorphosis within the last few years. The diameter of the circle in which they appear is not more thin eight Miles ; and the area comes within twenty miles of London. The details, if not of particular interest-to dwellers in other counties, are yet of general concern, because they illustrate how quickly and how crucially the English countryside is changing. The houses, it need hardly be said, are or Were of considerable, though not enormous size. Most of them are not old as houses go, but in some respects seem More out of date, less suited to modern needs, than older houses. The Early Victorian age is further away in this regard than the Elizabethan or Jacobean, though Elizabethan houses—so many vandals are there—have recently been destroyed in Essex.
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