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what they are like, just to prepare me."

"Perhaps," said he, "you have seen a tolerable picture of these villages
as they were before the end of the nineteenth century. Such things
exist."

"I have seen several of such pictures," said I.

"Well," said Hammond, "our villages are something like the best of such
places, with the church or mote-house of the neighbours for their chief
building. Only note that there are no tokens of poverty about them: no
tumble-down picturesque; which, to tell you the truth, the artist usually
availed himself of to veil his incapacity for drawing architecture. Such
things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery. Like the
mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright; as
people always do when they have any sense of architectural power; because
then they know that they can have what they want, and they won't stand
any nonsense from Nature in their dealings with her."

"Besides the villages, are there any scattered country houses?" said I.

"Yes, plenty," said Hammond; "in fact, except in the wastes and forests
and amongst the sand-hills (like Hindhead in Surrey), it is not easy to
be out of sight of a house; and where the houses are thinly scattered
they run large, and are more like the old colleges than ordinary houses
as they used to be. That is done for the sake of society, for a good
many people can dwell in such houses, as the country dwellers are not
necessarily husbandmen; though they almost all help in such work at
times. The life that goes on in these big dwellings in the country is
very pleasant, especially as some of the most studious men of our time
live in them, and altogether there is a great variety of mind and mood to
be found in them which brightens and quickens the society there."

"I am rather surprised," said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that
after all the country must be tolerably populous."

"Certainly," said he; "the population is pretty much the same as it was
at the end of the nineteenth century; we have spread it, that is all. Of
course, also, we have helped to populate other countries--where we were
wanted and were called for."

Said I: "One thing, it seems to me, does not go with your word of
'garden' for the country. You have spoken of wastes and forests, and I
myself have seen the beginning of your Middlesex and Essex forest. Why
do you keep such things in a garden? and isn't it very wasteful to do
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