ees in the middle distance, with a few grey
houses clustered about it; while nearer to us, in fact not half a furlong
from the water, was a quite modern stone house--a wide quadrangle of one
story, the buildings that made it being quite low. There was no garden
between it and the river, nothing but a row of pear-trees still quite
young and slender; and though there did not seem to be much ornament
about it, it had a sort of natural elegance, like that of the trees
themselves.

As we sat looking down on all this in the sweet June day, rather happy
than merry, Ellen, who sat next me, her hand clasped about one knee,
leaned sideways to me, and said in a low voice which Dick and Clara might
have noted if they had not been busy in happy wordless love-making:
"Friend, in your country were the houses of your field-labourers anything
like that?"

I said: "Well, at any rate the houses of our rich men were not; they were
mere blots upon the face of the land."

"I find that hard to understand," she said. "I can see why the workmen,
who were so oppressed, should not have been able to live in beautiful
houses; for it takes time and leisure, and minds not over-burdened with
care, to make beautiful dwellings; and I quite understand that these poor
people were not allowed to live in such a way as to have these (to us)
necessary good things. But why the rich men, who had the time and the
leisure and the materials for building, as it would be in this case,
should not have housed themselves well, I do not understand as yet. I
know what you are meaning to say to me," she said, looking me full in the
eyes and blushing, "to wit that their houses and all belonging to them
were generally ugly and base, unless they chanced to be ancient like
yonder remnant of our forefathers' work" (pointing to the spire); "that
they were--let me see; what is the word?"

"Vulgar," said I. "We used to say," said I, "that the ugliness and
vulgarity of the rich men's dwellings was a necessary reflection from the
sordidness and bareness of life which they forced upon the poor people."

She knit her brows as in thought; then turned a brightened face on me, as
if she had caught the idea, and said: "Yes, friend, I see what you mean.
We have sometimes--those of us who look into these things--talked this
very matter over; because, to say the truth, we have plenty of record of
the so-called arts of the time before Equality of Life; and there are not
wanting peo