though alone they are hardly sufficiently effectual. The great sanitary principle, which every experiment upon town sewage seems to make more clear, is, that as soon as the manure becomes liquid, that is, once let it be mixed with water, it is irretrievably wasted, and has moreover become a very dangerous nuisance. The only possible way of avoiding this nuisance is to follow Nature's laws instead of acting in defiance of them, and to use earth instead of water. Whatever the difficulty of carrying out this principle in towns, it is perfectly easy to do so in cottages in the country, especially where the cottage stands, as it ought always to do, in a garden.

The privy ought to be in or close to the garden. If it communicate in the usual manner with the ash-pit, the ash-pit should be roofed over and be kept perfectly dry; but the simplest plan is, I think, to make the ash-pit and privy all in one, by fitting the privy seat with two pair of hinges at the back, so that the whole

of it will open. It may thus be very well used

as the ash-pit; and if a little dry earth be occasionally put in with the ashes, and the whole be cleaned out from time to time, and made use of in the garden, it may easily be kept at all times perfectly sweet, and the garden moreover will be greatly benefited thereby.*

The ash-pit may also very well be kept separate from the privy, as is often done. In this case I would still make the privy seat to open in the same manner, and put dry earth into it from time to time; but however it be arranged, let there by no means ever be a cesspool.

The drain from the sink may be carried a short distance into the garden, and allowed to sink into the soil. There is no great waste in this, and it will produce no nuisance, as it in

* See on this subject a very good pamphlet, called "National Health and Wealth," by the Rev. H. Moule, of Dorchester-a valuable publication, and one which would be much more valuable, if it were not tacked on to an attempt to monopolize this sanitary principle by a wretched patent, so that some persons may take it for nothing but a puff of the author's shop.

evitably will do if it be carried through the privy into a cesspool.

It is to be hoped, as was said in the preface, that in future more cottages will be built on the land where the labourer is wanted, and fewer in towns. In all such cases the cottage can and ought to have a piece of land attached to it for a garden; and a garden attached to the house is the true, and I believe the only, means of overcoming sanitary difficulties.

NOTE.—All the figures of details in this chapter are on the scale of half an inch to the foot.

CHAPTER IV.

ON COTTAGE DESIGN.

THE design of a building is a more difficult subject to treat of than its construction. This latter depends a good deal upon fixed mechanical laws, and principles of arrangement which can easily be defined; whereas design must be treated of as a matter of perception and taste, qualities which differ more or less in every person. Not that symmetry and beauty of form do not really depend upon laws as fixed as the laws of mechanics, only that we do not understand or know anything about those laws. In the absence of that knowledge, the best thing that we can do is to educate, as well as we can, that perception of proportion and form which

all men have more or less. To do this we must acquire the habit of looking at things, at all common objects and ordinary buildings, no matter how simple or plain, and of judging how far they appear to us to be in good proportion, or otherwise; for proportion or harmony and good keeping between the different parts of a building, or of any other object, is the first and the last thing upon which all beauty of form and design depends: and unless the proportions of a building without ornament of any kind be pleasing and harmonious, no amount of ornament whatever can make it otherwise than ugly. But this being so, there must necessarily be a degree of vagueness and uncertainty in treating of design, for the perceptions of different persons are not quite the same: they are influenced and warped by habit and by fashion, and by a thousand other things; so that what appears undeniably true to me, some one else may find it impossible to assent to. It must, therefore, be understood, that although I may seem to speak positively respecting any particular