with extensive gardens attached. Some even begin to complain
that the cottages now erected are in a sense "too good" for the purpose.
The system of three bedrooms is undoubtedly the best from a sanitary
point of view, but it is a question whether the widespread belief in
that system, and that system alone, has not actually retarded the
erection of reasonably good buildings. It is that third bedroom which
just prevents the investment of building a cottage from paying a
remunerative percentage on the capital expended. Two bedrooms are easily
made--the third puzzles the builder where to put it with due regard to
economy. Nor is a third bedroom always required. Out of ten families
perhaps only two require a third bedroom; in this way there is a large
waste in erecting a row. It has been suggested that a row should consist
of so many cottages with two bedrooms only for families who do not want
more, and at each end a building with three bedrooms for larger
families. In one instance two cottages were ordered to be erected on an
estate, the estimate for which was L640; these when completed might have
let for L10 per annum, or 1-3/4 per cent, on the capital invested! The
plans for these cottages had so many dormer windows, porches,
intricacies of design in variegated tiles, &c., that the contractor gave
it up as a bad job. I mention this to show that the tendency to build
good cottages has gone even beyond what was really required, and
ornamentation is added to utility.

Then it is further stated that the labourer cannot build cottages. I
could name a lane at this moment the cottages in which were one and all
built by labourers; and there are half-a-dozen in this village which
were erected by regular farm labourers. The majority of these are, as I
said before, wretched hovels, but there are two or three which
demonstrate that the labourer, if he is a thrifty man, earns quite
sufficient to enable him to erect a reasonably good building. The worst
hovel I ever saw (it was mentioned in my letter of the 14th) was built
by a man who is notorious for his drinking habits. Some forty years ago,
when wages were much lower than they are now, two labourers, to my
knowledge, took possession of a strip of waste land by the roadside, and
built themselves cottages. One of these was a very fair building; the
other would certainly be condemned now-a-days. The lord of the manor
claimed these; and the difficulty was thus adjusted:--The builders we