I assure you that, after years of thought, I see no other remedy for the worst evils of city life. “If,” says the old proverb, “the mountain will not come to Muhammed, then Muhammed must go to the mountain.” And if you cannot bring the country into the city, the city must go into the country. Do not fancy me a dreamer dealing with impossible ideals. I know well what cannot be done; fair and grand as it would be, if it were done, a model city is impossible in England. We have here no Eastern despotism (and it is well we have not) to destroy an old Babylon, as that mighty genius Nabuchonosor did, and build a few miles off a new Babylon, one-half the area of which was park and garden, fountain and water-course—a diviner work of art, to my mind, than the finest picture or statue which the world ever saw. We have not either (and it is well for us that we have not) a model republic occupying a new uncleared land. We cannot, as they do in America, plan out a vast city on some delicious and healthy site amid the virgin forest, with streets one hundred feet in breadth, squares and boulevards already planted by God’s hand with majestic trees; and then leave the great design to be hewn out of the wilderness, street after street, square after square, by generations yet unborn. That too is a magnificent ideal; but it cannot be ours. And it is well for us, I believe, that it cannot. The great value of land, the enormous amount of vested interests, the necessity of keeping to ancient sites around which labour, as in Manchester, or commerce, as in Bristol, has clustered itself on account of natural advantages, all these things make any attempts to rebuild in cities impossible. But they will cause us at last, I believe, to build better things than cities. They will issue in a complete interpenetration of city and of country, a complete fusion of their different modes of life, and a combination of the advantages of both, such as no country in the world has ever seen. We shall have, I believe and trust, ere another generation has past, model lodging-houses springing up, not in the heart of the town, but on the hills around it; and those will be—economy, as well as science and good government, will compel them to be—not ill-built rows of undrained cottages, each rented for awhile, and then left to run into squalidity and disrepair, but huge blocks of building, each with its common eating-house, bar, baths, washhouses, reading-room, common conveniences of every kind, where, in free and pure country air, the workman will enjoy comforts which our own grandfathers could not command, and at a lower price than that which he now pays for such accommodation as I should be ashamed to give to my own horses; while from these great blocks of building, branch lines will convey the men to or from their work by railroad, without loss of time, labour, or health.