The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them.